If China is serious about affordable EVs, then they are eventually going to produce cars with aerodynamics like this:
https://autodesignmagazine.com/en/2020/01/gac-eno-146-designed-by-the-wind/
...and keep the size/mass down to something reasonable, like a 90s-era compact sedan.
That is how you keep battery costs down for a given amount of range. I think a $10,000 EV that can comfortably seat 5, accelerate like a typical ICE car, approach 150 miles range @ 70 mph, and top more than 90 mph is possible. And you could use a 15 kWh pack of cheap LiFePO4 batteries to do it. Or put a 3-cylinder ICE in the same car and get 80+ mpg.
CONSIDERABLE SHOUTING said:
This discussion is why i'm frustrated in the likes of Casey Putsch and his Omega Car, which he intentionally made to be as aerodynamic and as eco-friendly as possible. 100MPG diesel that out-accelerates a Viper, though I'm not sure if he ever provided hard numbers on it's Cd or weight, and has never shown how he made the body composite as far as I know. It's exists tho, and lots of what he's said is true:
[youtube]5EqLXt0qV-I[/youtube]
... based on public videos he's posted and members of the Genius Garage who work on it. But notice- I'm not sure if it has a frunk or much carrying space. Note how it has no seats either- where you sit is molded into the body and frame itself. That outer shell? In past videos are several inches think (!). It's super interesting and I hope if more people put fires under his feet he'll release actual plans for it- I'd buy em!- but lets not even try to debate that buyers everywhere would find it very strange. Hell, with that acceleration it would honestly be a detriment too, tons would drive it and find just how fast that makes you and have to ask themselves if they're responsible enough to accept that responsibility.
I've come across this car last year. It's a beauty. If he goes to offset seating like the VW XL1, he could reduce frontal area 10-15%. That front end probably is not doing any favors to its drag either. But compared to any car you can buy today, this thing is a slippery MF.
Mercedes demonstrated something with similar aero with the C111-III prototypes in the 1970s, as did Opel with its record setting GT streamliner getting close to 100 mpg on diesel. More recent cars like the Opel Eco Speedster(2002) and the VW Ecoracer(2005), have also demonstrated rapid acceleration combined with 3x or better fuel economy over today's sports cars.
The auto industry really doesn't care. The more cars we throw away and replace with new ones and the more petroleum we consume, the more profit their executives and the executives of tangentially associated industries(like oil, defense, ect) make. That lies at the heart of the problem. Planned obsolescence needs to be done away with if cars are to be at all environmentally sustainable in the future, or there will not be resources to have them at all for future generations.
A sort of dream vehicle I've been thinking about, is taking my Milan SL velomobile, and scaling it up into the form of an offset 2-seater sports car. The Milan has a Cd of 0.08, and a frontal area of 0.41 m^2. Scaling that up into a 4-wheeled sports car with exposed front wheels and enclosed rear wheels with a rear track narrower than the front, maybe 4.5-5" ground clearance, and designing it for the bare minimum downforce required to have stability at top speed via ground effects, might mean a Cd of ~0.15 and a frontal area of ~1.0 m^2. One could put a Hubmonster in each wheel, use a 20 kWh pack of Model 3 LiFePO4, run a lightweight ebike controller to each motor, and set the battery pack voltage and wheel size to allow a top speed of 160 mph or so. The entire vehicle as a monocoque with F1-style safety cell would probably weigh in around 900 lbs or so ready to drive, but with no passengers or luggage, and might be survivable in a crash at top speed. And it wouldn't pose much risk of burning your house down.
The results would be somewhere close to the following: such a thing would only need ~4 kW to hold 70 mph on the highway, and it would thus only consume 50-60 Wh/mile driven normally, giving a range well in excess of 300 miles. Peak power would be around 200 horsepower, but peak torque could be in the thousands of lb-ft, which would be monstrous in such a light car with AWD and no driveline losses. At top speed of 160 mph, it would only need ~40 kW to maintain speed once reached, so range would be around 80 miles at top speed and close to that when abused on a race track. 0-60 mph would be around 2.5 seconds, 0-120 mph around 6 seconds, with the acceleration rapidly tapering off after 120 mph. 1/4 mile drag races would be in the low 9s with a 140-ish trap speed. AND you'd have independent slip detection and torque management on each individual wheel, allowing a setting to where if the driver keeps the accelerator lightly pressed, the car could effortlessly hold a constant speed through a corner, allowing the maximum possible theoretical lateral grip for whatever tires are chosen, perhaps around 1.5G using skinny LRR tires. Unlike the typical electric car, it would be light and tossable through the twisties, instead of being too heavy to get out of its own way.
Replacing the unobtanium Hubmonster for a suitable Chinese microcar hub motor, all of the EV components could be bought off the shelf for less than $8k, probably cheaper if purchased in volume. If such a car were mass produced in a volume similar to a Mazda Miata, it could have a similar cost, and outperform cars costing 100x as much in everything but top speed.
THAT is the EV future I want to see. Once my friend and I get the Minion road-worthy, this is going to be our next project. Bonus: the above proposal may be possible with a 72V system, keeping costs down and enhancing safety.
JackFlorey said:
I agree. However, the average price of a new car is $47,000. That is no doubt in part due to people buying quarter million dollar supercars - but the average used car (where you typically do NOT see people buying supercars) is $29,000. And people are still buying them, given how low inventories are.
You can make the argument that they should not be that expensive, which would be a reasonable argument. But they are - and people are buying them at those prices.
Just because people are buying them doesn't mean they can afford them. It is not uncommon today to get 8-year loans on used cars. When there's no mass transit and you need to get to work and have other obligations(children are a major driving force in cars being all but mandatory in the U.S.), there's not much real choice in the matter. People will pay whatever they have to and sign the dotted line, to keep from losing everything from not being able to get to work. My personal experience is that no job I've ever had has been stable for at least that long, and that is probably true for most working people. The likilihood is high that said used car will require repairs during the life of the loan as well, which if the owner lives paycheck to paycheck, where will the money come from to service it? This is a bubble waiting to pop, like housing, and then all the Vanguards and Blackrocks are going to swoop in with all of that money printed out of thin air and handed to them and scoop everything up for pennies on the dollar while the auto industry and FIRE companies will get more taxpayer-funded bailouts, as has already happened repeatedly. Then we'll eventually all "own nothing and be happy" and have to rent everything we need from billionaires at grossly inflated costs with no hope of ever being able to buy anything outright as real wages decline.
They're the business, using a cf-30 atm and it's had several falls of vehicles and workbenches onto concrete floors, doesn't mind getting rained on much either. Had a cf-27 once, surprisingly good for an ancient P2 and it fell out of my backpack while filtering through traffic at about 40mph, turned back and saw it bouncing down the road before getting run over by a Clio. Pulled up, wandered back (it was logjamed), opened it up, hadn't bothered it one bit 
