hybrid ~300 mpg

[EagleKeeper]

3D printed

In early 1903, physician and car enthusiast Horatio Nelson Jackson accepted a $50 bet that he could not cross the United States by car. Just a few weeks later, on May 23, he and mechanic Sewall K. Crocker climbed into a 20-hp Winton in San Francisco and headed east. Accompanied by Bud, a pit bull they picked up along the way, the two men arrived in New York 63 days, 12 hours, and 800 gallons of fuel later, completing the nation's first cross-country drive.

About two years from now, Cody and Tyler Kor, now 20 and 22 years old, respectively, will drive coast-to-coast in the lozenge-shaped Urbee 2, a car made mostly by 3D printing. Like Jackson and Crocker, the young men will take a dog along for the ride—Cupid, their collie and blue heeler mix. Unlike Jackson and Crocker, they will spend just 10 gallons of fuel to complete the trip from New York to San Francisco. Then they will refuel, turn around, and follow the same west-to-east route taken by Jackson, Crocker, and Bud.

What technology can accomplish! :thumbsup:

 

[Kaido]

Semi-related:

http://www.autoblog.com/2013/11/01/man-makes-record-setting-drive-across-the-us-in-28-hours-50-min/

Across America in 28 hours, 50 minutes by car. Pretty crazy what people are doing these days!

 

[Zenmervolt]

3D printed

What technology can accomplish! :thumbsup:

They don't have a finished car. They don't even have actual MPG figures. They have a computer model that they predict will get 300 mpg.

Technology can accomplish a lot, but right now the link seems to be more about what imagination can conceive.

I'll go ahead and say this Urbee has about the same future as this car did.

ZV

 

[Scarpozzi]

Wow. It looks safe to drive too!

 

[JCH13]

They have a paper car...

By the fall of 2008, Kor and his team had a full computer model and a partial physical model of a hybrid that would get about 300 mpg.

They said one was made for a SEMA show, but make zero mention of what it's fuel efficiency is.

Making the body from fiberglass molding, it turned out, would have required creating a full-scale model of the exterior, creating the molds, laying in the fiberglass, extracting the fiberglass, and then fitting the pieces together. The process would have taken up to 10 months, at least, and the parts would need a lot of tweaking to perfect the fit.

It should NOT take that long to make a fiberglass body, even a one-off body.

I admire their ambition, but question their engineering prowess if they're run into such difficulties and have yet to produce a running vehicle, even just a prototype, in over 5 years.