Gas is expensive, ain’t it? Everyone except maybe the residents of Venezuela (who pay around $.15 per gallon) are suffering and manufacturers are doing everything they can to convince us they’re working on making cars more efficient. But are they? If progress on that front isn’t swift enough to your taste, you could always take matters into your own hands. Improving the aerodynamic coefficient of your car would increase its mileage, so Bob Evans, an American industrial designer, came up with the GasPods. These are aftermarket… “airfoils” that allegedly reduce drag by “expanding, organizing, and enhancing the airflow” coming off the back of the vehicle. A set of ten such airfoils placed on the rear of the roof of the car reduce drag by 5%, and adding a few more along the sides on the rear increases that efficiency to 6.7%. The wind-tunnel and PC-simulation tested pods feature rare earth magnets behind a rubber base, so they can be easily attached to your car and just as easily removed once you’ve had enough of people laughing at you.
But hey, if it saves you money in the long run, who cares how much people laugh? The product itself is cheap enough, with them being “$29.95 for a set of three adhesive-backed pods in a stock color, and up to $124.95 for a custom-painted set of nine magnetic pods.”
Hit the jump for pictures and links.
[ Product Page ] VIA [ Gizmag ]
