swissauto Smile
The project targets of the SmILE ( Small, Intelligent, Light and Efficient ) was to doulbe the fuel mileage of a production Renault Twingo car, keeping the same performance, same transport capacity and same safety and comfort.
With a gasoline consumption if 3.4 l/100 km ( 69,2 mpg ) for the NEFZ drive cycle, a consumption reduction of 50% was reached, reaching emissions lower than Euro lll rules and achieving improved performance for acceleration, topspeed and cruising range.
Within several testdrive in dayli traffic, consumption values af between 2.3 and 2.5 Liters was reached confirmed from the German TüV.
With the SmILE, swissauto realized the first officially measured street legal car using less than 3lt. gasoline per 100 km measured by the german TüV.
Intensive detail work at the aerodynamik, which was done in the 1:1 wind tunnel of the Swiss Army in Emmen brought up a lowered drag coefficient from 0.246 instead of 0.371, which is a reduction of 34%.
The rolling resistance was reduced using Michelin efficiency tires and the overall weight of the car was reduced by 150 kg by various optimisations.
The vehicle optimisations was done in collaboration with the Swiss companies Esoro, OCP and BRM.
The completely new designed 360 cc engine offered a very much improoved overall efficiency because of it’s pressure wave supercharger, which results in this low fuel consumption within the drive cycle but also in dayli use. You can find thihs engine for more detailed information within our engine projects on this site.
Swissauto has got awards for this concept car from Idee Swiss and from the OECD in the years 1996 and 2000 as most sustainable energy efficient means of transportation.
The project was done for Greenpeace and supported from the swiss federal office of energy.
Still today, this project is known as the first example of the downsizing / supercharging trend technology.
During the last 10 years, swissauto optimized this concept step by step and today, a new generation Demonstration car can be presented with the new Hyprex charged 1.0 lt. Golf which also is presented on this web.
