Nerd’s Eye View: LA Auto Show Part 2 – Cars & Stuff

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The new all-electric e-Golf doesn’t really look too much different than a standard Golf.  I’m guessing the wheels are unique and maybe a bit more aerodynamic. The VW stage for the car was very blue. Blue is the color of ‘efficiency’ in the automotive market. Have a look at all the little ‘hybrid’ emblems on Toyotas and notice the blue on them. On the Lexus hybrids, the Lexus emblems have a blue background instead of black. The Mazda Skyactiv emblems have blue in them.  Nissan uses blue on their high efficiency whatever emblem on their cars. The Gold TDI emblem sometimes has the ‘I’ in blue.   Mercedes has BlueTEC clean diesels.  AdBlue is the urea stuff you add to diesels for the SCR emissions system. Anyways, blue means efficiency in the automotive world.
No engine means no exhaust or muffler under the rear bumper.
This is a view of the front under tray. There’s no oil to be changed so there’s no access door required.
This is under the hood of the Golf TDI.  I can’t recall exactly, but I think the wide plastic thing sitting at the front and top over the radiator is the air scoop for the airbox.  After the air gets filtered, it snakes its way to the back of the engine where the turbo resides.
Somewhere under all the heat shielding and insulation wrap is the turbo.  Why is there heat shielding on the exhaust emissions stuff hanging off the turbo?  There are two reasons off the top of my head. The first is to keep the heat in the emissions stuff to make sure the catalysts get up to temperature as quickly as possible. The second is to keep heat out of the A/C line running next to the exhaust stuff (the shiny tube on the very left of the picture is the A/C line). Call me skeptical, but I don’t think A/C works as well when you put heat into the refrigerant line.
Video cameras everywhere!  To relay the live video signals from the cameras to the trucks outside we have these relay towers.

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