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Zero-60 in 3.1 Seconds, Batteries Included
FloatsomNJetsom writes "Popular Mechanics has a very cool video and report about test-driving Hybrid Technologies' L1X-75, a battery powered, 600-hp, carbon-fiber roadster that pulls zero-60 in about 3.1 seconds, and tops out at 175 mph. Of course, there are few creature comforts inside, but that's mainly because the car's 200 mile range is meant for the track, not the road. Nonetheless, Popular Mechanics takes the car for a spin up 10th Avenue in NYC. Oh, and the car recharges via a 110 outlet. They also test-drove Ford's HySeries Edge, a hydrogen fuel-cell powered, plug-in series hybrid that, unlike the L1X-75, is unfortunately at least 10 years away from production and nearly 100 mph slower."
How would a bike version do? Existing litre bikes can manage around 2.5 seconds... Or is gravity the limiting factor here, I have hellish problems keeping my front wheel on the ground.
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Remember, American car companies are heavily invested in the big oil companies. Which is why we have had shit for gas mileage for so long. It has taken some serious market blow-back to even get the "big" automakers interested in addressing the major shortcomings of their engine designs. Even with that, they have succeeded in getting "laws" passed to bail them out once again. Meaning they are hoping to not have to make cars with efficient gas-mileage any time in the future. As for competition, they just get more laws passed to curb any such from imports. It is easy - like stealing candy from a baby - the way America car companies play the American people.
Expect tons of these prototypes, like usual. But nothing seriously worthwhile in production, ever.
The only catch is that it is very expensive.
Price, not strength, is the reason you won't be seeing a carbon fiber sedan.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I've heard that electricity generation produces more carbon pollution than combustion engine technology. So is this a productive application of technology?
It is caused by the water dropping down, releases ton of carbons. As for wind power, those blades are made of carbon and they just evaporate in the sun. Nasty stuff.
When will people finally get it into their head that the move to electric/hydrogen cars means that you break the direct link between your source of energy, and the energy to put in a moving vehicle?
A wind powered car would be inconvenient, by an electric car whose electricity comes from windpower isn't.
A country like greenland could use geothermal energy to create hydrogen and ship it to the rest of the world.
But yeah, some power plants currently use carbon based fuels, so electricity causes carbon pollution. We wouldn't want to confuse you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Every so often a story pops up like this and I find myself scratching my head. Considering that, in most areas in the world, there are speed limits of some sort, what is the point of having a car that can go 175mph or get to 60 in 3secs -if you can't ever use it-?
Even in places like Germany (i.e., Autobahn), drivers tend not to drive at top speeds, either due to being responsible/safety conscious or, lacking that, because they simply won't be able to (due to other drivers who aren't driving as fast.) Unless you're driving at a racing track for the day, I don't see many places where you could fully take advantage of the car.
It's similar to the people I see driving around London in their Ferraris. Yes, of course, Ferrari make some lovely cars, but when the speed limit is 20mph and you're constantly stuck in traffic, what is the point? I mean, seriously, my bicycle is quicker!
With electric cars, the h.p. rating it typically limited to overheating the motor. As opposed to a motor with brushes, a brushless motor can take as many amp as you will as long as it does not overheat. That means a lot if you only want to accelerate for a few seconds. The same goes for the control electronics and batteries.
So while you may have 600hp to accelerate, you may only have 50hp of continuous power. This may be exactly what you want in a car, but the term may be somewhat meaningless.
Instead of a gas engines power/torque curve vs rpm, a power curve vs time would give us this information.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
When will we be allowed to build a sufficient number of nuclear reactors to power these vehicles? I enjoy the feel of my internal combustion engine, but for the efficiency of nuclear power for electricity, I'm ready to switch.
Free the atoms! Free the atoms!!
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is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
They never sound right so it will never be cool enough.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Ten years from production don't mean shit when your company is three years from oblivion.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Sometimes conquering a specific 5% of total users means selling way more than 5% of the total market value. This is very clear on the beer market, I'm not sure about the automotive business. What I do know is that F1 racing has an impact on what may turn up on production cars some years later. If a company delivers an electric car that has extra performance compared to the usual suspects in the high-performance segment: Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, BMW... they have a chance to get the attention of the people who are more willing to invest in bringing the tech to other market segments. Besides, all high performance vehicles put together might have a larger impact on emissions than a lot of regular cars. Selling these cars for more than what a house costs may be a first step in a desirable direction.
First, because a lot of people also want to drive their cars on the tracks.
Second, people who want a stable, safe, efficient vehecle doesn't mean they'll also want it to be slow.
Lastly, just because you don't want to do a 3.5 second 0-60 to reach 175, doesn't mean that "noone" wants to. Open you eyes.
there's no reason light cars can't be safe - people regularly walk away from 150mph crashes in F1 cars.
We can't even get people to wear seat belts and observe traffic laws - what are the odds we can get them to spend years developing high speed driving skills, to wear nomex garmets, full-face helmets, neck braces, undergarmet cooling systems, four point harnesses - and not have head-on collisions - and be willing to spend the several hundred thousand dollars for the carbon fiber bodies that F1 cars are using?
The big three (I will talk primarily US) are tanking and fast precisely because they never got it on mileage and reliability until the japanese had a solid decade or more advances on them. And for the most part they still haven't caught up. They obviously threw away that market because they didn't give a crap, and are mostly retarded to boot.
I used to have a 74 dart, held six adults, roomy trunk, I tried it once it would actually do 110 mph with the six banger in it, and it got around 25 miles per gallon, with just a fraction of the plumbing and electrical nightmare modern engines are.
Now it is 2007, what do you see? See much diff with US cars other than they cost huge gobs more, about impossible for the average joe to work on them much, and get maybe just a smidgen better mileage, or in some cases worse or just static, no improvements? I'm just talking performance and mileage now, not radar gps equipped DVD playing sensurround airbags stuff, just from the transportation angle, which is primarily what cars are supposed to be anyway. It's like about zilch progress near as I can see.
Nope, the big three US car makers been stepping on their dicks for a LONG time now. On purpose or just top heavy retarded management, no idea (my guess is equal amounts of both, and yep, oil is a profitable commodity, you sell a lot more at 10-25 mpg than at 45-65 mpg), but the results are there to see.
I'll tell you another reason, the top engineers go into racing where it is fun, change can go fast and is driven by engineering, they get paid pretty darn good and are held in high esteem. They are *valued* folks. In the car industry, engineers are way down the list of "attaboys" and paycheck compared to the bloated marketing and managing side, and those folks get "driven" by the vultures who demand ever increasing profits but have mostly no clue about quality. A first year rookie car dealer salesman makes more than an engineer working for years. And I don't want to hear that it's all the unions fault either, they build what they are told to build, they have zero say in how things go in that direction.
I was in the UAW in the 60s,and you could clearly see this coming, at least I could. Of course back then it was the horsepower wars,that mostly blinded folks and oil by the barrel was very cheap as well, but anyone who stopped and extrapolated a few decades out could see gas would get dear eventually and that reliability long range would keep a car company running in the red. Detroit and most of their management and "analysts" missed both of those obvious calls. And they are so obvious, that yes, you might tend to think there was some action on the side to make it that way on purpose, lose some in one industry, gain a lot more in another.
Sort of like "new and improved" bloated operating systems sell new computers, even though the old ones aren't "broken" or "worn out". One hand washes the other with lotsa cash it appears.
Heh, a reverse from slashdot normal computer to car analogy!
and if you put millions of these cars on the streets, people would stop looking for cops and slamming on their brakes causing multi-car pile ups, and start actually DRIVING and looking out for other cars.
Speed n Cars don't kill people, Stupid fucking drivers that don't pay attention to other drivers kill people. (and drunk drivers)
Why not convert our cars into gigantic slot cars while we're on the Interstate? Our electricity use would be metered and read off when we take the exit using the same technology used in wireless toll passes.
Actually, I'd go farther and have autopilot too, so the cars can draft on each other safely. But then you have to convince people that an automatic system that occasionally fails and kills people is better than a manual system where you're only as safe as the worst driver on the road and which routinely kills people.
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