Weight reduction efforts in cars and weight increase efforts in humans - which one wins?
It takes energy to accelerate a mass, so having less mass to accelerate makes sense if you want to use less fuel. But while people have gained weight and great efforts have been made to reduce the weight of car compenents, there is another trend that swamps both of them. Cars have become much heavier for a variety of other reasons - larger engines, crash resistance, creature comfort and so on... Cars that weighed under 3,000 pounds were common in the 60s, now most are well above 3,500.
Some practical cars in the 2,000 pound range are appearing and much lighter designs have been demonstrated. Widespread appeal of cars like the VW Go! is unlikely in the US unless gas prices rise dramatically and stay up.
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