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Multi-Rider Doubles MPG: How would you make the 3 shell attract extra riders?

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The roads around me are not 100% safe for bicycles, especially in the winter.
No road is ever 100% safe for bicycles, winter or otherwise. Not even cycle paths are. You go on a cycle ride with friends, get chatting, overlook a tree branch, have an accident and die by snapped neck. Oh wait, I forgot, you don't have friends, so no way to get into that mishap situation... ;)
 
No road is ever 100% safe for bicycles, winter or otherwise. Not even cycle paths are. You go on a cycle ride with friends, get chatting, overlook a tree branch, have an accident and die by snapped neck. Oh wait, I forgot, you don't have friends, so no way to get into that mishap situation... ;)
Exactly! So bikes are not always an alternative for cars, Trains, buses, and airplanes do not travel between my home and work either.
I need a personal car with just myself in it.
 
Tried the acoustically reflective sun visor this AM using an iPad, as that could be a secondary instrument panel when media is displayed on the windscreen.

Instruments were a pair of iPhones, one as a source with a 440 Hz tone and a 220 Hz tone. The other was the sound meter.

Results:
1) rear seat ambient was 3 dB louder than front.
2) sound reflecting sun visor reduced (440Hz) driver voice attenuation by barely less than 1 dB as observed from the rear seat. It reduced attenuation by less than 1 dB when the signal frequency was 220 Hz.

No real conclusions besides that a combination of improvements will be required to improve occupancy.
 

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When I go to a restaurant and sit at a table for four - I find it is possible to talk to only one other person at a time, leaving the other two to either interrupt the first conversation, or conduct their own conversation and compete for noise level. I went to the restaurant with these folks because I WANT to hear what they have to say - but only one at a time. If I had to be in a car - and listen to multiple conversations simultaneously, I could not drive as well. Add in music - from each occupants impression of taste and volume: Conversation is now degraded. Add in personal topics (finances, business secrets, health, relationships) and the conversation is degraded. Add in smelly food, dogs, kids.....and you get a commuter bus environment.

Gee, I wonder why folks like their personal car and private time?

On an airplane, I seal off the world with headphones. I would not have an important conversation in such a public place. The entire concept of optimizing commuting volume reduces me to a non-person mannequin with no soul, needs or wants..just something to be packaged and hauled.
This makes me want to buy an even bigger, personal transport system (Model S here I come!!)
 
I would love a quiet car, and all kinds of things can be done to accomplish this. zero gaps between the doors and pillars of the car, a smooth underside, no whip antenna. A lot of these things can be retrofitted to existing cars, and are all likely going to be engineered into the model 3, since these are also factors in drag generated by the car. besides that, acoustically shielding the motor noise from the passenger compartment, undercoatings, and low noise tires go a long way.

This is the same concept as my trimmer. most trimmers are so loud, it's annoying to use, much less for the neighbors. with my trimmer, it was already pretty quiet to begin with, but the string is actually quite loud, too. I found a string that generates very little noise, and you have a trimmer that just sounds like a small 4 stroke running very quietly.

My point is, all the little noises add up, and detract from the overall experience. I have a saturn ion, and in a mission to reduce drag and noise, experimented with a lot of things, and wind noise is very easy to almost eliminate with just a little engineering. I have been waiting for another car to implement another cadillac/insight type rear tire skirt. this is yet another way you can reduce noise. The type of fan used for the HVAC makes a huge difference, there are so many types, and they all have different noise signatures.

As someone else said, sound isolation is expensive, and heavy, but anything you can do to reduce the generation of noise is gold. For example, from the le5 2.4 L ecotec engine to the lkw 2.5 L ecotec. GM completely re engineered how the engine was laid out to reduce noise and vibration.

Anyway, with the low drag of the car, and EV powertrain, I think the 3 might just be a contender for the quietest car out there.
 
I found a string that generates very little noise, and you have a trimmer that just sounds like a small 4 stroke running very quietly.

Thank you for the detail. Do you remember the brand and model of string?

Funny thing about noise. It can influence behavior it ways that that cause the influenced person to struggle to make the attribution. From a product perspective, competitors struggle with unexplained preference.

The original post shows acoustic data from full sized pick up trucks. T means Toyota. They lag in sales and sound level, but I doubt their market knowledge machine will ever discover a correlation.

You can set competitors up to be outside looking in, and blind on to how to solve it.
 
On an airplane, I seal off the world with headphones...want to buy an even bigger, personal transport system (Model S here I come!!)

I know you are not suggesting that you have never had a meaningful experience with more than one person in the room.

Maybe list the number of people in the room for your most meaningful experiences?

People are not as bad as... Maybe you need a manipulation filter, or manipulator filter.

And constructive media.

Here is a two question approach to avoid hackles.

1) are you formal or informal?
2) are you uptight or laid back?

Plot the answer in four quadrants. As long as everyone in the car shares a single edge, you'll get along.

Let's address every concern you voiced and see where it ends up.
 
I know you are not suggesting that you have never had a meaningful experience with more than one person in the room.

Maybe list the number of people in the room for your most meaningful experiences?

People are not as bad as... Maybe you need a manipulation filter, or manipulator filter.

And constructive media.

Here is a two question approach to avoid hackles.

1) are you formal or informal?
2) are you uptight or laid back?

Plot the answer in four quadrants. As long as everyone in the car shares a single edge, you'll get along.

Let's address every concern you voiced and see where it ends up.
As an engineer - I tend to focus deeply on a conversation. Focus on one at a time. Eliminate distractions - like interruptions and music.
Others in the room - sure, but so what. They are not the one I'm talking to. Have a important discussion on a plane? Not if the topic is company secrets, finances, designs, any thing where a miscommunication can happen and become a problem. I do see others chatting about sports and having a group shout - but a meaningful conversation? I would not like to have that type of person in my space. I would not like to be forced into that space by a commute designed around max load and not around max comfort.
 
I would not like to be forced into that space by a commute designed around max load and not around max comfort.

I think we are on the same page, sort of.

The goal is to attract people to a venue where they will have meaningful experiences. Where if you choose to drive solo, you miss out. In that you experience less gain.
 
Thank you for the detail. Do you remember the brand and model of string?

Funny thing about noise. It can influence behavior it ways that that cause the influenced person to struggle to make the attribution. From a product perspective, competitors struggle with unexplained preference.

The original post shows acoustic data from full sized pick up trucks. T means Toyota. They lag in sales and sound level, but I doubt their market knowledge machine will ever discover a correlation.

You can set competitors up to be outside looking in, and blind on to how to solve it.

oregon gatorline platinum supertwist. It's so quiet I can only hear it when I rev the trimmer.

One thing to note also is, the more noise you eliminate, the more noises you can hear. for example, when I shut off my car I can then hear the fuel pump, infotainment cooling fan, ect... So at a certain point you are "chasing" the loudest device in the car to eliminate annoyance. To this end, the louder the road noise and wind noise are, the cheaper the car becomes to build as far as avoiding annoyances/squeak complaints. Manufacturers have been known to swap one part for another simply to avoid annoyance complaints. One example is on the saturn ion. In 2003 they came with a cvt (which actually proved to be garbage, but not relevant to this story) and an actually good and proven bulletproof 5 speed auto from aisin (toyota's main supplier). Being made by the people that make toyota's transmissions, though, they had the typical shift flare. in between shifts, the revs raise above where they were in the previous gear. This was a source of complaints, and even though it has no effect on reliability/durability, the number of complaints from a crowd not buying a toyota (for some reason, this doesn't phase toyota, or toyota owners have been brainwashed, but I digress) led GM to switch to the technologically inferior 4 speed GM unit after only 2 years in production. I'd be interested to know Db levels on a model S inside, I would suspect the 3 would be similar if not a littls louder/quieter depending on how much the noise level is effected by sound insulation.
 
Thanks for the string pointer.

One problem with car geometry is horn amplification. Like a gramma phone or victrola. The tires, in combination with the asphalt, form a horn geometry with the tread squeezing out air at the small end, just like the mouthpiece on a trumpet.

If you look for that horn shaped geometry, you will see it amplifying sounds at the base of the windshield etc.

A soft shelf behind the rear seat turns that horn into a sink.

I expect you know this, but you can find horn amplifiers everywhere if you look. I expect Tesla has attacked this on the 3, and it will be good.

53 dB good? I don't know.
 
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I'm lost. Don't know what you are arguing..proposing. Don't know what question to respond to. Done here.
I do see the point or at least one of them.
Just driving around with family. The two front seat folks chat to each other, the two back seat folks chat separately. The front/back conversations only overlap when everyone raises their voices to be heard over the cars ambient noise.
When there are two in front and one in back, the backseat passenger is mostly excluded from any conversation and has to sit there excluded unless they sit uncomfortably forward to get their head close enough to hear the conversation.
22522 is suggesting the you can encourage more carpoolers if the experience (inclusiveness) is improved.
Given that the Model ☰ is likely to have lots a glass for the roof, I would suspect that rear seat passengers may be more included anyway.

Listen to the audio during the launch day test drives, you can hear the driver quite well, even from the rear seats.
 
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I do see the point or at least one of them.
Just driving around with family. The two front seat folks chat to each other, the two back seat folks chat separately. The front/back conversations only overlap when everyone raises their voices to be heard over the cars ambient noise.
When there are two in front and one in back, the backseat passenger is mostly excluded from any conversation and has to sit there excluded unless they sit uncomfortably forward to get their head close enough to hear the conversation.
22522 is suggesting the you can encourage more carpoolers if the experience (inclusiveness) is improved.
Given that the Model ☰ is likely to have lots a glass for the roof, I would suspect that rear seat passengers may be more included anyway.

Listen to the audio during the launch day test drives, you can hear the driver quite well, even from the rear seats.
My point is that I don't want to be forced into a commute with noisy strangers - even if they can lean forward and chat (perhaps, especially because they can lean forward and chat/distract). The encroachment into my personal space outweighs the sound level.
Perhaps that is the difference in being a city dweller and a open desert fellow. The first has lost so much of his "space" that one more intrusion is not even noticed. To me, every thing is intrusive and worthy of armor plate. I would not survive the claustrophobia of a city sidewalk 100 feet before I threw someone into traffic. Just came back from Florence and found this very tempting.
 
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My point is that I don't want to be forced into a commute with noisy strangers - even if they can lean forward and chat (perhaps, especially because they can lean forward and chat/distract). The encroachment into my personal space outweighs the sound level.
Perhaps that is the difference in being a city dweller and a open desert fellow. The first has lost so much of his "space" that one more intrusion is not even noticed. To me, every thing is intrusive and worthy of armor plate. I would not survive the claustrophobia of a city sidewalk 100 feet before I threw someone into traffic. Just came back from Florence and found this very tempting.
You're definitely missing the point then :)
The question is if anyone personally likes carpooling.
For those that do it highlights the issues of compatible people and the difficulties of front to back conversation.
All pretty pointless if you don't intend to carpool in case you can't prevent yourself from killing someone.
 
In my vanpool van, the riders on my commute prefer no radio, and no talking. They plug in earphones, read smartphones, or take a nap. I think it's because talking is a big part of their job every day.

The road noise is significant in the van, and in our cars. I'm curious to see how a lack of engine noise affects the ride experience. I'm sure my spouse hopes that I'll be able to turn the music down. :-D