Edison2 Very Light Car

[dfbvt]

rayfellow

In the meantime we curious onlookers will have to wait.

Waiting? Unfortunately we have become very "experienced" at waiting. I do however, feel better about the odds that something is actually happening this time as we wait.

Fingers crossed.

Dave Bowles

[rayfellow]

This is from the Edison VLC Facebook. Words from Oliver Kuttner

The difficulty is to not loose the efficiency during this process. The Aptera after "development weighed 3 times as much as the XP base VLC. We are not willing to fall into this trap. I am proud to say that we are holding the numbers and an example is the new chassis which is the philosophical son of the steel tube chassis but is executed in stamped aluminum designed to be spot-welded or glued weighs the same 67 pounds while giving more space and easier entry. The car goes from 2 doors to 3 doors. The shape is reminiscent but more spacious. We leave the flat-wrap design that was driven by the hard XP time deadlines for a more gentle more pleasing one. The CDa should be the same maybe even better. WE were able to incorporate what will be bumper height standard bumpers without loss in efficiency...

Of course all this does not come easily and it is a relentless pursuit of the target. Especially our Ron will not let anything pass by without giving it the best try to make the most of it. so I am pleased to say that the 4.0 is alive and well but it just takes time...

I have a great team and the two chassis which now exist in the shop show a lot of promise. The cars remain simple. They are low cost to produce and they will have the same fundamental efficiency as the VLCs you know. Our target is to have fully optioned cars in the 1200 lbs range made from conventional materials for 4 people. We have reason to believe we can achieve those numbers. Those cars will be higher performance than the old VLC and will have AC more room and most of the features a normal buyer requires. The new "in wheel suspension is developing nicely and we believe it has promise in every production car as it provides more space and zero scrub. It is the lowest rolling resistance suspension on earth while giving excellent handling and removing the very cumbersome shock-tower found in ordinary cars..

We have commercial interest from many sides often for some of our detail solutions. I believe Edison2 will be like for example Boston Scientific. They developed the noninvasive surgery methods that are now the standard. For 20 years the industry resisted them but they kept pushing and improving. Change is not always welcome in large organizations but in the automotive world it is now inevitable. it will come and what we do is the only true path to a lower fuel requirement future and it is the only real enabler for meaningful electric cars which have to be part of the mix. We have been very busy but i will try to write more in the future. What we do works and it could change everything, energy independence, new technologies and new jobs and a new export product for the USA. Reinventing the Automobile has a lot of implications. I am very proud of the very dedicated and intelligent people at my firm. Rest assured we are working hard and there are real results coming...

[dfbvt]

Rayfellow,

Thanks for digging that information up. So it seems that our waiting this time may very well turn out to be worth the wait. Once they get their designs done lets hope that they can find a way to get some company in the USA to build them. That I think will be their biggest challenge.

I'd put down some $$ if it looked like that could happen.

My fingers are still crossed......

Dave Bowles

[Ken Fry]

Originally Posted by rayfellow

"It is the lowest rolling resistance suspension on earth while giving excellent handling and removing the very cumbersome shock-tower found in ordinary cars.."

" it will come and what we do is the only true path to a lower fuel requirement future and it is the only real enabler for meaningful electric cars which have to be part of the mix.

I take this hyperbole to be a bad sign: it is as if they are struggling to get more funding, and therefore grasping at straws.

re suspension:

Some suspension designs cause scrub during transitions from static load height. Some of the worst (production versions) in this respect can almost cause a measurable difference in rolling resistance, but typically only during the transition (e.g., hitting a bump). However, there are numerous suspension designs that provide near-zero scrub as a result of deflection, and many that provide very nearly perfect tracking while cruising at a range of loads within the design envelope. The front suspension in the original VW Bug was close enough to scrub free to be considered as causing no increase in rolling resistance at all. Any live axle design (and designs like de Dion and the first VW Rabbit twist-beam rear suspension, etc., etc.) causes no increase in rolling resistance either. The "very cumbersome" shock tower is a common design feature on the cheapest and smallest cars (and many others): it is simple, straightforward, cheap, proven, and easy to integrate into most designs.

re "what we do is the only true path":

There is no "only true path." The screamingly obvious "only real enabler for electric cars" is cheap batteries, the availability of which can only come from selling mass market cars like the Leaf, which can rely mainly (excluding the batteries) on existing, cheap technology rather than on entirely new ways of making things. We've had 90% efficient motors and 95% efficient controllers for decades. With respect to electric cars, what the VLC offers is light-weighting and streamlining, but the industry has been aware of those advantages for numerous decades. Even the dullards at GM were able to develop the EV1, which gained its efficiency from light-weighting and streamlining.

I would have liked to see Edison come up with a production version of the X-Prize VLC to capitalize on their potential IP in combustion control. In-wheel suspension is an area with huge players (such as Michelin) that can be hard to compete against. Streamlining and light-weighting has little new IP associated with it (this is the reason the Aptera had no IP other than the design patent on the decorative part of the shape). An ultra-efficient vehicle fits a a niche market, and it is (comparatively) easy to sell to that niche. Selling IP to Detroit is not so easy, I think. I could be wrong, of course, but one has to expect the NIH syndrome.

I wish them luck, but find the tone of this a little discouraging.

[PatQ562]

I think the realists amongst us realize that producing an Edison2-like car would take several more years of development, and that assumes a massively funded champion from outside the industry willing to relentlessly pursue the vision. None of the mainstream car companies will field such a radical departure, and the 3rd world companies have a different market (lower speed, compact village cars, not long pointy freeway flyers). The developers are being realistic by not framing this as a run-up to production; they have some engineering concepts they'd like to license, but if so they will most likely be dropped into conventional cars for only incremental impact.

Barring unforeseen breakthroughs, battery costs will only drop slowly as volume increases. In this market, the strongest weapon is, indeed, hyper-efficiency as it directly reduces the most expensive part of the vehicle. Low energy consumption is also a strong appeal to the early adopters who willingly support such breakthroughs. Ken Fry knows this quite well - any progress to report on Zing prototypes?

Although somewhat outside the scope of this forum, doubling or tripling the efficiency of fuel-powered engines would make the biggest impact on transportation energy usage. Obviously the industry knows this and we can assume there's no known solution at this time. But moving from 15-20% to 50-60% efficiency would be huge.

Pat Q

[smilingcat]

If I recall correctly, I thought Edison was after licensing of their technology rather than to become a manufacturer. There are lot of good sound reasons behind this business approach.

But there is a counterpoint, which is, it is very hard to sell technology/IP to GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda etc... Who are you kidding to say that you have a better widget than the big auto manufacturers with their multi-billion dollar research fund. You don't think they've looked under just about every rock under the sun and in the caves.

Only way to survive in auto related business in my opinion is to be boutique. Tesla is a boutique house, Lotus is a boutique house (I might add, I did own a Lotus and a very fun ride). Ferrari, Lambo are all boutique but all are now owned by the big car manufacturer. Even Prosche is now owned by VW group.

Edison needs to concentrate on being a boutique car house with rabid followers. Trying to sell IP to Detroid is the same as bashing your head on a brick wall. If they see something that could upset their business plan, they'll come knocking on your door. Not the other way around. If they think your IP could preclude them from developing something new, they'll buy you out before it gets too expensive.

just my 2cents.

[NeilBlanchard]

My concern relates to the front wheels, and that is in the latest couple of versions we have seen, the front wheel fairings are open on the outside. This likely means that the fairings are no longer pivoting with the steering, and also that the *inside* of the wheel fairings also has to be open. This is higher drag than the former design, and it seems to negate the raison d'être of the front suspension which was to allow the front wheel fairings to remain fixed in the vertical plane with the wheel only moving up and down over bumps in the road.

The front suspension will still work and it will still allow the struts to be fixed, but having the fair fixed completely doesn't use this feature to it's full extent.

I think that Edison2 has always been intending to design and then license the car to be produced in quantity by others.

[PatQ562]

An enclosed fairing must not only surround the wheel, but allow some space around it for variations in clearance, whereas a "rim only" fairing can be matched to the wheel width, which presents a lower frontal area. If the wheel center is well faired, I have to wonder how much difference each approach makes, noting of course, that at speed, when the fairing matters, the wheels will be pretty much straight ahead and lined-up with the fairing, so having the wheels pivot outside of the fairing (at low speeds) is not going to matter much.

If one is going to expose the wheels, why not lightweight, highly streamlined cycle fenders (ie "rim fairings") that hug the wheels more closely at all suspension loadings, thus presenting a minimum frontal area? These are obvious questions so I assume the smart designers have run the numbers on each alternative. It would be nice to have some findings. The same questions could apply to exposed wheels vs inside wheels vs their respective frontal areas and net CdA numbers.

Pat Q

[NeilBlanchard]

Eric sent me an email with a long video by two folks from Edison2; David Brown and Brad Jaeger:

http://cvp.telvue.com/player?id=T01694&video=61481

There are new details on crash testing and a few new renderings. The VLC v4.0 has an aluminum frame -- and they hope to have a running version in a few months.

[Sheepdog 44]

The aluminum frame has an aesthetic resemblance to the exterior frame of a smart car.