Design
Due to hydrogen fuel cell drive system used by the Hy-wire, the conventional car layout has been revamped. Without the need for a conventional engine block and transmission system coupled to the steering column and pedals through mechanical linkage, the car's power system and single electric motor are built into a flat skateboard configuration. This serves to lower the car's center of gravity, but more importantly to standardize vehicle drive train systems. Because all propulsion and energy storage systems are housed in the skateboard, designers are free to arrange the passenger compartment however they see fit. This allows for highly flexible modular vehicle configurations such as a 4 door sedan, mini van, or even a small bus to be placed on the same drive system, with the only difference being the shape of the car's upper body and the location of seats. The skateboard itself contains crumple zones similar to those in conventional automobiles.
Read more about this topic: General Motors Hy-wire
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)
“If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“What but design of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)