 |
| I'm curious what this book has to say about the genesis of the car... In 1990 to 1996, I worked for GM at the Advanced Concept Center California (ACC, in Newbury Park). When I started, they told me that recently, they had done the styling work for the Impact (later named the EV1 in production), in conjunction with AeroVironment. GM had a contract with AeroVironment (based in Pasadena area, as I recall) to do joint advanced vehicle projects. Impact was one of those projects. I worked on one project with AeroVironment for a "narrow lane vehicle." It was supposed to be very narrow for use in urban environments. (There was a meeting with about 10 people from our facility and a bunch of people from AeroVironment at their office, to discuss what the next project shoud be. The founder of AeroVironment, Dr. MacCready was there,as well as our head, Tom Peters. After some pleasantries, they went around the big conference room table and people shared their opinion of what they preferred as the next project. The pre-discussion had narrowed down the choices to a super-aero car and the narrow lane vehicle concepts. Everyone was saying that they thought the next project should be the super-aero car. I was one of the last people to give an opinion, just based on being in a certain seat around the table. I was the only one who didn't go for the super-aero car. I suggested the narrow lane vehicle because it was kind of a new concept, whereas the super-aero car is something many people of looked at and have come up with concepts in the past. When everyone had spoken, Dr. MacCready gave his opinion and he agreed with the narrow lane vehicle concept for the same reason, that it's kind of new territory. What was interesting is that once Dr. MacCready gave his opinion, nearly everyone started changing their mind and their opinion. In short order, it was decided that the next project would be the narrow lane vehicle. It turned out to be the last project with AeroVironment. The contract was not renewed after that project.) It had 4 wheels so it had to meet Auto FMVSS requirements (not as severe as they are now back in 1990). We built many scale models and mocked up a full scale vehicle (tandem seating). One of the fun things about the project was to take 3/8 scale clay models of 3 different styling concepts to the Cal Tech wind tunnel. It was a pretty old tunnel and was pretty small but it was large enough to fit the 3/8 scale models. We did many runs to measure drag, lift and center of pressure (including at different angles). What was fun was that between runs, we would modify the model by adding or removing clay in critical areas to try and improve the Cd. We added spoilers in the back, changed the shape around the outside rear view mirrors, the shapes leading into and away from the wheels, etc. It was a lot of iterations with gut-feel for what will improve the Cd. In the end, we improved the Cd on all the models significantly, with some pretty minor changes to the design. We took the full scale mockup to the Arizona GM proving grounds (Mesa, AZ) to see what it would be like to drive such a small & narrow vehicle next to other cars, buses and trucks (in a safe test track environment). The mockup was made of plywood, foam, fiberglass & plexiglass. It had a basic electric drivetrain out of a golf/utility cart so that it could be driven at speeds up to about 25 MPH. Of course we went in the summer when the temperature was above 100 F! I remember sitting in the pool/Jacuzzi late at night at the motel we stayed at, taking in the cooler night temperatures and draining some cold bottles... I got to drive a huge school bus (with air brakes)! So much fun... |
