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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff Works dot com where

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Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, is

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Speaker 1: it possible to create one hundred mile per gallon cars

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Speaker 1: that can run on real roads? Recently a car drove

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Speaker 1: from the Canadian border in Washington State all the way

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Speaker 1: down to the Mexican border in California on I five.

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Speaker 1: That's nearly fifteen hundred miles. What was amazing about the

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Speaker 1: trip was the fact that the car burned on the

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Speaker 1: twelve point four gallons of fuel. The car got an

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Speaker 1: average of a hundred and nineteen miles per gallon. This

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Speaker 1: was not a weird experimental car made out of tissue

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Speaker 1: paper with the driver lying in a prone position looking

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Speaker 1: out through a periscope. This was a real two passenger

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Speaker 1: car that looked pretty normal. The car, called the Avion,

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Speaker 1: proved once and for all that it's possible to create

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Speaker 1: one hundred mile per gallon cars that can drive on

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Speaker 1: real roads under real conditions. What's even more amazing is

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Speaker 1: the fact that the car was not created by a

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Speaker 1: university research team or NASA scientists. The car was originally

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Speaker 1: created in the nineteen eighties by Craig Henderson, and Bill

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Speaker 1: Green and has been tweaked ever since. It brings up

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Speaker 1: a good question, how can our cars get better mileage

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Speaker 1: per gallon of fuel. Let's look at the different techniques

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Speaker 1: that the Avion uses. The most important feature of the

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Speaker 1: Avion is its aerodynamics. Airflow has a huge effect on

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Speaker 1: the car's fuel efficiency, especially at highway speeds. A typical

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Speaker 1: car might need ten to twenty horsepower to maintain highway speed.

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Speaker 1: The Avion needs far less, down to three to four

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Speaker 1: horsepower to achieve the same speeds. The reason the Avion

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Speaker 1: is so slippery is that it takes into account the

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Speaker 1: major sources of dragon conventional cars and eliminates them. A

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Speaker 1: big part of it is the shape of the rear

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Speaker 1: of the car. Think about a raindrop. It has a

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Speaker 1: bulbous nose and a long sloping tail. The longer tail

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Speaker 1: is important, so the avions rear end looks a lot

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Speaker 1: like a rain drops. The Avian is also a low car.

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Speaker 1: Many of today's cars, especially SUVs and minivans, are taller

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Speaker 1: than a person. This means that the car has to

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Speaker 1: move a lot of air out of the way as

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Speaker 1: it's going down the road. The Avion is built like

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Speaker 1: a low sports car, so there's less air to move

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Speaker 1: in a conventional car. There is lots of extra sources

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Speaker 1: of drag. The underside of a conventional car is all bumpy,

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Speaker 1: with many extraneous pieces catching the wind. It is possible

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Speaker 1: to make the underside smooth like a race car and

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Speaker 1: eliminate a lot of air resistance there. There is a

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Speaker 1: big vertical grill up front in most cars, acting like

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Speaker 1: a wall to the wind. Spoke wheels chop at the air.

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Speaker 1: The Avion addresses all of these problems and corrects them.

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Speaker 1: Another kind of drag comes from the rolling resistance of

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Speaker 1: the tires. Big fat tires with low air pressure create

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Speaker 1: a lot of rolling resistance. The Avion uses low resistance

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Speaker 1: tires on its trips. Many hybrids are using these tires

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Speaker 1: as well to improve their performance. Another thing helping the

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Speaker 1: Avion is its weight. It's made of aluminum and other

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Speaker 1: lightweight materials, so that it weighs half as much as

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Speaker 1: a normal car. The weight helps whenever accelerating or going

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Speaker 1: up a hill. Think about the amount of energy needed

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Speaker 1: to get a ping pong ball going five miles an hour.

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Speaker 1: Now compare that to the energy needed to get a

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Speaker 1: bowling ball going the same speed. The ping pong ball

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Speaker 1: requires the slightest touch. The bowling ball requires a big push.

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Speaker 1: In a car, extra weight means extra fuel being burned

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Speaker 1: every time you climb a hill. And then there's the engine.

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Speaker 1: This car uses a tiny diesel engine that's smaller than

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Speaker 1: the engine found on many motor cycles. It doesn't need

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Speaker 1: a giant engine because the car is so light and

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Speaker 1: so slippery. The fact that it's a diesel also helps.

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Speaker 1: Diesel fuel contains more energy per gallon than gasoline does,

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Speaker 1: so that helps right from the start, and a diesel

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Speaker 1: engine uses a higher compression ratio, making it even more efficient.

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Speaker 1: By putting all these things together, great aerodynamics, great tires,

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Speaker 1: low weight, in the most efficient engine possible, it's possible

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Speaker 1: to create a car with great mileage with what these

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Speaker 1: techniques will trickle in the mainstream cars now that they've

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Speaker 1: been proven to work. Be sure to check out our

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Speaker 1: new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing

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Speaker 1: possibilities of tomorrow the House Stuff Works. I Find app

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Speaker 1: has arrived down at it today on iTunes,