Colin Chapman told us to "simplify and add lightness" yet over the last 20 years cars have been gaining weight at a steady clip.

Not only are they larger, they are now obscenely heavy.

While reading another thread I saw a mention of Braille Batteries.  Essentially, these batteries are smaller and lighter than traditional batteries.  The lithium batteries in particular are up to 60 pounds lighter than an OEM battery.

Which leads me to my question.  How much lighter can you make a daily driver with a modest investment in aftermarket parts?

Assume that emissions aren't tested in the county of registration and that comfort is a factor.

Thoughts?

Remove Motor?

Who is Colin Chapman?

60 pounds lighter than OEM batteries? How many OEM batteries even weigh 60 pounds?

Aftermarket parts? Pull out all the consoles, cup holders, heat/cool compartments, DVD, GPS and other unneccesary gear. The pull out all the sound deadening stuff.

But, cars today are stiffer, and safer than cars of the past. That means weight, if you want a 1500 lb car that gets great mileage it's possible to build. Of course it will be destroyed in a 15 mph crash, and everyone that was in it will be killed.

Weight has almost no bearing on automotive safety.  Size is a better indicator.

As for weight.  I'm looking up which battery saved that much.  More typical in my applications would be a ~25 pound savings.  Which is still quite a bit.

ETA: Colin Chapman.

Bumpers, airbags, sturdy seats, safety cages, etc all weigh something more than flimsy components.

Also having a un-body that doesn't flex, for handling, or the feel of sturdiness, is important to a lot of people. That also has a weight penalty.

Very few people are willing to buy a new car with the same creature comforts of a 1980 VW Rabbit that weighed 1,800 lbs had a 49-90 hp motor, geting to 60 in 15 seonds, and having a top speed of 85.

Most of the increase in weight in the last 20 years comes from creature comforts.  Followed by larger engines, larger overall size and the like.

I am of the opinion that you can have your cake and eat it too, especially if you decompound the mass.  My next truck will have a smaller engine.  But it will also be smaller overall and that will mean I won't have to give up that much overall performance.

Remove the spare tire, unbolt/remove any seats you don't regularly use, Aluminum heads/block, remove all emissions equipment you can.  Pull the air injection pump, gut the cat, ect.  Gut the interior for sound deadening stuff and trim.  Just some stuff I've picked up from the drag racer/daily drivers.

Good point, most people haven't made that conenction.

2001-2003 Prius 2,765 lbs
2004-2009 Prius 2,900 lbs
2010-         Prius 3,042 lbs

If I get a Tacoma again I might LineX the floor...  It would be a lot lighter than floor mats.  And it has some sound deadening properties.

I daily drove 2 completely gutted cars('95 Integra, '92 Plymouth Laser)..and its not fun..I shaved a few TENTHS off from my 1/4 mile time..now i'm talking I took the carpet, center console, door panels, headliner, pillar trim peices, rear seats, rear seat belts, everything that you could take out in the trunk area, any emissions crap that I could get away with..had a small motorcycle battery, 13 inch aluminum rims off from a civic VX that weighed 11 lbs each with tires...the only stuff in the interior was a stripped down dash, 2 seats and a steering wheel. It takes alot of weight to really make a difference.

Somone once told me that 100lbs of weight drop would equal a tenth of time dropped in the 1/4..IMO its not really worth it unless its a track car or limited street car.

I stripped down a TJ and it actually handled a lot better.  Wasn't a lot faster.

If the OEM decided to make things lighter, that would be awesome.  Ford is taking up to 20% of the weight off some new vehicles.  Once you make one thing smaller everything can get smaller.

So you make the battery lighter, and then make the battery bracket smaller, then the firewall thinner, etc.

For what it is worth, seats are about 10% of the weight!

Taking weight off a car, is tougher, less effective after the car has been designed and built. than it is for the designers to design a car that is as light as possible.

Aluminum, fiberglass, or plastic hoods, trunk lids, door skins etc can make a car lose a lot of weight over steel.

But, most desginers are focused on weight issues when designing a car.

Drill 1" holes every 2 inches in your frame.
Go Off Roading
Scrap car
Weight problem solved!

Or, start with the trunk and work your way forward.  By the time you find 200 lbs you'll realize that the effort isn't worth and potential gain.

Edit: another low impact way to drop weight is to cut the excess length of bolts and screws off. A friend supposedly dropped almost 30lbs off his car doing this. and a few of those lbs were off the hub/wheel/suspension area and dropping unsprung weight can help with handling quite a bit.




Yeah, forgot to add that I had bought a carbon fiber hood. A friend of mine with a 3rd gen camaro brought it to the track after taking the back hatch and glass off and it ran about half a second faster. the back hatch on those probably weighs over 150lbs.





This is a pretty good article on weight reduction-




http://www.modified.com/features/0208_technical_assistance_program/index.html










 

I would argue that they have so many other concerns that they don't pay proper attention to weight.  In the late 1990s Ford solicited suggestions from suppliers on how to save weight.  They got back hundreds of ideas on how to save weight at an average of 50 cents per pound, and they implemented none of them.

Since then, however, they have figured out how to take as much as 1,000 pounds of production SUVs at no increase in cost or decrease in performance...

I recall another magazine doing something similar several years back with a '70s Cadillac.  

As an aircraft engineer and mechanic, I am always around truly light things. The wings, for instance on my personal aircraft (a 177RG) weigh a staggering 120 pounds each. And, they are really quite large. 2 people can easily lift the wing and put it in place. In fact, the entire Left wing weighs less than one door on my F150 supercrew.

With that in mind, you already know the tricks to make a conventional car, a race car. Strip it out. What so many people don't generally see is the serious effort aerospace engineers put into making each and every part, right down to the nuts on the bolts very light weight.

So, consider this, build a car like an airplane and it becomes less than half the weight, with the same HP.

Colin understood this very well. His cars were very light and always at the front of the pack on a road course. I worked for a vintage race car team when I was young. The 1950's and 60's vintage British race cars were interesting and quite fast.


Fast forward to today. Cars are full of heavy stuff. Bumpers are complex, large and heavy. Airbags and safety features add plenty of weight. The structure is designed to protect occupants and heavy. Engines and transmissions are often quite heavy for the HP produced.

That's exactly what I'm taking about.  And when you make a part lighter, everything downstream gets lighter... A lighter engine uses lighter mounts, with a lighter frame held up by a lighter suspension.

Of course, the OEM will have to do this in order to take full advantage...

I suppose, what I was trying to say is that the proper approach to light weight is to address each and every issue. Right down to the nuts, bolts and washers. (there is a reason AN washers are much smaller in outside diameter).

Each component must be designed with light weight in mind.

cujet is dead on  what the aerospace world has known for years - mass is the easiest component to modify to effect required work. There's been a number of academic/industry treatments with the aim of reducing mass without a reduction in safety and NVH. Probably the best publicized developed and continually supported program (since '93 - though its a bit dated and there's some real criticisms) is RMI's hypercar concept. Pretty simple - use carbon fiber to make major components light allowing everything else to be reduced in size and weight.
With less mass motives can be reduced - folx like EDS  have developed small, efficient, powerful engines that use Ethanol Injection to control "knock". Ford has a working program (in conjunction with EDS) called Bobcat that is developing the technology. Kinda a development of thier EcoBoost engines. If they can put this all together, it will be a game changer. I'm betting any of this requires a systemic shock ($5 per gallon fuel perhaps) to overcome market resistance and replace the current paradigms tho. The landscape, in so many ways, looks very 1970's at the moment.






When Ford brought Mulally on from Boeing, I thought hmmm...Boeing
<Aerospace>. He's playing with the last coaches team. Items
coming to market were in the product stream before he came on - but
he's made some very decisive moves that have positioned Ford well.  For
Bill Ford, it was a gutsy move that's so far panned out. I think that
trend will only improve once Mullay's vision is incorporated. Do I expect a "Hypercar" - eventually - something close.

 

I'm very aware of RMI, Lovins and the Hypercar.  Have been for about half a decade now.

That is one of the reasons that I support a $0.10 a year increase in petroleum taxes for the next 20 years.  And I don't mean fuel tax, I mean petroleum tax, with only carbon fiber and perhaps a few other things getting a rebate.

The Ford engine sounds awesome.  I really want one...

Yea - the concepts been  simmering, but almost purely academic, for a long time. FiberForge and HyperCar LLC were formed, but not much more. With Mullaly who has the process experience with the Dreamliner - and a guy like Bill Ford who has enough balls to fire himself and hire his replacement - think Ford is the best bet to get it done.





Tax is an interesting concept. Anything the Gov't gets involved, concerned about unintended consequences of market subsidization. There's a need- someone will fill it - tho we may not be satisfied with the time-frame.



To get back to your original question - check out some of the hypermiling forums (Ecomodder.com, Hypermiler.com) Some crazy stuff there. Easiest way at present to save fuel - change your driving techniques.





 

Living in NC, as you can see, I would have to disagree on paying any more taxes on the foolishness that it already is.

I come from one of those red states too...

Doesn't matter, I stand by what I said.

Alacrity, what is the hold p on the Hypercar?

If I could answer that question with any certainty - I'd be bringing it to market myself.




I think generally, the same things that stifle any innovation. Market resistance, cost, a disconnect between the innovator and the direct effect - but mostly, in this case industry inertia. The auto game is a mature industry - most of the people have come up through the ranks of mfgs. Tends to be a fairly closed community with a very mature product - which isn't the most fertile breeding ground for innovation. Need a shake up to change th path of the river.



Why I saw Mullaly as a serious disruptor. Cross industry, proven track record, experience with technological innovation. Excellent skill set for someone to bring together the pieces that been lying around for decades - and make bank.



 

No interest in new taxes - but 10 cents a gallon is roughly $100-$150 per year for average drivers. Lot of other tax increases greatly excees this - but few notice. Gas taxes get people attn because its visible and tangible. But it has very little effec on your real tax burden. That said, I'm not in love with the idea.





 

I work in taxes.
When you're paying up to 20%+ of the price extra in taxes, I don't buy the "it's just a little bit more..." argument; not to be rude.
Enough is enough though. We've already far surpassed reasonableness, so I'm not even content with an unchanging status quo, to be honest.
Give a mouse a cookie and...yeah.

Gas doesn't solely get my attention because I want to curse every time I fill up like most –– but more so because of the sheer ratio of taxes on the product and on the corporations + the "green" movement and the trend toward throwing greater taxes (due to inability to balance a budget) on the scapegoat that petroleum has been for quite some time.
"Hey, let's junk as many used cars as possible, try to coerce $40k 'green' vehicles on the public, AND raise gas taxes...they'll have little choice!"
No thanks. It may not have much effect on my tax burden, but public policy shouldn't be speculated on the idea that it doesn't hurt most people that much. There are plenty of people that don't make a ton and travel a lot to get to work and such. I think they'd have something to say about it.

As directed toward the OP's comments, I think it relates around what has been said before: comfort and "style".
Logically, the base model to the top of the line often increases in weight.

If you don't need all the perks, then big ol' leather seats and an A/C unit from under the hood make a pretty good dent.
Instituting many parts from the base model that make little difference (like steelies with a plastic hub cap instead of a solid wheel?) probably make small differences as well.

If that doesn't work, diet, exercise, and only keep 1/4 of a tank at all times.

You're a rarity - likely as you work in the field - but most people do not fathom the severity of the hidden tax loads they pay. My point -  there's a lot of other tax changes that effect tax load much more so than gas taxes - but they never elicit the same type of visceral response, well that we are seeing here. I would love to see people get as exercised over personal property tax revisions in many states  that are increasing taxes a great deal more than $150 per year. Otherwise I don't disagree with your statements on taxes.
 

I think we're in agreement.
Property taxes are, I believe, one of the most unconstitutional policies ever instituted in this country.
It is one of the increasingly numerous forms of multiple taxation for us.
Essentially, you are a ward of the state that is "allowing" you to drive on the roads or live on the land, "renting" out to you that which you have partially or fully purchased and paid taxes upon prior.
In all honesty, I'm not sure that a man with no money, job, etc. should owe anyone anything if he wants to sit on his long-ago purchased land and eat whatever pops up out of the soil.

We should not all be automatic, life-long annuities for the government. I believe this goes against what our forefathers fought for us NOT to be subjected to.

You could do a street legal formula vee.

Start with a sand rail frame and section it for one person.

Your typical 1000lb formula vee with a 95hp 1600cc motor will do 0-60 in 4.5 sec. Aircooled is simple and light.

Smaller Battery, remove spare tire, possible aftermarket exhaust, remove Cat, possible lightweight CF parts (not always lighter), buy lightweight wheels.