Showing posts with label VW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label VW. Show all posts
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Thursday, February 28, 2013
In the Caribbean off the coast of Cancun, Mexico, lies what looks like a old-fashioned Volkswagen Beetle. Resting in about 30 feet of water, the Bug appears to have been dropped there intact; it’s coated in algae and coral, with a few lobsters using it as habitat, but realistic enough that you can almost see the letters on its tires. It’s not a real Beetle, but part of an unusual art project that’s already become a popular destination for underwater tourists.
The Beetle was created by artist Jason DeCaires Taylor, who has filled what’s now known as the Cancun Underwater Museum with some 500 sculptures drawn from everyday life in Mexico. Taylor has been building underwater sculptures since 2006, using marine concrete — far more resistant to corrosion from sea salt than regular concrete — as a way to draw attention to the plight of natural coral reefs while taking some of the pressure from diving tourism away from them. The sculptures are also designed to resist severe hurricanes, another threat to coral reefs.
Most of Taylor’s sculptures are made from casts using live models from the local population; after carving the concrete and planting some coral colonies to spur growth, they’re lowered precisely into place by a boat-mounted crane. The original Bug remains a mainstay of life in Mexico, where it stayed in production until 2003, and only in the past few years was the last one serving as a Mexico City taxicab retired from service.
But Taylor’s life-size replica of a Bug, which he called “Anthropocene,” weighed eight tons. As this Discovery clip shows, Taylor and his team had to tie the Bug to giant air bags, then tow it six miles from shore to the drop site. They eventually put the sculpture in place — but not before dropping it a couple of times when the air bags broke free from the Bug. While the coral will make it unrecognizable in a few years, it will still keep the iconic Beetle shape well after the surface copies have turned to rust.
Photos: B.campbell65 via Flickr Via:Autos.yahoo.com
How a life-size VW Beetle becomes an underwater tourist attraction
Monday, February 25, 2013
Saving energy in an automobile usually requires running a smaller engine, cutting weight and reducing aerodynamic drag to a minimum, and in the XL1, VW pushes all three steps to their modern limits. Power comes from a two-cylinder, 0.8-liter diesel — essentially half of VW’s standard 1.6-liter four-cylinder diesel plant — mounted in the rear of the XL1, linked to a 7-speed transmission, a 5.5 kWh lithium-ion battery and electric motor. The two-seat body of the XL1 has a 0.189 coefficient of drag (a Toyota Prius has a 0.25 Cd) and it weighs just 1,752 lbs., about half of a typical American midsize sedan.
That combination allows the XL1 to travel 31 miles on electricity alone, and over 310 miles on a tank of fuel, for what VW claims is a mileage rating of 261 mpg (or 313 mpg by European standards) — better than any other gas, diesel or electric-powered vehicle. That’s twice as efficient as the most miserly car for sale in the United States, the Scion iQ electric — which can only travel 38 miles on a full charge.
To build the XL1, Volkswagen also had to use engineering extremes usually not found outside a racetrack. The body of the XL1 will be made from carbon fiber, although using a process VW claims will be far cheaper than those applied by supercar builders such as Ferrari and Lamborghini. The XL1 will be assembled by hand in a special section of VW’s Osnabrueck factory in Germany. And to ensure the safety of the passengers in case the XL1 rolls over, the scissor doors can be blasted open with explosive bolts.
But that efficiency comes with a few sacrifices, with speed first among them. Together, the electric motor and engine produce 68 hp and 103 lb-ft of torque. VW says that’s enough to launch the XL1 to 62 mph in 12.7 seconds — although it suggests not doing so. Top speed is limited to 99 mph. And the two seat interior of the XL1 has to look stylish, because there’s nothing behind the seats; the XL1 will offer a limited amount of space under the hood. To save weight further, only a cutout of the windows roll down, like the old Subaru SVX.
Given the combination of exotic materials, engineering costs and low-speed, hand-built production, there’s no way the XL1 will make a profit for VW. It exists only due to the will of VW Chairman Ferdinand Piech — grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, the designer of the original Beetle — who has pushed VW to refine the idea of the XL1 for more than a decade. For all that VW revealed today, it didn’t announce prices, and that’s the one bit of data that will determine whether the XL1 makes sense as anything other than a corporate science project.
Via: Autos.yahoo.com
Volkswagen reveals the XL1, a 261-mpg Beetle for the 22nd century
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
