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Originally Posted by Particle Man
And I would say a lot of that ha to do with styling more than anything. I know road friction played a big part in the past but new materials and technologies have improved that as well.
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Aerodynamics make a big difference which is why most hybrids and electric cars look so much different than conventional cars. But the average car still creates a lot of drag and no mater how streamlined the vehicle is, power required increases drastically with speed.
From Wikipedia:
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The power required to overcome the aerodynamic drag is given by:
Note that the power needed to push an object through a fluid increases as the cube of the velocity. A car cruising on a highway at 50 mph (80 km/h) may require only 10 horsepower (7.5 kW) to overcome air drag, but that same car at 100 mph (160 km/h) requires 80 hp (60 kW). With a doubling of speed the drag (force) quadruples per the formula. Exerting four times the force over a fixed distance produces four times as much work. At twice the speed the work (resulting in displacement over a fixed distance) is done twice as fast. Since power is the rate of doing work, four times the work done in half the time requires eight times the power.
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