Zoomi Life

Yeah, it’s not electric. And to make it worse, it’s not REAL shark skin. But it is a shark-inspired facsimile.  It works on the “golf ball principle,”  just like shark skin.  You know how they put those little tiny craters in golf balls to make them fly farther and straighter?  Ya, that’s what they’re there for, not just for looks, it turns out.  Sharks use the same dimples in their skin to have the same effect underwater.

SkinzWraps, which makes commercial vehicle wraps (advertisements and so forth) came up with the idea and has produced a wrap that has dimples to mimic shark skin.

They claim that it improves gas mileage by 18-20% and blogger Adam McGill confirms this, having gone on a test ride with SkinzWraps CEO Peter Salaverry.  The EPA estimate for the Scion they were in was 22/28mpg (city/highway) and the real-time MPG monitor was showing 28/34mpg.

Another anecdote from Mr. Salaverry is that after a long spring day out on the lot, he climbed into the car and saw little numbers for MPG (more than 10% loss from usual with the “skin on”).  Curious, he looked at the car and saw yellow pollen all over it.  He washed it and, sure enough, the MPG was back to normal.  See?  Clean cars do get better mileage.

As Treehugger points out, no independent testing has been done scientifically.  I think it’s pretty cool anyway.  My pickup needs paint anyway.  Maybe a skin wrap would be better.

Source: TreeHugger