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A comment on A German Car That Was Ultra-Aerodynamic and Totally Impractical.

Re:A German Car That Was Ultra-Aerodynamic and Totally Impra... by imaginenore on Sunday September 14, 2014 @05:18PM (#8316267)
It's not surprising that a prototype-type of car has a drag coefficient of 0.15. Does it have AC, airbags, comfortable seats, audio system, power windows, ABS, etc?

Volkswagen XL1, a production car, has a drag coefficient of 0.189.

If you look at the modern experimental cars, they have much lower drag coefficients, like Aurora 101 is 0.08.

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Re:A German Car That Was Ultra-Aerodynamic and Totally Impra... by smegel on Sunday September 14, 2014 @06:56PM (#8316525)
> Does it have AC, airbags, comfortable seats, audio system, power windows, ABS, etc?

How do any of those things affect aerodynamics? Maybe power windows require a slightly different window design...but even that seems unlikely.

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Re:A German Car That Was Ultra-Aerodynamic and Totally Impra... by imaginenore on Sunday September 14, 2014 @09:51PM (#8316907)
Because you can't shape the car any way you want, you have to fit all these things in, while still being bound by box-like constraints (for driving on normal roads, parking, stability while turning, etc) and having to be slightly elevated to drive over bumps and small rocks.

It's pretty damn hard to build a practical and safe car with a very low drag.

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Re:A German Car That Was Ultra-Aerodynamic and Totally Impra... by sliverstorm on Sunday September 14, 2014 @08:39PM (#8316758)
Space, mostly. You have to fit those things somewhere. The more gadgets you cram inside, the more you find you can't keep your perfect shape.
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