Chubby drivers are influencing carmakers. Yes, that's right. Car companies around the world are designing bigger vehicles, despite the quest for better fuel mileage. Sadly, they're satisfying overweight car buyers.
Although automobile fuel efficiency is up, and the newest cars deliver better gas mileage than ever before, automobile weight is steadily increasing. The 2008 models are considerably heavier than predecessors.
Although carmakers won't admit it, industry observers say heavier cars are designed to accommodate a gush of obese drivers and passengers. Look around: obesity has increased sharply for both adults and children in the United States.
Data from two National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveys show that among adults aged 20 - 74 years the prevalence of obesity increased from 15% (from a 1976 - 1980 survey) to nearly 33% (in a 2003 - 2004 survey).
Since the mid-1970s, surveys also show increases in overweight children and teens. For children aged 2 - 5 years, the prevalence of overweight increased from 5% to nearly 14%, and for kids aged 6 - 11 years, prevalence increased from 6.5% to almost 19%. For teens aged 12 - 19, obesity increased from 5% to over 17%.
This isn't just an American phenomenon, either. Figures show (pun intended) China's nouveau riche car buyers are growing fatter, as are drivers in Europe. MacDonald's Beijing burgers and sugar-laden Shanghai Coca-Cola makes for heavier passengers. Heavier passengers need heavier cars, and these vehicles need bigger (heavier) engines and drive trains, and so it goes. Guzzle Coke. Guzzle petrol.
Market researchers at
Mega Associates indicate the average weight of a new vehicle is up by nearly a hundred pounds from that of last year's models (reported recently by
Ward's Auto World).
If you think that's trivial, consider this: the average weight of a 2008 automobile is up by more than half a ton from that of cars built in 1990. New car ads tout big engines, and big bumpers, and lots of chrome and heft. Reminds me of the 1960s.
Lighter cars are needed, not heavier ones. The Hypercar concept, promoted by the
Rocky Mountain Institute and
Fiberforge (formerly Hypercar) is close to the answer. Hypercars are ultra light and streamlined. They provide equal or better performance, as well as equivalent, or better, safety, than today's cars.
The Rocky Mountain folks contend the best, and possibly the only, way to achieve safety and fuel economy is by building aerodynamic vehicles using advanced composite materials such as carbon-fiber. These ultra light cars ideally would be powered with something along the lines of a hybrid-electric power plant, possibly running on fuel cells. For its part, Fiberforge is attempting to lower the cost of high-volume advanced-composite materials and structures for such ultra-light super-strong vehicles.
Fiberforge is commercializing what it bills as a breakthrough manufacturing process for the production of advanced-composite parts. The company's approach uses so-called tailored blanks, or semi-finished panels made from pre-preg (pre-impregnated) thermoplastic tapes. Using these tailored blanks, and CAE software, Fiberforge contends it can rapidly convert an automotive design to blank design to CNC machine instructions, and do it cost competitively.
While thrusts like these are the wave of the not-too-distant future, what's also needed is an all-out drive (pun intended) to get Americans, and chunky drivers in the world's industrialized nations, to eat healthy, exercise more, and trim down. With the cost of gasoline at sky-high levels, and going up, the incentive might be there -- if people make the connection.
