Thursday, May 26, 2011

New car

From last few days, I have been thinking about a designing a car. I know, it sounds unreal but I like to imagine :) If I were to design a car, here is my wish list.
- It should be a hybrid (diesel + electric motor). I prefer diesels :)
- It should be fun to drive (good handling)
- It should be economic enough to drive. (better value for money)
- Wherever possible, it should try to generate energy. e.g. the brakes, the suspension, the chassis, the transmission, the tyres (?) should be regenerative.
- It should have automatic switch to run on electric motor under certain circumstances.
- It should maximize the fuel efficiency than any other car out there.
- It should have a better footwell with well organized peddles. I prefer long peddles where you can rest your whole foot.
- It should be spacious.
- The seats should be comforting.
- The suspension should have multiple modes like - comfort (soft suspension), sports(rigid suspension) and BoBW(Best of both worlds)
- All necessary gadgets.
- Being a diesel, it should a good turbo to boost the power.
- The torque curve should be linear or flat.
- Minimal or no turbo lag.
- Good AC with minimum load on engine.
- A good linear, progressive clutch (this is very necessary and is neglected by almost every manufacturer)
- I would like to keep about 10 - 12 % of power as reserve to use as needed. I would like to have a boost while overtaking :). About this, I was thinking about keeping a spare cylinder (a small one) and while the car is running on engine power, it should not use power output of this spare cylinder but it should be available on demand. (this is just a requirement and not the design :). The design might be much more difficult)
- Instead of having one turbo, I would like to have 2 turbos - a small one and other big one. They will work in mutually exclusive fashion. The small turbo should start spooling early in the rev range (will have advantage of being small) while the big one will take over after a threshold.
- About the hybrid nature, the diesel engine when running should charge the battery and all regenerative energy should be used to charge batteries.

Thats it for now. Will add more as I remember more :)