What is Digg?93 Comments
- brbeaird, on 05/11/2009, -2/+56Why would you want to "shed" miles per gallon? Wouldn't you want *more* miles per gallon? Or maybe you want to shed gallons per mile...
- xShad0w, on 05/11/2009, -0/+39Awful Title.
- gizzymo, on 05/11/2009, -0/+18I think less extreme measures are required, look at european cars, they go a hell of a lot farther on the same amount of gas than american cars do.
- PapaPanda512, on 05/11/2009, -4/+21No.
- inigomntoya, on 05/11/2009, -2/+17Actually the answer to this is 'Yes' - as their test proved that wrapping your vehicle in this manner does in fact shed the number of miles that you can drive with one gallon of gas.
- Wargala, on 05/11/2009, -2/+16Actually, the best way is to streamline the rear of the car. Here's an excellent example of that:
http://www.aerocivic.com/
Yes, it's ugly as sin, but if you make the car more aerodynamic, instead of the golfball idea, which won't work, you can squeeze way more mpg's out of a car then anything a hybrid drivetrain can do.
The easiest way to demonstrate this it to drive down the road, roll down the window, and put your hand out the window palm down finger tips towards the front of the car.
Notice how "hard" the wind is pushing against your hand. Now, raise your fingertips towards to the sky, and you'll notice a gradual increase in air resistance until it takes a bit of strength to get the hand to move through the air. multiply this by the amount of times your hand goes into the surface area of a car, and you'll see what I mean. - antonio97b, on 05/11/2009, -1/+11Woah, that's deep. I think you should go to MIT or something.
- immatellyouwhat, on 05/11/2009, -0/+9So tell your wife to get out?
/Heeeyooo!!! - inigomntoya, on 05/11/2009, -0/+8Speed Holes, eh?
- Groovydoo, on 05/11/2009, -0/+8I wish they would have said "NO!" in the first sentence!
- gdog05, on 05/11/2009, -0/+8All it really needs is some speed holes: http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/5508/02gv4.jpg
Ned: Whatcha diddely-doin', neighbor?
Homer: Aw, putting speed holes in my car. Makes it go faster.
Ned: Is that so? Well, gee, maybe the old Flanders-mobile could use some - Namco, on 05/11/2009, -0/+8I disagree. Why, last month I removed 25 broken down cars and 37 SUV's off the road and it did not increase my vehicle's economy one bit.
- dicketj8050, on 05/11/2009, -0/+7is everyone just going to leave their cars out in hail storms on purpose?
- ssquared22, on 05/11/2009, -1/+8Shedding gallons per mile sounds sorta wrong, but I know the grammar is correct. I think. Ha.
- anenokoji, on 05/11/2009, -0/+6Small, light efficient cars are key, with small and light engines.
- pixelate, on 05/12/2009, -0/+6But the point of the article wasn't to ask if a golf ball covering could decrease mileage. The Digg title is still a mistake.
- anexanhume, on 05/11/2009, -1/+7Terrible title, and the test in the article shows it didn't do jack crap. I feel so enlightened.
- mctom987, on 05/11/2009, -0/+5RTFA fail
Title was acutally accurate - trolleyfan, on 05/11/2009, -0/+5"Are you reading the right article? They tested it in a real world situation and it did nothing to help fuel economy. The only person that said that it helped was the guy who works for the company that sells this moronic crap."
Are you reading what *he* said right? He said - correctly - that it helped shed the number of miles you can drive on a gallon of gas. "Shed" implies that number "X" here - the number of mpg - got *smaller* because it *shed* miles (well, about a quarter of a mile, actually).
Now, if he had said it had gained mpg, well, then he'd be wrong (and a probably company shill). - kamakazitp, on 05/11/2009, -0/+5it doesn't work on other surfaces because other surfaces are not spheres.
WARNING: NERD CONTENT:
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/aerodynamics/ ... - anaxa, on 05/11/2009, -2/+7Dugg for reading ability.
- NotRylock, on 05/11/2009, -2/+6Its a latex cover with dimples in it, the dots are the car's paint showing through.
- PaulC, on 05/11/2009, -0/+4Ever since I learned about golf ball aerodynamics in high school, I've always wondered why, if the dimples make things so much more aerodynamic, we don't see them on any other surfaces like cars. It's cool to see them trying it out, even if it does look like ass.
- trolleyfan, on 05/11/2009, -0/+4And often diesel.
- dusanmal, on 05/11/2009, -0/+4All what is left is for American car makers to go and read specifications of those cars and learn what is considered to be a small, medium and large car there. Than take their own designs and engines and production and make those here. But they won't. Because they are scared of "car nuts" who make a small but loud consumer base in the USA. I place blame on those "car nuts" and as a particularly bad example on a kind-of-leader of the group Csaba Cszere who at the crucial moment in the 1990's have led the crusade of "underpowered" mockery at manufacturers who tried to import fuel efficient cars (in particular his mockery strongly contributed to the extinction of cars like early Mazda Protege and VW Passat Diesel from USA market despite extremely brisk sales [ ex. 1997 VW Passat TDI wagon sold every single imported car in 4 months, mostly at MSRP prices or higher.... car was not back in 1997 or next year because of C.C. and likes mocked its "underpowered" 90 hp engine, ...]). Instead we got SUV craze. Thanks "car nuts".
- 1Bad, on 05/11/2009, -1/+5It just a giant sticker with holes in it. They call the holes dimples, and is equivalent to taking a hole puncher and punching holes through a piece of paper and calling those dimples. This is a scam to take advantage of people's desire for improved MPGs.
- scarz99, on 05/11/2009, -0/+4Long answer: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
/yahtzee - TheBigBad, on 05/11/2009, -0/+3"Every system on a new vehicle is optimized to return the best fuel economy, given the available technology"
Then technology is going the wrong way because my 1991 Accord gets a consistent 31 mpg and the 1992 CRX HF I owned got close to 50. Unless you are hauling something, there is no need for the amount of horsepower that modern vehicles have.
You don't need a 300 hp Chevy Suburban just to put groceries in the back. - Gyga, on 05/11/2009, -0/+3I doubt many broken down cars are on the road... oh you mean old cars. why didn't you say so.
- t0x2c, on 05/11/2009, -0/+3Dugg for reading ability. MPGs were, indeed, shed.
- BoneheadFarker, on 05/11/2009, -0/+3Golf balls aren't really aerodynamic. The reason dimples work on a golf ball is because it creates turbulence all over the surface as opposed to mostly just at the back. By spreading out the turbulence and reducing the amount at the back that creates drag, it produces a longer flight.
On the other hand, a similar principle can be applied to wings and propeller blades. Humpback whales have bumps on the leading edge of their flippers, which allows them to perform tight maneuvers underwater for a creature of it's size. By creating a similar turbulence over the top of the wing surface as the dimples on a golf ball do on it's entire surface, it allows the air or water to stick to the surface longer in a specific direction, which reduces the chance of a stall while creating lift. Great for airplanes, not so good for cars.
The only true way to reduce drag on a car is to make it as smooth and tear-drop shaped as possible... - LoudMusic, on 05/11/2009, -0/+3Terrible Digg title aside, I've been wondering about this for quite some time. And the results are the opposite of what I anticipated.
RESULTS
UNWRAPPED
430.1 Miles / 17.522 Gallons = 24.55 mpg
WRAPPED
429.8 Miles / 17.526 Gallons = 24.52 mpg
And I think their testing was fair. So the answer, golf ball dimples on a car do not improve MPG. - anaxa, on 05/11/2009, -0/+3If you don't want to read the article, just scroll down to the table at the end. The dimpled car was worse.
Golf balls != cars. - Namco, on 05/11/2009, -0/+3I had to read it 4 times to understand it myself.
- 1Bad, on 05/12/2009, -0/+2Thanks for clarifying. I misread what he wrote, and was simply trying to prevent people from believing that this product could help anyone improve their mpgs.
Inigomntoya, your a dick. - inigomntoya, on 05/11/2009, -1/+3Oh there's a spreadsheet?! Well, *****!
STOP THE PRESSES! How do I delete my comment!?
/s - unxconformed, on 05/11/2009, -0/+2Drag associated with the shape of the car is going to dominate the skin drag in the ranges of speeds cars operate in. Like the article showed, having that dimpled skin provided no benefit (even if their testing procedure was sort of junk). Don't waste your money on this snake oil covering....
- Prodigy1990, on 05/11/2009, -2/+4the title makes sense. if you read the article it shows that the covering actually reduced the MPG's by a small amount.
- anenokoji, on 05/11/2009, -0/+2Actually I went to ITT
- trolleyfan, on 05/11/2009, -1/+3Actually, the article shows it, if anything, makes mpg worse...
- Taiyoryu, on 05/12/2009, -0/+2"In normal operation, the skin friction accounts for no more then 1 percent of the total drag since the main drag generation mechanism is the vehicle shape"
This "snake oil covering" is attacking the wrong problem. You get the most gains from adjusting the overall shape of the car.
It's like improving the energy efficiency of a home. I certainly encourage getting more efficient lighting, but you'll get more gains first by improving insulation, properly sealing a home, installing an automated thermostat and setting it properly, and installing an efficient HVAC system. - JCEEZ, on 05/11/2009, -0/+2yea golf balls rotate....
- secrity, on 05/11/2009, -0/+1Is there an article regarding these "car nuts" or Csaba Cszere? Wikipedia didn't have an article about Csaba Cszere, although they had one for Csaba Csere, who was a Technical Editor for Car and Driver magazine. The Csaba Csere article didn't mention anything about "car nuts" or anything similar.
- jbmcb, on 05/12/2009, -0/+1Wow, you just eat up whatever you're fed.
> European cars have a lot better MPG
Different safety standards, different standards of gauging MPG, different definition of a gallon, different emissions standards... apples and oranges.
... their range topped 260km
The EV1's worked very well - in California where it doesn't get that cold. Try firing up your lead-acid battery car in Minnesota when it's ten below zero. The thing about cars is they have to work *everywhere* - on top of mountains, in death valley, on the coast of Florida, in Alaska. Building an electromechanical device that works in every environment reliably is *extremely* hard. You aren't paying for the price of the parts of your car, you're paying for the billion dollars and ten years of development it took to get all the parts to work all the time.
> or watch Who Killed The Electric Car on youtube.
That show is an incredible load of crap. GM killed the EV1 because it was loosing money on it - period.
> Pretty much their rules don't allow any production vehicles that are electric to use NiHM batteries.
Oh I love it when people bring up this tidbit. So if Chevron has issued this edict banning NiMH batteries in all vehicles, how does the Prius get to use NiMH batteries? Or the Honda Insight? Or the new Ford Fusion hybrid? Or all the Saturn hybrids? Or just about every other hybrid on the road today?
Unless, of course, you're talking about using NiMH batteries in all-electric cars (I don't know what the difference would be patent-wise, it's pretty much the same thing) but in that case - it's because NiMH batteries SUCK by themselves. The power output curve is totally wrong for use in continuous duty applications, like driving on the highway. That's why the gas engine kicks in on the current generation hybrids. LiONs are somewhat better, but are expensive, heavy, and don't do well in extreme environments. LiPolys are the way to go. - catalysis, on 05/12/2009, -0/+1Try taking a pick-axe and putting some speed holes in it.
- inactive, on 05/11/2009, -1/+2always wondered who that guy pissed off, and how. I mean, that's at least a hundred dollars worth of axes sticking in that car. What if they guy drove off while you were waiting in line at Home Depot??
- Majora26, on 05/12/2009, -0/+1What ain't no country I ever heard of!
- Majora26, on 05/12/2009, -0/+1I wasted my life reading that article. Looking back, i could've done something productive, like skipped straight to the comments
- sageerrant, on 05/12/2009, -0/+1...yup, I'm still a geek.
-
Show 51 - 96 of 96 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is 