APR 19

Today's auto makers actually do know how to make cars aerodynamic, it is just that they don't because consumers are more interested in gadgets like memory seats, in-car entertainment systems, climate-control, navigation systems, iPod interfaces etc. There has been no progress in auto aerodynamics since the late '80s when drag coefficients dropped from the .4s to .3s.

Automobile 'progress' since then has generally resulted in all vehicles becoming heavier, with the attendant requirement for heaver construction tyres to manage the extra weight (which increases rolling resistance!). The only truly worthwhile improvement over the last 15 years has been computer controlled stability systems.

Auto-makers could easily add active aerodynamics to cars in the form of servo controlled fairings which are brought into action when the road speed is high enough to warrant it. At highway speed, most of the engine's power output is being used to overcome air resistance and not carry the mass of the vehicle. Active (computer managed) aerodynamics could easily reduce fuel consumption by 15-20%.

You can blame the lack of progress on the consumer.

Sorry, I don't blame it on the consumer because as a consumer, I've never had the opportunity to buy such a vehicle as they haven't been introduced, as you said, sense the 80's. There are polls and whatnot, but are you actually saying there is not a large enough market for vehicles that get 50+ MPG?

Take the smart car as the example. To comply with US safety regulations the chassis became so heavy that its mileage is frankly terrible.

For as long as people drive blindly around in armored vehicles like large SUVs, and the road authorities insist on all 4 wheeled motorized vehicles to be able to withstand the likely head on collision with the unconscious Hummer driver; we shall have an unfair safety issue for right winged families to scream "Won't someone think of the children!". Unless they're playing on the driveway behind the SUV (3 times as likely for a fatality with a SUV), or on a bicycle, motorbike, as a pedestrian or any of the other vulnerable but unimportant persons who are at risk from bad driving in big cars. And yet law makers have nothing to protect them from a Hummer. What are your chances of surviving a head on collision as a pedestrian?
The solution?
Contact your road law legislating body and lobby them in a public forum, as I'm sure you can't afford to bribe them as well as oil and auto companies.