Next Generation vehicles

Presented by Sharma Srinivas Gangaraju Associate professor MEDept

What if the vehicle is like this

What is all About this presentation

Despite being over a century old, the automobile is still a highly inefficient user of energy. Its not just the powerplant thats to blame. Weight, aerodynamic drag and high levels of rolling resistance mean that the amount of power actually being utilised to propel the driver and passengers is extremely low. Automobiles today are much heavier in comparison to cars of the twenties. Coming 2020 this will all change.

The car of 2020 will be made from aluminium, carbon fibre and thermoplastic. It will weigh only half the weight of present-day cars and will ride with the help of air suspension. Brakes will return energy to the storage battery as will solar panels on the roof. Body panels will be made from massdyed thermoplastics.

The car of the future will shed a considerable amount of its bulk, with the majority of designs adhering to a threeseat format, as any reduction in weight will mean increased efficiency. By 2020, steel will be consigned to the history books as far as automobiles are concerned. It will be replaced either by new types of porous super-light and strong alloys of steel, or replaced altogether.

While the monocoque, or integration of body and chassis into a single unit is extremely popular today, there are already signs that the much stiffer spaceframe (an unstressed body on a frame) may not be as hard to mass-produce as it was a couple of years ago. Fiat has already put a modern mass-produced spaceframe design into production, and it looks like it may be the way forward. Modern spaceframe designs need less investment per model and allow manufacturers to update their models more often. Extruded aluminum sections will form the bulk of the spaceframes components as advances in metallurgy will result in harder as well as more resistant alloys. Unstressed body panels means they can be manufactured from much lighter mass-dyed thermoplastic, which will also be scratch resistant. Colour-impregnated plastic panels will also reduce costs drastically as the paint shop is one of the largest investments in a car plant today. You will also be able to select and change colours at will, much like you can do with the Mercedes Smart today.

Carbon fibre will find extensive use in all forms of components. Currently the darling of Formula 1, this fibre-based material is less than half the weight of steel and much, much stronger. However, manufacturing and curing carbon fibre components in large numbers is at present an extremely long and arduous process that has not been successfully mass produced. Once production and cost-related issues are simplified, carbon fibre and its many variants will become the material of the future, with everything from suspension arms to full monocoques possible in the lightweight strong material. A hybrid body made from aluminium and carbon fibre sounds extremely promising.

Materials that constitute the glass area of the car will also change dramatically, as lighter and stronger polycarbonate will replace conventional glass. By 2020 the kerb weight of a typical economy segment car will not exceed half a tonne, despite being many times stiffer and safer than today.

Aerodynamic drag currently accounts for around a third of all power expended. The search for higher efficiency will see designers striving to achieve the lowest coefficient of drag possible, which will result in the introduction of aerodynamically efficient flat floors and skirted rear wheels. But dont worry, you wont have to change that flat - all tyres will be of the run flat type by then. The rolling resistance of tyres will also be drastically reduced to help efficiency, but without affecting overall levels of grip too much.

All four wheels will be independently suspended, with pneumatic suspension systems and adaptive dampers, which can be altered to suit driving style and conditions. Wheel and suspension system location will be done with the help of carbon fibre or titanium links that will help reduce weight and thus momentum in the suspension. The adjustable ride height will be perfect for our conditions, especially broken surfaces, and it wouldnt be wise to predict a major improvement in Indian roads, even over the next 20 years.

Hybrid vehicles