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By
EWAN KENNEDY
22 December 2008
The greatest dream of Laurens van den Acker, the general manager
of Mazda's Design Division is cars that will never crash. Not for
the human suffering it will eliminate, though that obviously is
part of his dream, but because he will be able to come up with
fascinating futuristic shapes designed purely to please the eye,
not to save lives in crashes.
The
shape of current cars is dictated far more by the need to provide
protection during a crash than most people realise. They have
long, tall fronts that crumple to give pedestrians a chance of
survival, as well as protecting the car’s occupants. The doors
are so thick that they steal significant space from the car’s
interior but are necessary to add strength.
Strength
that is usually never required. Only a tiny number of cars are
involved in major crashes. The rest carrying around hundreds of
kilograms of safety structure, including airbags, that goes unused
to the wreckers yard or recycling station at the end of the
car’s life.
As
van den Acker said with a smile, “it’s as though we are all
wearing parachutes all the time just in case we need to jump out
of an aircraft one day”.
Stop
cars from crashing and their bodies can be shaped purely for
stylish reasons. Style that might have a low front, super sleek
bonnets and all sorts of possibilities dictated only by the
imagination.
Perhaps
even shapes that could be changed quickly, either at the whim of
the driver looking for a new image, or to suit different
aerodynamic needs. A car travelling at low speeds through a city
could be a different shape to one moving a fair clip on a
motorway, with computers changing the car as speed increases.
Mazda's
design chief says we could have cars with far more interior space
being offered in smaller bodies. Look at the back seat space of a
2008 car compared with a 1988 model and you will find it’s
little changed in the room offered. Yet look at the exterior size
and you will see how much larger is the current model of the same
car.
At
the same time as the body of our no-crash cars can be reshaped,
hundreds of kilograms of unnecessary weight could be stripped out.
Meaning a smaller engine would still give plenty of performance.
A
small engine weighs less than a big one, can run through a lighter
transmission and requires a fuel tank with less volume. The
benefits increase domino fashion the more you look at them.
Will
we ever see a car that can’t crash? Yes, the required technology
is already understood in principle, though a huge amount of work
has to be done. Cars would need to be able to communicate with one
another, roads would have to carry electronic information about
traffic, weather and a multitude of other factors.
The
downside is that we won’t be driving them ourselves, computers
will do everything for us.
We
may not see cars that can’t crash in my lifetime, but there's a
good chance that my grandchildren will find them the normal mode
of transport.
© Copyright
Marque Publishing Company
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