The surface area of the front, given that the car is basically the same as the last one in every dimension, will be no different from the last one. Only now, the Cd is lower. Which means the Cda will be lower too. Which implies that there will be an improvement in economy across the range, especially since the engines have also been tinkered with
Somewhere I read the front is actually wider than the previous Elise that's why I said the front likely has more drag. If you assume the front has the same surface area/similar shape then yes the car should have a reduced Cda given the Cd is lower. I'm assuming that isn't the case.
Right, so people who don't have a lot of money have to drive boring cars. Gotcha. I guess I'll have to stick my £1k, 40mpg MX5 up on ebay then.
You missed my point. I'm saying if someone has the money to buy a car that fetches £60k+ then they surely must be able to afford the fuel for such a car as well.
What I also meant was that if someone is so concerned about their carbon footprint and fuel efficiency why are they buying a performance car and thrashing around in it. That is doing anything but being fuel efficient.
You'd be surprised. Have a look at the Elise owners' club site and see how many of them run it as a daily driver.
I'm a member of one of the Elise clubs in Australia. Most don't run them as a daily driver. Also looking at most of the car sale websites most of the cars average only around 5000km a year. If they were daily drivers then the cars would be doing something more close to 20000km a year. In the year or so I was monitoring Elises for sale on the market, ones for sale with kilometers matching that of a "daily driver" were seldom.
Again, you'd be surprised. I don't think I've ever seen someone in an Elise driving like a cock (fast, all the time, everywhere) like you'd get someone in a hot hatch, or even in a VAG diesel doing. It's a useable car that happens to kick ass when you do drive quickly on a twisty road or at the track. In normal driving, it's a fairly economical car.
That is more likely because those with an Elise are more likely to "use" their cars going off to drive on some twisty roads or a racetrack. Those I generally see thrashing around the city and suburbs are in a car that is anything but performance orientated and in my books anyway, being stupid. The guys from the Elise club are off on a track day or on a drive day through some twisty's every few weeks.
You're making it sound like I'm making out that people buy Elises as a substitute for a Prius. What I'm actually saying is that it's a fun car that also happens to be inexpensive to run, which is actually very appealing for a lot of people who have better things to achieve than watching their wages tick away at a petrol station.
I'm just trying to say that I personally find fuel economy being an odd consideration to purchase an Elise when a person who can afford one would be unlikely to have an issue affording the running expenses of one. Especially when the majority of people here that would have a lower "typical" wage buy v8's as daily drivers and thrash them about daily.
A circa 15% gain is anything but marginal. It's quite impressive for such a focused car.
...which is why I specified "all other things being equal" 💡 So now that you've read it twice, given the choice of two otherwise identical cars, would you choose the more or the less efficient one?
It is marginal though when you look at how much even the least fuel efficient Elise burns compared to 90% of all other cars on the market. Sure it is an impressive improvement, but the fuel efficiency of the car was damn impressive before anything was improved to start with.
I know what you are saying in your question. I'm trying to say that because my mind would never consider such a statistic (I don't think I've ever looked at the fuel efficiency of a car I have ever purchased/considered) I'd probably be completely unaware of such a difference and would think the two cars are identical so would base my decision on some other factor I could use to differentiate the two cars.
IF I did consider fuel efficiency in my purchase decision and did look at two absolutely identical cars which for some reason have different fuel efficiency figures then yes I would buy the more fuel efficient one. But as per my previous paragraph I haven't ever considered such a thing so probably wouldn't have known there was a difference.
