Race Cars to the Rescue
Race Cars to the Rescue One does not usually associate energy efficiency with Formula One racecars, but they do go together. Many of the standard features in today’s cars were tested on race tracks (and before that by bootleggers doing their best to outrun the local gendarme. Likewise, Formula One cars are helping in the development of two major innovations for increasing vehicle efficiency, the zeroshift gearbox and regenerative braking. In “F1 Soups up the Family Car,” Science Illustrated (September/October 2009, pages 50–53) describes how these two innovations are important in the high-performance arena and how the investments there may yield dividends for ordinary road vehicles. For racers, the biggest advantage of the zeroshift transmission is that it gives quicker surer gear changes. For ordinary cars, reducing those freewheeling seconds between gears can reduce energy losses to the level of