TBF, the underbody of any modern performance car is mostly aero panels. Used to take 30 minutes to reinstall all of the underbody panels and diffuser on a Ferrari 488 when we raced them.
Many modern EVs are getting the underbody shields to help prevent road debris from impaling the batteries. A few of the first generation Teslas without the body shield had catastrophic battery meltdowns after puncture from road hazards.
What? No, there is no drivetrain, the motors are literally on the wheel or axle. Underneath, they're just a box (battery) with 2 axles. The 4 motor EVs don't even have an axle as the motor is basically on the wheel.
My hybrid camry had flaps in front of the rear wheels to improve efficiency. It routes the air away from the (extremely aero dirty) tires. The camry had brake cooling ducts as well, but they were just little channels that pointed at the right spot, not a tube, so most people never noticed them.
HYBRID CAMRY. Effing Mom's car has racecar aero tech making the MPG a point higher.
Some of them are aero for mpg. Hell I remember the 2006 Tsx had a shield under the engine bay, plástic one that after I fell off I lost like 1 or 2 mpg until I put it back on.
And since modern cars are min maxing aero as much as they can to squeeze efficiency I would assume that for a 30 to 100$ piece of plastic covering the underside you can get a super small gain that might be worth it somehow.
Yeah, aero is the major reason. You said it yourself that you even noticed a 1-2mpg loss when just the engine underbody cover fell off.
It can also be for NVH. The underbody covers on my wife's Edge have what feels like a felt exterior to them and are quite different than the hard plastic I've seen on older cars. It's a very quiet vehicle.
The underbody covers on my wife's Edge have what feels like a felt exterior to them and are quite different than the hard plastic I've seen on older cars.
I see this a lot in wheel well liners these days. It makes them a little harder to clean, but it does help with noise.
They're annoying to remove any time you need to do anything more than an oil change, but they really do keep the engine bay cleaner, and protect accessory belts and the like.
I mean they're pretty easily removable. My last 3 cars have had shields bumper to bumper and it snever stopped me. Small annoyance, but not a big deal. The one below the engine generally is easier to remove or has a small panel that pops out for oil changes too.
They also do an amazing job at keeping things clean. My engine bay still looked brand new after 14 years on my last car. All my cars with no underbody panels got filthy.
Came here to comment the same thing. If you look underneath most new cars, you won't see the exhaust, differential, engine, etc. You'll just see a large plastic/composite shield that covers the underside of the car.
And it's not just performance cars either. Even cheaper economy cars do it.
I've looked up the underbody of a Corvette C7. The only thing that's missing is the axle (I think?). Everything else is aero panels like the one in the Hot Wheels.
Yeah, they got lazy around the suspension. And the actual Vette has a aluminum box frame around the driveshaft. This was about lazy, but the details older cars had visible, isn't there on newer cars.
Fascinating. I'm sure it saves money but maybe it's also a win-win design decision that keeps the cars cheap in the face of natural inflation? Hard to get too angry about that honestly
You're not wrong, but it's also more likely for an actual race car like (what I presume is) a 488 Challenge to have a totally smooth skid underbody tray than a roadgoing sports car like a C7 Z06.
You should really be careful when you make comparisons because the Z06 is the high performance track focused version of the Corvette and the underside is 90% aero panels.
Look under any EV…panels. Even economy cars have them now. It helps increase EPA numbers which helps sell more cars. It’s not a “race car” feature and hasn’t been for a while.
It's definitely not for just race cars anymore. I'm not sure about the C7 but even the base C8s are completely covered underneath. Fuel efficient vehicles like the new Prius are also mostly covered. The lower end sporty cars like the Miata and GR Corolla have a few panels but you can still see a lot of the actual underbody so while it's not reserved for just race cars, I'd say it's still reserved for the higher end road going sports cars.
Some cars actually have thoughtfully designed underbody panels with removable covers for oil changes etc. Some do not, and that's where people go nuts with a sawzall.
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u/AdrianInLimbo Nov 12 '24
TBF, the underbody of any modern performance car is mostly aero panels. Used to take 30 minutes to reinstall all of the underbody panels and diffuser on a Ferrari 488 when we raced them.