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The Bugatti Veyron
An anonymous reader writes "OK, most /.ers cannot afford the Veyron, but reading this article at HowStuffWorks is still fascinating. How do you fit 1,000 horsepower into a compact engine? How do you keep a passenger car on the road at 250+ MPH? The article links to a set of videos on the Veyron engine that are also very good. Are there any cars out there better than this?" There's also a story by Popular Science.
Who cares? I want my flying car!
karma capped
Apparently the acceleratory (is that a word?) force of this car is so immense, that at full bore you are pulling the same kinds of G-Forces as you do on the vertical drops of a roller coaster ride.
;)
Does 186MPH in 14 seconds.. must be a terrifying experience for both the driver, and for his wallet when he comes to fill it up!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
My lowely little GMC minivan is far better than this car. I can fit the kids, my wife, our double stroller, and a whole bunch of groceries/luggage/cargo, etc in it confortably, pay about $350/month for it, and still get around 20mpg.
Not that the Bugatti wouldn't be a lot of fun, but I doubt I'd have my license very long if I owned one of those.
The Veyron is an interesting ride. It has one of the few W16 engines out there, not to mention quad turbos. One of the most amusing facts about the Veyron is the amount of effort that went into the sound system. Apparently, Bugatti demanded audio perfection, even when screaming along at 252 mph. I don't know if I speak for anyone else, but I think I 'd have larger concerns than the quality of my audio, if I was cruising at 252...
I have a Veyron you insensitive clod!
Modding your 1982 Pinto doesn't count.
Anyone care to put money on this car making it to market?
The Bugatti Veyron is the last gasp of Piech's reign at VW (He had a thing for supercars and old nameplates). It's been plauged with reliablity issues and has cost VW a fortune to develop.
(Kinda sounds like Rhapsody a bit, doesn't it?)
-E2
The evil monkey commands you to dance.
60 years ago when internal combustion propellor planes were the standard, I'm guessing that the prop plane defined the hi-tech, high powered, low weight internal combustion engine. Anyone know if that's still true?
The question from the orginal conversation was "has anyone used a wenkel rotary (it has a low weight to power ratio) in a plane?" Why/Whynot . . .
You have a French tank?
Well, here in the USA, we do use very heavy passengers:)
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Sorry, but according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most valuable car in the world is the Bugatti Type 41 Royale, at $15 million. It's also not the fastest overall, since it's beaten by racecars and the like.
Carmack's Testarossa had 1198 bhp and they had trouble getting it dialed in and over 170. Pretty tractable though the wheels DID spin in 3rd gear when the turbos came up to speed at 85 mph.
Not sure if the Bugatti really does have "the most horsepower." Maybe most for a production car.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
You don't. That's part of the beauty of it.
KFG
"How do you keep a passenger car on the road at 250+ MPH?"
The answer for most people is: you don't.
I like how the HowStuffWorks article has a "Shop or Compare Prices" link at the very end.
It doesn't come up with too many matches, though.
"Tomorrow's forecast: a few sprinkles of genius with a chance of doom!" - Stewie Griffin
Get a motorcycle.
Most of the 1000cc sportbikes on the market today will do a nice 140+ mph quarter mile, top out at 180+ mph, and corner better than anything short of an indy car for around $10k.
Or, if insist on stupidly ridiculous 250 mph speeds, you could still get one of these and save three quarters of a million dollars.
There are tons of kit cars and one off race cars that are capable of such feats but you never hear about them because gearheads dont have billion dollar marketing budgets to get news stories written about their flagship image cars.
250 mph top speed is retarded because the only places you can really reach such a speed are on a banked oval track. Overlooking the fact that the veyron is a heavy barge of a car and has mediocre street tires... Even the fastest of close wheeled race cars (many of which have comparable horsepower, much stickier tires, far less weight and better aerodynamics) are hard pressed to break 200mph even on tracks with enormous straight sections. Mostly they keep to speeds below 150 because of having to constantly brake for curves. It would be a much lower speed if they had street tires instead of racing tires. 250mph is a useless speed until tire compounds and braking systems have advanced a VERY long way. The trick is less in getting to 250mph than it is in avoiding things going slower.
As for aerodynamics, it isnt very hard to keep the car planted, even without fancy computer desgined undercar tunnels. There are tons of books on desgning and testing over and underbody aerodymics- much of this knowledge has been floating around for decades.
As for 1000+ hp, there are a ton of big block v8s making that power all over this country. Some making significantly more. A few even do it on pump gas.
Check out these babies . They can do 0-60 in a mere 2.9 seconds, that's actually 0.1 quicker than the bugatti!
They're powered by two bike engines working together to give a power to weight ratio of 600BHP per tonne, and the amazing part is they only cost around 16,000 although some assembly is required. Top speed isn't close to 250+mph, but do you know anywhere where you could get to that speed (UK driver speaking here!)? These certainly win the 'bang-for-buck' award here, and are available to joe avaerage...
http://www.frenchgeek.com/
It has wings - just upside down - for the downforce needed to make it stable. From TFA:
But wouldn't it have been easier to just add 398 lbs. of extra metal? Serious question. Is downforce from the spoiler(wing) that much better than extra metal?
Bugatti has been renowned not only as a sports car, but a luxury sports car. It's asking the question what is the absolute best I can buy. where in ferrari for exampe is primarily a sports car creature comforts only as needed. so given the history of the car this is not unheard off. On a side note engine technology has also been pushed as far as the marine world. if i'm not mistaken the original diesign for the W16 engine was taken from one developed for speed boats.
Is that just at full throttle? This car reminds me of some of the huge Dusenburgs in the 1920's. These cars were such gas hogs that you had to turn the car off while pumping in gas, becuase they used it faster than the low power pumps of the day could get it in the tank. Also, I remember Bugatti calling this car a show car, but I don't remember them ever saying they were going to make it. It seems to me that it is not practical enough to drive. At 1.33 GPM, you would need to drive a gas truck behind it to get more than 5 miles! How big a gas tank can this car have? 15-20 Gallons? Think about it...
The perfect accessory to the Bugatti
I am a karma whore.
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
Cars are designed to use their engine at 10% of peak output most of the time.
Planes are designed to use their engine at 90% of peak most of the time.
I can see a better way to get that much power. Make a redundant array of independant cars, or RAIC. Take 10 Kias, and weld them together. You get 1200 hp, plus better mileage. Also, who needs run flat tires, if it breaks down, pry one of the Kias out and drive to get help.
But wouldn't it have been easier to just add 398 lbs. of extra metal? Serious question. Is downforce from the spoiler(wing) that much better than extra metal?
Downforce has weight but not mass, so you don't need to expend horsepower accelerating it.
Wankel engines in the past have had dependability issues. In a aeronautical sense this isn't too appealing. The old Wankel had serios issues with fuel concumption, and wearing of the plugs, and combution linings. This engine in the Wankel rx-8 is supposed to solve most if not all of these problems. so perhaps now it will be a viable alternative.
Tire grip increases with weight, but it is a log curve- the more you increase weight, the smaller the increases in traction are. Since each increase in weight also increases the mass, the tires have to do more work to change the direction of the car. Thus, heavy cars tend to develop less and less traction than lighter cars.
Adding downforce increases the car's "weight" for purposes of calculating the grip of the tires on the road, but doesnt increase the mass of the car that they have to change the direction of.
This is why the "ideal" race car is a stick figure formula 1 type car with a giant engine and huge wings. The downforce keeps the car stuck on the road with the force of many times its weight, but since the car is so light it can change direction with mind boggling speed. This is why formula one cars can develop over 5gs of sideways acceleration. The powerful engine helps to generate speed which in turn increases downforce. The cars actually grip more the faster they go.
No... The point is that you want those small-dicked meatheads to kill themselves, just so long as they don't kill us geeks in the process.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Are there any cars out there better than this?"
I am not a troll, but I'm going to venture and say, all cars. High-priced Italian sportscars are designed to work for about 2-3 years and then fall apart. Their parts are ridiculously expense (I've read how some vehicles oil changes alone are hundreds of dollars.)
Cars like the Veyron are made to be purchased by an elite few who will drive them on rare occasions and keep them in climate controlled garages the rest of the time.
If you've got nothing better to spend your money on, buy out the RIAA.
If you're clearly insane (which you'd have to be to go 250mph on the street, in a car that's hugely different aerodynamically from an F1 car), then why not build a motorcycle with better performance for a lower price? Really, this is either 1) like putting linux on a toaster, you do it just because nobody else has, or 2) it's just a way to prove you can blow huge amounts of money.
...and that is "How Slashdot works". :)
Leonid Mamtchenkov
Are there any cars out there better than this?
This may or may not be the best car available. However, it is surprising how much competition the Veyron has:
There are more cars in this class, but I can't remember them off the top of my head.
I don't know how the market can support all of these $250k+ cars. How many people out there can really afford these? Wish I was one of them
All this talk about horsepower and not many even know that it's actually pretty easy to get to the 1000 mark. Toyota Supras, a ricer's wet dream, can be tuned to that level realatively easy as well as the Nissan Skyline. Of course, what do 600-(~)900HP Supras have in common? The same 1/4 mile times. (not true in all cases you anal geeks)
To true car enthusiasts who enjoy driving, it's more about speed in a corner rather than straight line speed. What's the point to having a 1000HP car if you can't turn it?
Anyway, what has me worried as that the US auto companies are sell more "high horsepower" cars and cheaper than the European ones. They're "fast cars on a budget." A good example would be the Dodge Neon (SRT-4) or the Pontiac GTO. Since they are cheap and the Neon pretty much being a "girls car," it would be purchased to be given to inexperienced teenage drivers and many accidents will follow. I've seen at least 4 SRT-4 roll-overs, all by teenage drivers.
The European companies such as BMW or Mercedes, their "performance" cars will be pushing incredible figures, something along the lines of 500HP for the new M5 and 600 some for the CL65. These cars are out of most people's budgets, but what the point is that BMW and Mercedes are putting in many safety gadgets that help the driver with traction in many conditions and BMW's Dynamic Stability Control system will even put the brakes on individual wheels when the car senses a slip so you don't go skidding out of control. Merc has a similar system. I haven't heard of any such things from Dodge or Pontiac.
In the end what I really want to ask is, will Bugatti be responsible as to whom they sell the cars to and also add as many safety features as they can? If you have something that fast and add an inexperienced driver, a horrible wreak will ensue.
If you're referring to General Aviation propellor aircraft, the answer is definately no.
Chances are that the Lycoming or Continental engine in your average Cessna has changed very very little over the past 50 years. Even though intercooling and turbocharging are more common options today, they are still air-cooled, still cruise at 2500-3000rpm, and still magneto-fired. If you took a time machine, kidnapped an A&P from 1950 and put him here, he would probably die from the shock of everything being exactly the same. If not, he would begin a spree to kill all of the lawyers responsible.
By comparison, your car's engine is about 25% more fuel-efficient, can produce 50-100% more power per unit of displacement thanks to its higher speed, is liquid-cooled, is often variably-timed, will run on unleaded low-octane fuel, and is probably much quieter than an aircraft engine.
Many automotive engines, from Honda Goldwing engines to Chevy 350 cu. in. V8's and on up, are converted to air use in Experimental Aviation. They usually must be geared down to swing a decent-sized prop at a reasonable mach number (supersonic prop tips are bad). Some pilots do this because of the costs of a certified engine ($20k+, plus regular maintenance by an A&P), some do it because 100LL avgas is so expensive, some do it because they believe the end result will be more trustworthy.
As for rotaries, yes, they'll save you a bunch on weight (and size, if needed), and some people put them in experimental aircraft. They have very few moving parts which increases reliability. Unfortunately the combustion chamber in a rotary has so much more surface area (per unit of displacement) than the equivalent reciprocal engine that rotaries will probably continue to lag 15-20% behind reciprocal engines on fuel efficiency.
Bugatti was bougt by Audi in 1998?. Audi is part of the Volkswagen AG.
They have tremendous problems with the gearbox. The 1000hp is only a marketing thingy. But now their problem is that their gear box breaks after about 3 months with the power of the 1000hp. Their solution: A smaller version with only 800hp to match the gearbox.
Their problems:
- customers ordered the 1000hp version not the smaller one
- producing a gearbox to handle all that torque that 1000hp produce.
Are there any cars out there better than this?
Porsche Carrera GT At Porsche the don't design for top speed for driving straigt ahead, they design for top speed in curves!
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
No bluetooth!
...I'm reading here are kind of off-base.
"You can only drive 60(75,85)mph anyway, what a waste"
"The small-penised guys who buy this will kill themselves in 15 minutes"
"How pointless, it only gets 3mpg!"
etc, etc, etc.
Hmmmm, where do I begin. The people who are in the market to buy this automobile are not going to drive it every day. In fact, they will probably transport it in its own trailer if they take it to any concours, etc.
The main thing is, you're viewing this as a car. It isn't. It's a piece of kinetic, semi-functional sculpture. The collectors will buy this, then put it in their lovely 30,000sq.ft. showroom, and maybe take it around the block once in a while to get a little sun.
There are people with vast amounts of money who appreciate exceptional feats of engineering and design. Jay Leno is one. The Sultan of Brunai is another.
As far as the driving like assholes, that only happens with idiot rockstars and the like who just got a million dollar paycheck. The vast majority of the people driving this car will be doctors, investment bankers and the like. These guys drive carefully.
I live in Carmel, CA. We have the Concours d'Elegance here at Pebble Beach every year, and countless other similar events at nearby Laguna Seca. In addition, there are enough Ferraris and the like around here normally that I usually see 2-3 on the way to work every day. Hell, Porsches are common as VW beetles around here. I've never seen any of the more exotic cars driven less than super-carefully.
Yeah, it's a lot of money, but it costs much less then some of the jewelry worn at the Oscars... and this is much cooler then some bling-bling necklace.
-m
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
I would rather have this instead
http://www.moller.com/.
Cool, there is a "Shop or Compare Prices" link at the end of the article!
'We couldn't find any product matches on Shopping.com for "the Bugatti Veyron"'
Damn!
I refuse to have a sig... dammit!
They have definitely produced one. It's sitting in the Bugatti showroom on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin. Quite amusing actually. Normally happy families are torn apart as the wives and daughters run off to gaze in the haute couture windows, while the guys stand there with their faces plastered to the glass.
*blinking cursor*
Okay. so this is all great and well...
But how do the breaks work?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Actually, they bought Rolls/Bentley, but later found out to their chagrin that the Rolls name was owned by Rolls Royce Aircraft Engines and only licensed to Rolls the automaker. RR Aircraft Engines then licensed the name to BMW, who now make the "Rolls" Phantom (though it is on a bespoke platform built in a new factory and not a rebodied 7 series).
"Are there any cars better than this?"
Yeah, just about any car on the road, for most commonly used definitions of "better". For example, a Civic is cheaper to buy, cheaper to insure, cheaper to maintain, easier to drive, quieter, rides better, more comfortable, has more cargo space, and has better gas mileage.
Does it really get >1K HP except at top speed? I'd expect that on a dyno, or off the line, the performance is nowhere near that because you can't funnel air into the engine fast enough. For cars with lower horsepower ratings, the aerodynamics and speed of the car make less of a difference, right?
Five years ago this would be the first place they would advertise. Oh my how times change.
No, wait. . . now!
No, really, now! And it will have a jillion horsepower and go a bazillion miles an hour!
As to the question of "are there better cars out there?" the answer is yes: any one of them you can actually drive.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
drag engines are torn down after every day, if not every race - do you want to have to bring your car in for a total engine rebuild every 500 miles?
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
While the Bugatti is an amazing car, I must still admire the McLaren F1.
10 years ago this car was built. Its engine cranks out 627 BHP, from a NORMALLY ASPIRATED (eat that, quad turbo W16) V12. And its only 6.1 liters!
For a car more than a decade old to still be this good compared to todays technology is a feat.
400lbs is a ton
Damn you metric sytem!
And to the other poster, I'm pretty sure an F1 car would beat the pants off any car in an autoX type event. There is just no replacement for lateral grip, and crazy accelleration (0-100 in 5 secs), and braking (55 feet 100-0).
I think that an F1 car would get it's ass kicked if it was prepped for an F1 race and dropped on to an autocross course. I think that it would do quite well if it was prepped correctly for an autocross.
F1 tires would not heat up by the end of an autocross run, giving little benefit. They would need to be swapped out from tires meant to last for 100+ miles of racing with ones designed to last 10 miles of racing (softer compound autocross tires). I've never driven an F1 car, but my guess is that the steering would suck for an autocross. I suspect it would be easy to mess with the ratio to make it more usable, but the lock-to-lock at relatively low speeds would probably be close to impossible without mods. Also, there is no point in 6 or more gears when you wouldn't even get out of first gear (and even then, you'd not get to the power peak in first gear on an autocross course). Again, I've not driven an F1 car, but I would expect that they would not generate significant power at low speeds, as that is not what they were designed to do.
If you took any 1000 lb car with 1000 hp and set it up well, it would be great for autocrossing. However, the F1 circuit does not leave the cars set up well for short, low-speed handling contests.
Learn to love Alaska
I have to take issue with one point you make here... 'Grip' or friction between the road surface and the tire is linearly related to the normal force or weight. Your other point regarding inertia increasing with mass is correct though and a good point.
Despite lacking the 'amazing' performance specs, for my money the Toyota Prius is by far the most advanced car on the road. It's power distribution and energy recovery seems like a much bigger innovation.
Let's see, the Veyron is cool and fast, but everything in the car is pretty common and didn't require any special innovation to achieve. The engine? Just two corporate VW DOHC V8s bolted together. And turbos are not exactly new technology, and putting 4 of them in one place doesn't get you any farther. Wow - 4 valves per cyclinder, did NASA design this monster!?! Ohhhh, dry sump lubication, fairly rare due to cost on production vehicles, but in use for plenty long. Continuously variable cam timing, I believe Honda was putting this on Civics about 20 years ago. And obviously seven gears are seven times more advanced than four gears. Dual clutch systems were invented decades ago, just never worked so well due to reliability. F1 style paddle shifting - Ferrari had it first. All wheeel drive - Jeep perhaps? Many high end cars have unique tires, all that means is they're expensive, not innovative, and have dimensions too ridiculous for the manufacturers to build in volume. Carbon fiber chasis also common on several high enders.
The Veyron is just a really expensive combination of all the top technologies available in the market at the moment, I see nothing new here. Of course, that could just be the envy talking.
Just for the record, the article claims that F1 cars use a ground effect like the Bugatti. These days, actually, F1 has a few regulations to prevent that. The car bottom is flat and has a wood plank underneath that is 10mm +/- 1mm. If the plank is less than 9mm at the end of the race then the car is judged to have been riding too low.
See FIA 2004 Formula One Technical Regulations sections 13.2 and 13.3 for details.
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
Probably you should go talk to the people that build indy cars about that. The spoilers that they have are just inverted airfoils. In fact, travelling at 400 or so MPH, they would be capable of holding the indy car upside down on a ceiling.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Yup. Its called a 797. Caterpillar 797.
V24 diesel engine, with four turbos. Three thousand, four hundred ponies. Yeah, you heard me: 3400hp.
Seven forward gears. 42 inch brakes. Can haul up to 380 tons of your kids crap.
Course, it only does like 42mph (loaded) while getting 0.3 mpg. Yes, at 47 feet long and 23 feet tall, its kind of hard to park. But you can rest assured that your 13 foot tires are bigger than your neighbours' Escalade! Or his entire Chevvy for that matter.
Yours for only 3.4 million! (Some assembly required).
(PS: All joking aside, i've seen one of these beasts up close, and they're just insane. The pictures don't even do it justice.)
Don't know about Indy cars but F1 cars only need to be doing ~100mph to stick to the ceiling.
--
Reverse outsourcing: it's the future
There's a Bugatti Museum just over the field from my house (Gloucestershire, UK [Map]). The site is also home to the impressive Prescott Speed Hillclimb which is open to the public- you can even enter the time trial in your own car, although I find it more fun to watch the vintage cars, including old Bugattis, race up the hill.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
The Rocket III to be specific.
k eI D=83
http://www.triumph.co.uk/site/bikes/page.cfm?Bi
2.2l engine in a motorcycle, yes, it is insane, but it accelerates faster than a sportsbike. To get the best acceleration out of it you need to be carrying a pillion, though on thinking about it maybe that wouldn't be necessary in the US.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The next big thing in fuel efficiency for conventional piston engines is the variable timing and lift technology now available in BMW's 4.5liter V8 and soon to come form other manufacturers.
Toyota have been putting their variable valve timing and lift engines in several of their lines for over four years now. Branded as VVTL-i (i standing for intelligence), they're fitted in MR2s, Celicas, Corrolas and all sorts.
More info here
Nope... French tanks are the ones with enormous firepower, great performance, and terrific soldiers inside them, but which are unfortunately in entirely the wrong location. British tanks are the ones the Americans give the joke IFF circuits to. German tanks are the ones we hope like hell they never decide to use again.
It's Italian tanks that have the high reverse performance.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
At speeds approaching 200mph, a modern F1 car generates 2100kg of downforce. enough to stick it to the ceiling 3 times over.
It's a common misconception that the ground effect era of the 70's was the pinnacle of racing car downforce. The aero enginnering on an F1 car today is so advanced that the downforce they generate is way ahead of where they were in the 70's.
What *is* true is that ground effect gives more *mid corner* downforce when the car is going slow, so it pushes cornering speeds up. And if you lose the ground effect mid corner from hitting a kerb or something, you can get lift or at the very least lose all that lovely adhesive low speed downforce. This directly lead to the deaths of a couple of F1 drivers, hence ground effect aero was banned.
--is not to be confused with user #672982 - Bame Flait
Indy cars don't need anything even remotely approaching 400 MPH to generate that kind of downforce. The Ferrari 360 Modena (barely even an exotic) makes sufficient downforce to support it's own weight at about 150 MPH due to its elaborately engineered undertray. However, the all-time downforce winner is the Toyota Eagle MKIII GTP car from the late 80's (or maybe early 90's, I forget) which had configurations that generated downforce in excess of 11,000 pounds at 200 MPH (which it could attain in places like the Mulsanne straight at Le Mans).
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
not to mention the 1cm of ground clearance on a modern F1 car and no conventional suspension. also radiators that need to be moving at high speed to avoid overheating. an F1 car on an autocross track would not work, just as an autocross car on an F1 track wouldn't.
Actually the French made the most impressive tank ever (the Leclerc).
A swift, powerful, costly masterpiece of technology. The most reliable defence against what was then regarded as the main threat for France and Western Europe: a Soviet invasion.
Unfortunately the production began two years after the Berlin Wall fell.
Now the few Leclerc tanks that have actually been produced and sold gather dust in French territories or in the Arab emirates.
Typical French: "Toujours en retard d'une guerre" (always one war backwards).
Thomas Miconi
It would be nice if a car like this actually existed. Too bad they don't mention that minor detail anywhere in the article.
Did anyone else notice that there are no real photos of this car? Any pics I could find were all just nice computer-generated renderings. My advice: don't place your order for this car just yet.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.