Word: cheapness
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Even farther north, within sight of the Tucson suburbs, Dart took us to a wash where walkers dump their incriminating desert gear at the end of their crossing. Thousands of cheap backpacks littered the ground, as did countless soiled sweatshirts, water and whiskey bottles, toothbrushes and socks. Gesturing toward the city, Dart said, "Guide groups are buying $250,000 houses up there just to use as layups for these walkers. People who make their living at this are going to find a way through...
...spike? In retirement communities and suburban culs-de-sac, battery-powered carts are a cheap, energy-efficient way to move around the neighborhood. And in the street, drivers are more likely to thump against the pavement or, worse, collide with a car; more than half the incidents tallied in these studies took place off the golf course. Also, carts are getting faster--some go 25 m.p.h. (40 km/h)--but still often lack basic protections like seat belts or side rails...
...just that. What has these investors excited is that the rules of the auto industry are changing. Radical new car designs using lightweight materials and utilizing new-style power plants are becoming more affordable. Technology--computer-controlled battery packs, with power-storage systems that use nanotechnology--may soon become cheap enough to allow upstarts to compete with the Big Three...
...that is building both a battery-powered and a plug-in hybrid lightweight commuter car. The moment of inspiration came in June 2004: the launch of SpaceShipOne. The SpaceShipOne team had access to high-tech tools that enabled the building and design of a rocket for only $25 million--cheap by NASA standards. Could the same tools be applied to the auto industry? "The way cars are designed, half the energy they need is just to push the air out of the way," Fambro explains. "What if you changed the styling to make the drag of a car nearly equal...
...result? The Aptera's drag will be a third of an average car's and less than half of the Prius', which now has the lowest drag in the industry. Cheap technology allowed Fambro to create such an aerodynamic design on a limited budget. For $50,000 Fambro found some off-the-shelf software--the same kind NASA uses to test the drag of its space vehicles. To keep drag as low as possible, for example, the three-wheeled car has no side-view mirrors--the driver has 180° rear visibility with the help of rear-mounted cameras. He estimates...