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Comment by bagels | Hacker News Reader

Nowhere near 90% efficient. Door handles, side mirrors, vents, grilles, exposed wheels, several inches of ground clearance.

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How are you measuring efficiency? Because as I see it, when travelling along a level surface, 100% of the engine power is going towards overcoming drag, so the efficiency should therefore be 0%. What is that 90% a proportion of?

The question was not really well defined.

But just looking at drag force, there are a lot of things that can be done to reduce it by more than 10%, they're just unpalatable, impractical, or simply haven't been implemented.

Also a lot of energy is lost to heat, even in electric cars if you're looking at the whole car and not just the aerodynamics.

Nice that EVs don’t need grilles. Hopefully the Tesla door handles catch on as well.

Interesting to me that even what initially looks to someone largely ignorant to aerodynamics like me as a very low effort design, like the Nissan Leaf, actually has some fancy aero design hiding in plain sight.

The handles are distinctly non-Tesla style, very pronounced, but they've tackled the wing mirrors actively by shaping the air with the headlights. https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=6836

I expect as we see more small EVs (Small by non-US car sizes) built on native EV platforms, we'll start to see more adventurous designs for aerodynamic reasons as you can't hide a large battery in a small cheap car.

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