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02/05/2010
By EWAN KENNEDY
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Any car enthusiast looking at a story headline saying, ‘Lotus Looks At Lightweight Cars’ may shake their head and wonder where the author has been for the last 50 years. Because the founder of the famed British sports and racing car marque, Colin Chapman, was rightly famous for his engineering work in reducing mass – which is an important way of improving car performance.
No fewer than six drivers have won Formula One World Championships in Lotus cars; need we say more?
Chapman came up with the famous saying that the first thing you had to do in a successful car design was, ‘Add lightness’, an interesting way of describing the principle and one that certainly grabs attention.
Of course, any automotive engineer is well aware of the benefits of light weight in reducing emissions and fuel consumption, as well as making the car more nimble and pleasant to drive. And a car that's light on its wheels also has advantages in primary safety, because it gives a good driver an added way of getting out of trouble.
Studies by other organisations have shown that reducing the weight of a car by 33 per cent can cut its fuel consumption by 23 per cent. Obviously a reduction of mass by 38 per cent would have been even better results, however we don’t know of any calculations that show that figure.
The trouble is that decreasing weight takes a huge amount of specialist engineering expertise and can be very expensive. Or so we have been told by the mainstream car makers who, with a few exceptions, have been avoiding the mass reduction issue for decades.
Though Chapman died in 1982, Lotus Engineering, one of the spinoffs from his racing operation, continues to this day. The British company has just carried out a major study on ways of reducing weight in affordable production cars.
Lotus Engineering says a car’s mass can be reduced by as much as 38 per cent and can be achieved at an extra cost of only about three per cent. This would be an enormous improvement by any standard. (Note that Lotus didn’t include the powertrain in its research.)
Such a major improvement can't be made immediately. But Lotus says that techniques and technologies viable for mainstream automobile manufacturing should be available by 2020.
Using a late model Toyota Venza crossover SUV as a benchmark, Lotus looked at all every possible aspect of body design, both on the exterior and interior of the vehicle. For the body it considered not only different types of metals, but also ways of minimising the number of components, as well as better ways of fastening the parts to one another so that greater strength could be achieved while using less material.
Lotus also said that major gains could be made by using different materials and designs in suspension components.
Research on car interiors included the type of glass used, the seats and how they are fixed into the car, trim materials, audio systems, air conditioning, switches, knobs – everything.
On the downside, some of the changes suggested by Lotus Engineering may not appeal to car owners. Such as using non-opening side windows and only having carpets on the car floors not on the centre tunnel and door sills. The latter areas would receive some sort of a textured pattern in place of carpets.
Keep in mind that this report shows the extremes that can be achieved in mass reduction, it's up to individual car makers to do their own research into what pleases – and displeases – potential customers.
If you find this subject interesting, Lotus cars currently sold in Australia already use many ways of reducing mass. They are pure sports cars and aimed very much at the driving purist. Nevertheless, you may care to call into a Lotus dealer to see just what can be done.
Lotus presented its report, ‘An Assessment of Mass Reduction Opportunities for a 2017 – 2020 Model Year Vehicle Program’ to the International Council on Clean Transportation. It can be viewed online at www.theicct.org/documents/0000/1430/Mass_reduction_final_2010.pdf
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