Abstract

The increase of cars engine power has reached critical limits,so that further increase would make no sense, since alreadythe real traffic conditions now do not enable its reasonable exploitation.Experiments have confirmed that there is no essentialdifference between the more or less powerful cars in combinedtraffic in and near towns, particularly when fully complyingwith traffic regulations. For the evaluation of the car 'adequacy'a non-dimensional criterion number Nv was proposed.This number 1ises with the rising weight (safety), speed, lowerfuel consumption and faster acceleration. The usual Nv valuesat JOOkm!h are between 1 and 3 for the majority of ordinarycars. Statistics comprising a great number of cars in the past decadesshowed that the said criterion number turned out to be anadequate parameter for the assessment of development trends.Experiments showed that a higher criterion number value inreal traffic does not represent much advantage even in dynamicdriving.

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