McMrocks wrote:turbof1 wrote:The issue as always is speed. Road cars usually travel at speeds where aerodynamics don't have a lot of impact to begin with.
It is said that at 70kph it is better for fuel consumption to use the air conditioner instead of opening the window. I think aerodynamics matter even at speeds which don't seem that high.
Why yes, but you just took an example where you put the car yourself in a high drag situation. You opened the window after all. If I drive through mud, the car will also experience a huge amount of drag.
We aren't talking about that however; the question was "I remember some guy from Mercedes-Benz saying in some interview that there are no big gains to be made anymore. But is that true?". Current road cars their shapes are highly optimized. There will be gains still to be made, but we are far up the curve of diminishing returns.
Styling, packaging and pedestrian crash, outweighs frontal aero. We already know what a 0.19 car looks like in production, not many people liked it. We know what a 0.25 car looks like, it sells quite well, but hasn't exactly started a host of copycats.
Of course they do, but I don't think that's the discussion the topic starter wanted. These cars are made to reach a certain safety grade (I think the measurement was done in stars?) together with particular design features that highlight the brand. Despite these severe limitations, there's more then enough room to play around. However what the choice is, in these times you are not going to reduce the drag footprint a lot further. Atleast not under current max road speed norms; if we suppose these change to allow a significant higher speed (an extra 50+ kmh?), then it changes. Since the flow velocity variable of the drag equation increases squared, small things become much more important on higher speeds.
