Rinspeed's 500 offers best of both worlds

Rinspeed makes a habit of turning up at the Geneva motor show virtually every year with a wacky concept or two to showcase its off-the-wall design prowess, but this year the Swiss concern has trundled out something altogether more sensible -- and timely.

Pictured alongside is the Fiat 500 E², which allegedly does away with the dilemma of choosing between an economy car for tooling around the city or a high-po hatchback that gets the juices flowing on the open road.

Based on the Fiat 500 Abarth, the Rinspeed's Fiat 500 E² offers two completely different power settings that ostensibly endow the car with true Jekyll-Hyde characteristics.

Around town the 500 E² ekes out a modest power output of 45kW, making for parsimonious fuel consumption of just 4.0 litres/100 km.

However, once clear of the urban jungle the flick of a dashboard-mounted switch is said to transform the Bambino from an "urban angel to a little open road devil". It achieves this by liberating a healthy 120kW, which makes for a claimed 0-100 km time of just 7.4 seconds.

And it's no gas guzzler in this mode either, returning a consumption figure of 7.0L/100km.

"Just like the auto industry has to adjust to the demands of a new era, tuners have to look for new ways to do business as well," says Rinspeed boss Frank M. Rinderknecht.

"I don't believe too much in eco tuning. Many drivers are not willing to miss out on driving fun and don't want to drive a something that announces to the world that they do without.

"But the number of people who want to use our energy supply responsibly not in the least because they want to protect our environment will grow quickly. We need an intelligent use of our fossil resources, especially of our energy. The Fiat 500 E² fits this requirement perfectly."

Meanwhile, Fiat unveiled its own new eco-friendly engine technology -- 'Multiair' -- which is touted as a "fundamental breakthrough in petrol engine design that will cut fuel consumption by up to 25 per cent".

Multiair is also claimed to boost power and torque, while cutting carbon dioxide emissions by up to 10 per cent and other engine pollutants by up to 60 per cent.

The Multiair engine's USP is that it optimises the quantity and characteristics of the fresh air charge in the cylinders, making for more efficient combustion, according to Fiat.

In conventional gasoline engines the air mass trapped in the cylinders is controlled by keeping the intake valves opening constant and adjusting upstream pressure through a throttle valve.

One of the drawbacks of this simple conventional mechanical control, says Fiat, is that the engine wastes about 10 per cent of the input energy in pumping the air charge from a lower intake pressure to the atmospheric exhaust pressure.

The first new engine to be equipped with Multiair will be the 1.0- and 1.4-litre family of engines and the first car to see the new engine installed will be the Alfa Romeo Mito at the end of 2009, with a possible Australian and New Zealand launch in late 2010.