When Ulli Sommer, a 41-year-old engineer and avid cyclist, started thinking about ideal car design a few years ago, the first image that came to mind was a nail. "It's the perfect combination of aerodynamics and strength," he says over coffee in the Munich conference room of Ruetz Technologies, his employer and partner in a venture to build the first mass-market ultralight car. Sommer's Loremo (pronounced lo-ray-mo) and short for Low Resistance Mobile — looks

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) nothing like a nail. On the contrary, it looks amphibious; Sommer and his partners first nicknamed it the bathtub.

Even so, Sommer says the nail metaphor helped his team diverge from standard car chassis design and find a way to create a light yet crash-resistant frame. Weighing a mere 450 kg, the Loremo prototype claims to get 100 km out of a meager 1.5 L of fuel — about half the amount used by the most efficient cars available today. That, most people would agree, is an idea whose time has come. Experts may quibble over just how much oil is left buried in the earth. But no one disputes that record pump prices, geopolitics and global warming are taking the pleasure out of driving. The future of cars will definitely depend on alternatives to the traditional combustion engine, such as fuel cells that burn hydrogen and emit clean water exhaust.

But until we get there, a variety of transitional technologies will try to squeeze as much efficiency as possible out of traditional engines. All major manufacturers are now rolling out hybrid cars that combine electric or alternative-fuel-burning engines with standard gas and diesel engines. Loremo believes that its models will be the first ultralight cars to go mass transit. "Our goal is to begin mass production of the first 10,000 cars in 2009, and until then we don't see any competition. None of the big manufacturers has plans for this segment," boasts Gerhard Heilmaier, Loremo ceo.

How is the Loremo different? Unlike a traditional car frame, which is built to divert energy in a crash in a ring around the passengers, the Loremo's frame consists of three steel girders running from front to back that transport the energy of a crash underneath the passengers. That innovation means Loremo's frame weighs only about 100 kg, compared to 300 kg for the frame of a similar-size conventional car. A crossbeam in the center of the car between the front and rear seats, which are arranged back-to-back, stabilizes the frame.

Shaped like an upside-down V, the crossbeam provides a cavity in which to place the engine and the gas tank. The body of the Loremo is made of thermoplastic, a light and flexible synthetic material currently used in the airline and rail industries. The car sits low to the ground; air shafts built into the underside of the frame channel air through to the rear, pushing the car closer to the road, which adds to stability and reduces air resistance. Sommer claims that this design saves weight, improves aerodynamics and still provides resistance in a crash to the same level as other sports cars and subcompacts.

The result is the Loremo LS, a car with a two-cylinder, 20-horsepower, turbo-diesel engine that maxes out at 160 km/h and is expected to cost just €11,000. The sportier version, the Loremo GT, has a three-cylinder engine, gets 100 km to 2.7 L of fuel and can hit speeds of 220 km/h.

There are, however, a few design issues that could give consumers pause. For example, the Loremo has no side doors. Passengers enter the car through the front end, which lifts forward. The driver steps into the front seat and pulls down the hood section, which incorporates the dashboard and steering wheel, to close the car. The car's door locks and windows are manually operated, and a navigational computer does not come as a standard feature. These were stripped out to save weight and cost. "What's wrong with manually opening the window?" asks Heilmaier.

Well, nothing, perhaps. But history suggests that austerity does not always sell. In 1999, German carmaker Volkswagen launched the Lupo 3L TDI in Europe, a no-frills subcompact that got 100 km on 3 L of gas. Volkswagen built 29,500 Lupo 3Ls and then last year yanked the car from the market. "It was too frugal," says Hartmut Hoffmann, a product spokesman for VW. "Customer interest faded."

Other manufacturers have flirted with ultralight models, but few have dared bring them to market. In 1997, Ford announced plans for what it called the P2000, which promised to be 40% lighter than conventional family sedans. And in 2002, Opel, the European subsidiary of General Motors, unveiled the Eco-Speedster, a sleek, low-riding sports car that gets 2.5 L of fuel to 100 km. But none of the manufacturers ever intended to offer their ultralight cars for sale. "The real problem is that consumers are still very wary of these cars," says Garel Rhys, director of the Centre for Automotive Industry Research at Cardiff University Business School in Wales. "People don't buy a car solely for its environmental impact but for a host of other reasons, the way it drives and how it looks."

But with fuel prices at historic highs, all that may be about to change. ceo Heilmaier says 10,000 people have signaled interest in buying a Loremo since March, when a model was shown at the Geneva auto show. That's not bad for a car that hasn't even been driven yet. The first drivable prototype is to be built this year, and Sommer expects to go into production of the first 5,000 to 10,000 cars in 2009 and ramp up to 100,000 by 2012.

At least one major investor, Kosmo Technology Industrial Berhad, a Malaysian auto components maker, is on board. Kosmo has invested €2 million in Loremo, a big chunk of the €5 million Loremo has raised so far. The company will launch another financing round in September to raise €60 million to fund its production plans. If consumers are finally ready to embrace radical fuel efficiency, then Sommer and his team will have truly nailed it.

• WILLIAM BOSTON | Munich
• Will anyone want a new and radically efficient car being built in Germany?