The way the rear fenders usually extend below the top of the rear tires, covering them a bit. This was found on luxury cars years ago but went out of style in the 70s.
Is it suppose to serve some purpose on electric powered cars? Or is it just fitting in with their extra-efficient motiff (i.e. extra low drag coefficient)?
Either way, my god do they make a car look dorky and hideous! 
I think it is definitely to make the car look dorky. The first generation of hybrids were/are being pushed as a badge of virtue. The hybrids Ford is working on look just like the cars they’re modeled after, except for a plate that says HYBRID on the rear. Good news, since seeling them to the tiny minority who look at a Prius and say “Neato” is not going to do anything about global warming or dependence on foreign oil.
This feature you describe actually exists on a single hybrid model available in the U.S. - the Honda Insight. The Honda Civic Hybrid, Toyota Prius, Lexus hybrid and Ford Escape hybrid do not have these extra panels. The purpose of the panels is to reduce the air resistance of the vehicle so as to save even more gas. The Insight has a coefficient of drag of about 0.25, which is one of the lowest (and therefore best) of any production vehicle in the world. When it comes to hybrids, I would regard the Insight as more of an experimental, proof-of-concept vehicle than a truly practical car. Other “features” contributing to it’s fuel efficiency are extremely light weight and very limited passenger capability (room for just the drive and a passenger). With these limitations, why bother with one of these cars at all? Cars are best for delivering rather high amounts of weight or passengers over longer distances. You can haul just about as much cargo with the Honda Insight as you can with a suitably equipped bicycle, but it will cost a lot less and burn no oil at all! The hybrid cars to concern yourself with would be the Toyota Prius, Lexus hybrid SUV and new Ford Escape Hybrid. All of these are fully-functional, everyday automobiles that happen to have above-average mileage and emissions control - in the case of the Prius, well above average. Don’t let the “neatomobile” leave a bad taste in your mouth :).
An addition - the hybrid technology used by the Prius, and licensed to Ford for it’s own hybrids, is superior to Honda’s technology. It takes better advantage of the car’s batteries and electric motor, and is capable of powering the car by itself or in parallel with the gasoline engine. The Honda hybrid system will only supplement the gas engine under load. The Honda technology has the advantage of being less complex than Toyota’s “Hybrid Synergy Drive,” which uses a complicated planetary gear mechanism, and lots of other stuff that I don’t even remotely understand, but it is less capable, and probably has less room for future development. I am definitely biased - my family owns two Priuses - but Toyota does, for the time being, have the technological edge, in spite of the futuristic “neato” appearance of the Insight.
Wheel “pants?” That’s a fascinating twist. In olden times (1950s-1960s,) they were called fender “skirts.” In both cases, it seems odd that we attached gender to a car part.
Actually I wasn’t sure what they’re called. Wheel pants are what they’re called on aircraft.
Or spats (on aircraft). I think the word spats is due for a comeback.
IIRC the late GM electric car had rear fender skirts.
Hi there I own one of those little cars with the wheel pants 
For the record the dinking screw/bolts that hold them on to the car cost 16 damn dollars sigh
While Grelby calls it “not practical” I feel he and I differ in our vehicle needs.
I am single and have no need for extra room, I can and have loaded up a passenger plus two weeks of stuff for vacation with no problems. The Honda Insight is the highest MPG highway vehicle sold in the US as of current. I have personally loaded up the car drove from north Alabama to Gettysburg on a tank of gas (10.6 gallons). The Insight does this as Grelby mentions very low drag and very light body. Is by no means a family car, but makes a great commuter car.
That being said, The Honda system IMHO will soon be viewed as the BETA of Hybrids. Toyota has made much better inroads toward better efficiency. Toyota’s system is much better in city driving, while Honda was better for interstate driving than city driving.
I always thought the hybrid “pants” were something to do with protecting the regenerative braking mechanism. Is that not right?
To improve the aerodynamic characteristics, i.e. minimize drag.
To take this thread to a compleatly different area, I think it’s funny that “Wheel Pants” rhymes with “Hail Ants” (Well kinda)
Take a look around next time you commute to work. Now, YMMV, but where I live, pretty much every car will have one and only one occupant, and will be hauling a load no heavier nor bulkier than a Cappuccino Grande from Char-bucks. Sure, you can’t haul I-beams in a Prius, but in the bulk of my driving, I never do. Do you?
For insterest’s sake, Car and Driver did a review of several fuel efficient cars, pitting two hybrids against a ULEV-but-strictly-ICE car and a [VW turbo] diesel.
Interest’s sake. Interest.
:smack:
I thought they were to lift and separate the headlights.
Other way around. You’re attaching gender to clothes styles.
Do any of the Honda’s have a true regenerative braking mechanism?
Well, that would be open to debate. We have X amount of oil in the ground and we are pretty much gonna burn through it. That puts Y amount of Co2 into the air. Hybrids or not, we are gonna burn through all the oil we can get out grubby hands on. Then we can argue about where to bury all the batteries.
And when it is cold, to hide the fact that the high beams are on.
This may be taking this thread into IMHO territory, but using any car at all, including the Insight, to transport a single occupant and virtually nothing else is grossly inefficient, and a fundamental misuse of a motor vehicle’s capabilities. We have made this foolishly wasteful use of cars all but necessary for many of us in this society. Where I live with my family during the summer is fairly rural, so it is spread out and lacks a mass transit network. I ride my bicycle for a lot of my errands around town, but unfortunately, I need the car if I want to go further in a short amount of time. Where I live for the rest of the year is also fairly rural, but has a large enough population base, centered in two or three cities or towns, to support an excellent network of buses, which greatly expands my range of transportation. I need a car to move my stuff from one location to the other two to four times a year. That’s it. Most of the rest of the time, I don’t need to haul I-beams or other large cargos around. I conclude, therefore, that I don’t need a car, and I am happier without one. If I do need to move large amounts of stuff, there are ways of dealing with the problem, which may or may not involve a motor vehicle.
Just to back this up with some numbers, your average commuter’s sedan probably weighs about 3,000 pounds, gets 25 miles per gallon and cost about $20,000. I don’t know what the length of the average car commute is, but let’s say that you’re traveling 10 miles each way, approximately the distance that I covered twice a week on my bicycle while working at a local after-school program. In this scenario:
You get the picture. My bicycle, on the other hand…
1: Travels 20 miles a day, five days a week (during a theoretical daily commute). So, 100 miles a week. A 175 pound person traveling at fifteen miles per hour (this is my average speed on my commute, as it happens) will burn roughly 34 Calories per mile (Calorie chart). I’m about 125 pounds, so I burn about 24.5 calories per mile, according to that chart. For the 175 pound person, that’s, what… 912 miles per gallon? A lot, anyway.
2: A bicycle properly equipped for commuting weighs around 30-40 pounds, plus the weight of the rider. Call it 200 pounds altogether. The amount of wear that the bike puts on the asphalt is effectively nil. It is probably immeasureable, and certainly insignifcant.
3: I spent about 500 dollars to buy and equip my bicycle. This is about what most people could expect to spend for a good commuter bicycle, but it is possible to spend much less (as little as $20, or perhaps nothing at all), especially if the commute is short. I do not need to make any other payments, I do not need insurance, I do not need to buy gasoline. Spare parts are inexpensive, for the most part, and I can easily perform my own repairs for most problems. I can keep my operating costs absurdly low, which leaves plenty of money for things that I want to do.
4: My bicycle keeps me physically fit and happy. Commuting is lots of fun by bike, not the dreary, stressful nightmare of travel by car.
It looks to me that, over reasonable distances, my bicycle is a far superior choice for commuting and light duty hauling (I could definitely fit a week of groceries for one person on my bike, and easily enough for two or more - maybe a whole family - if I owned a trailer. Trailers can be had for as little as $100-$300.). This brings us back around to the Insight, which costs around $20,000 for a hauling capacity of Not Very Much. With that capability for that price tag, I stand by what I said: the Insight is (generally) a failure as a practical automobile. Why not spend $1,000 and not burn any gas at all? The Insight takes what cars are good at, hauling large numbers of people or heavy loads over long distances, and discards it. I’ll stick to my bicycle, thank you.
Math leg-work courtesy of HowStuffWorks.com. It’s actually an interesting question, check it out!
For examples of bikes being used for serious work, checkout http://www.bikesatwork.com and http://www.pedalpeople.com (based in my area).
Okay, this looks like a major hijack to prove a minor point :wally. I’m sorry, I’ll be good from now on!