The 200-MPG Aerocycle

Dutch vehicle designer Allert Jacobs knew that his fuel-sipping, shell-encased motorcycle was street-legal. Unfortunately, the police didn’t, and impounded it after pulling him over during a test run.

But Jacobs has a lot of patience. He first built a resistance-reducing nose cone in 2007, in an attempt to increase his Honda Innova 125i’s 114-mpg rating. That design fell short, so he built a 1:5 scale model, followed by a full-size polyurethane and wood mold. By 2009, he was crafting the fiberglass shell. Steel tubes welded to the bike’s frame attach it, and a frame and rails added to the front of the bike allow the front of the shell to slide forward like a door and lock shut. Last winter, he even made aerodynamic cones with indicator lights for his side-view mirrors.

Most of the mileage boost comes from the aerodynamic shape, but Jacobs also converted the bike’s automatic clutch to manual to keep it from slipping. Altogether, the changes worked: On one long trip, the bike got 214 miles per gallon. And as for the impound? “I got it back,” he says, “and they had to apologize.”

Time: 3 years Cost: $5,000

HANDLING

Jacobs can put his feet down to steady himself when stopped, but the shell prevents him from planting them out wide. He’s considering building a new version with open sides in order to reduce balance issues.

COMFORT

After lowering the seat and raising the footrests above the wheel, Jacobs decided that they would improve steering if they were closer to the hub, so he welded tubes to the frame parallel to the front forks and attached the footrests to them.

SECURITY

Jacobs welded and bolted a steel rail to the front of the bike so that half the shell can slide forward 18 inches, allowing him easy access and exit. There’s a security bonus too, since he can lock up his bike along with any valuables inside.

3 More MPG-Boosting Mods

 

 

Duct-Taped Dream

Chang Ho Kim, who runs an auto-repair shop in Massachusetts, skipped doing airflow calculations and modified his 1989 Honda CRX HF largely on instinct. He added a narrow, wedge-shaped acrylic nose to move the air over the hood and roof, taped the seams between the body panels to prevent turbulence, and installed acrylic skirts to keep air flowing past the rear tires. An aerodynamic tail extends down off the hatchback glass. A few screws and lots of aluminum duct tape keep the pieces together. The mods yielded results: Previously, his Honda ran at 40 miles per gallon; now it routinely tops 60.

GREENIE VAN

Glass artist and furniture maker Marcus Sabathil’s Toyota Previa minivan is a moving example of his dedication to green principles: He increased its highway mileage from 20 mpg to 36. Sabathil made more than a dozen mechanical modifications, crafted a clear Lexan plastic aerodynamic tail with stainless-steel trim, and added interior side-view mirrors so he could fold in the outer ones on the road.

WONDER-TRAILER

Phil Knox, an aeromodding legend, attached an inverted and partially sawed-off boat to the top of a utility trailer and added fairings in front of and behind the wheels, as well as a smooth aluminum belly pan to reduce drag beneath the trailer. As a result, unlike normal trailers, Knox’s 430-pound creation—still awaiting a few tweaks before it’s finished—does not appear to reduce his pickup truck’s mileage.

New Generation of Supersonic Jets Aims to Get Rid of the Boom

True to its aeronautic roots, NASA is evaluating a new generation of supersonic airplane designs to see whether they can reduce sonic-boom levels.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin have submitted futuristic concepts that look similar to the Concorde, but aim to muffle the annoying and potentially damaging sonic boom problem.

Airplanes flying faster than sound create a cone of pressurized air molecules that extends to the ground, as NASA explains. The shockwave is noisy, but it can also cause structural damage, and in the Concorde's case, the U.S. wasn't having it. The supersonic jet never flew over land in the U.S.; sonic flights are restricted to military and research aircraft.

The new designs could make over-land travel possible, however, by using special engine or tail designs that reduce the shockwave effect.

The Lockheed design uses an inverted parabolic shape over a V-shaped engine array. The parabola would control air flow in a way that would lessen the shockwave, NASA says. It also has improved range, payload and environmentally friendly designs.

The Boeing concept, below, also uses a V-shaped twinned tail section, and like the Lockheed jet, it also places the engines on top of the wings. The Concorde, like nearly all current commercial aircraft, put the engines beneath the wings.

As Wired's Autopia blog notes, the design takes advantage of the wings as a natural sound barrier.

The planes are still a long way from takeoff -- NASA anticipates the aircraft could enter service by 2030 or 2035.

High-Pressure Process Yields a Brand-New Material That Stores Massive Amounts of Energy

With lackluster battery tech one of the biggest hurdles standing between existing energy economies and those of the green, renewable future, there's a lot of pressure on researchers to come up with the next big battery breakthrough. And pressure, it turns out, might be just the ticket. By exerting the kinds of super-high pressures found deep within the Earth on a unique compound, researchers at Washington State University's Pullman campus have created a novel new material with the capacity to store huge amounts of mechanical energy as potential chemical power.

Calling the material "the most condensed form of energy storage outside of nuclear energy," the researchers created the super-battery inside a diamond anvil cell, a small chamber that can create extremely high pressures within a confined space. The team filled the chamber with xenon difluoride, a white solid usually used to etch silicon conductors.

The science is in the squeezing; under normal atmospheric conditions, the molecules of xenon difluoride keep a respectable distance from one another. But under the intense pressures produced by the diamond anvils the molecules are forced together into metallic 3-D structures. At one million atmospheres -- roughly equivalent to the pressure found halfway to the center of the Earth -- the xenon difluoride is pressed neatly into these structures where the mechanical energy of all that pressure is stored in the chemical bonds between the molecules.

And just like that, the material becomes a chemical battery containing the mechanical energy from all that pressure. That raises the possibility of practical applications such as high-energy fuels, high-powered and compact batteries, or semiconductors that can function at very high temperatures.