by Commuter Cars CEO Rick Woodbury
I've heard that to innovate, you don't give people what they ask for, but
rather watch what they do.
What people do is drive cars with four empty seats, jamming up streets and parking spaces.
Small cars eliminate congestion and the strain on our resources, but not all small cars are created equal. A Mini-Cooper takes relatively the same space on the freeway as the largest SUVs because both use a full lane and have similar braking distances. Motorcycles can fit two-to-a-lane but are unsafe, offer no protection from the weather, and give little room to carry things.
Freeway Lanes
By federal standard, a freeway lane is 12-feet wide. A truck is 9' 4" from mirror to mirror, which leaves a clearance of 16" on either side. In order to double a freeway lane's capacity, the maximum width of a car needs to be 40" in order to have that same 16” clearance. The Tango is 39" wide.
We've driven two Tangos side-by-side in a single lane for over 40 miles at freeway speeds and it felt quite comfortable. A Booze Allen Hamilton / UC Berkeley study on a narrow car of nearly the same dimensions as the Tango found it would increase lane capacity from 2,000 cars per hour to 4,400 cars per hour.
Parking
The Tango can fit perpendicular to the curb in one-fourth of a standard parallel parking space. According to a diagram in a Booze Allen Hamilton / UC Berkeley study, by striping a parking lot for cars of the Tango's dimensions, parking capacity is increased by 350%.
According to the parking departments of San Francisco and Los Angeles, you can park as many Tangos, cars or motorcycles in a metered space as can fit, if the meter is paid.
Stability
For a car to be as narrow as the Tango requires one of two methods for stability. If tilted like a motorcycle it would have to have either manual or electronically controlled tilting. Both would be problematic. If the system failed in a turn it could be deadly.
The other simple solution is to ballast the car so that it has a safe rollover threshold - similar to a sailboat. By the time you put a couple thousand pounds of ballast in such a small car as the Tango, you have a weight that requires a lot of horsepower to move. Battery-electric is the answer.
Electric
The lead-acid batteries provide just enough weight in the Tango to achieve the same rollover threshold as a Porsche 911. As you may have seen in one of our videos, they also provide plenty of power. This is because, using the same kind of motors that pull 100-car freight trains in one gear from 0 to 90 mph, fit nicely in the space between the rear wheels leaving the rest of the bottom of the car for batteries. The two Tango motors actually produce more than twice the torque of a Dodge Viper V-10 engine.
Rollovers
In order to get the Tango to the mainstream, it will require overcoming the obvious objections - primarily rollover and safety. The Tango has achieved the static rollover threshold of a Porsche 911. Seeing videos of the Tango racing around corners and parked perpendicularly on a 30% grade with people trying but failing to push it over should eventually sink in and convince people that its looks are deceiving.
Even I, who know the rollover statistics, was trembling when I parked it on upper Stanyan St. in San Francisco. It's a 30% grade. After rocking it with my terrified stepsister inside, I was finally relieved of my fears. It just looked like it would fall over, but in actuality it's at least as stable as any other car.
Passenger Safety
For safety, we know that we must go to the extreme because everyone instinctively thinks that small cars are dangerous. The Tango has a full race car roll cage; in fact, there are actually four times more side protection bars in a Tango door than in the largest SUV. The four bars are also thicker and stronger than that single bar. Furthermore, they are attached by specially designed hinges to to be as strong as the cage in front, and have 1/2" steel pins in the rear to attach the doors to the rest of the cage. The cage is exactly the same as those in race cars that crash at over 200 mph and has an FIA certification. Race cars don't have air bags but do use a 4 or 5-point harness. The Tango has 4-point harnesses, as are used in pilot's seats of aircraft.
Driving Range
Range for an electric car is probably the next concern. Since the Tango is not trying to be a family car, the range is not such an issue. Again, according to transportation statistics, the average commute in the US is only 20 miles round trip. Even in Los Angeles, it's only 37 miles. So the average commuter would be well-served with lead-acid batteries which are inexpensive and have a low cost per mile when used within average commuting distances.
Charging
Charging, is another win for the Tango. For an average commute, one would just plug in the Tango every night like a cell phone. Service stations could install charging stations at a lower cost than adding a gasoline pump. And since the Tango's battery box is easily removable, a future plan could involve quick pack-swapping.
As of this printing, CEO Rick Woodbury will be on hand at the 53rd annual Hillsborough Concours d'Elegance on May 3, 2009, as part of our extensive Green Car Display and Showcase.
For info on the Tango, please visit CommuterCars.com.
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