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World's Fastest Hybrid OK'd For Production
thecarchik writes "The Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid supercar, first shown as a concept at this spring's Geneva Motor Show, got official approval as a production model today from the company's board of directors. Just consider the specs: a 500-horsepower, 3.6-liter V-8 engine with a 9200-rpm redline, 0-to-62-mph acceleration of 3.2 seconds, and top speed of 198 miles per hour. Oh, and did we mention it gets 78 miles per gallon on the European cycle? The astounding fuel efficiency comes courtesy of an E-Drive mode that lets the 918 Spyder drive up to 16 miles on pure electric power, though [ahem] not at 198 mph."
And in only 150 years, the gas you save pays for the car!
--Assuming you drive an earth mover to work today.
78 miles per gallon is about 3 liter for 100 km.
198 miles = 319 kilometers
"78 miles per gallon on the European cycle"
Sure, and my plug in golf car gets mpg on any test thrown at it. Really that's poor and deceitful advertising. This car is a plug in car - it doesn't generate it's own electricity. It's not like a prius where you just fill it and forget about it, you're supplying another form of energy yourself. Saying what MPG it gets is redundant unless you also show how many Joules of electricity it used in the process as well.
The Tesla Roadster Sport would like to have a word with you.
http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/convertibles/112_1004_2010_tesla_roadster_sport_2011_porsche_boxster_spyder_comparison/index.html
Eat sleep die
The other modes (Hybrid, Sport Hybrid, and Race Hybrid) sound interesting, but consider:
Ahhh, who cares - just park one in my driveway, and let me do an in-depth product test!
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
It accelerates so fast they can't even stop the timer before it reaches 62.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Europe is on the metric system. 62miles is about 100km.
d'oh broked link
Sorry about that
Wow, did they really need to have an auto-playing video ad with obnoxious music at the bottom of the page? I'm pissed that I gave them even that one pageview. I won't be reading the article.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
If I put a couple of extra batteries in my old Chevy I think I could get that far on the starter.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Sorry, but different Poreche. the hybrid is a 918 spyder, your linking to a Boxster spyder. Basically the Boxster has a 320hp flat 6 while the hybrid 918 has a 500hp V8 plus 2 109hp electric motors. Also it looks to be 4 times more expensive then the Tesla at about $650,000!
http://nexus404.com/Blog/2010/07/29/porsche-918-spyder-goes-to-production-kind-of-confirmed-back-in-march-the-green-light-on-the-porsche-918-spyder-is-now-officially-on/
Because, YOU TWIT, 198 mph and 0-62 in 3.2 seconds isn't really fast.
Sheesh.
The Spyder was $72.5k. But it won.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
It's called flashblock, use it.
I think I heard Porsche has a couple okay engineers on staff.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
It was to 100kph. It is a German car.
Plenty of modern electronic fuel injected vehicles get infinite MPG for periods of time, without having to employ dangerous shenanigans like shutting off the engine (and consequently shutting off safety systems and power control). They simply stop injecting fuel when the vehicle is moving sufficiently fast while in gear and without any accelerator input.
I'm an engineer...and a race car driver. You can decide if that qualifies me to answer.
Electric motors can produce torque at all RPMs, so you don't have to mess around with complex gearing to keep the engine in the "power band."
Sure, if you wanted to burn rubber, an electric motor would be happy to comply, but if you want a car that is easy to control, you only supply as much torque as the tires can handle (even ICE-powered cars do this). You don't want super-wide tires, because you increase rolling resistance, making the car less efficient. Tire contact patches are optimized for traction and resistance (and then the owner screws that up because he thinks 22" wheels on a sub-compact looks "gnarly!").
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
They compared a Porsche Boxster variation (320 HP, $70,000, 2900 pounds) to the Tesla (288HP $155,000 , 2800 pounds), and the Porsche won.
There is no Porsche made in the last 20 years that had only 220 HP
Now for $150,000 you can get a new Porsche 911 Turbo 0-60 3.2 seconds, 3400 pounds, and that will trounce the tesla a bit more than the Boxster.
..........FULL STOP.
As for Tesla? Screw 'em. We're paying them (government subsidy??) to develop a car they will sell us back at a ridiculous price.
It's a loan you twat, not a subsidy
http://www.google.com/search?q=doe+loans+electric+vehicles
Hell, Nissan got $1.4 billion+, Fisker got around $500 million, GM got $14.4 billion and Chrysler got $8.5 billion. You know who has a solid, proven drivetrain and energy management system? Tesla. There should be some sort of test before you're allowed to post here.
Because then it would be a volkswagen.
Reboot macht Frei.
Come on now, give them credit where they're trying. Some of the most gas guzzling vehicles n the roads in the last few years have been changed to at least be slightly nicer to the environment... just the start of big things to come. vcp @ university in thailand
A lot of comments here miss the point of this car.
It recovers some of the braking energy before a corner to charge the batteries, and then use the electric motors to exit the corner faster. The point of this car is to go fast, not save fuel/money (seriously guys a $500,000 car to save money?)
The fact that you can use it as a hybrid and get good mileage in some (very rare) circumstances is no more than a funny side effect.
It's true that an electric motor provides more torque than an internal combustion engine at low revs.
The shape of the toque curve is very different.
An electric motor can provide a lot of torque at 0 rpm, while an internal combustion engine can't even keep itself turning at very low revs.
This means that the power curve has a different shape. An electric motor has a much broader curve, so it is able to run with high power over a large range of speeds. So much so that it wont need a clutch, and may not need different gear ratios. It may still need some kind of gearbox to match the rpm of the motor to that of the wheels, but a single speed box is sufficient in many cases (possibly not if you want to get the max possible performance).
Wide tires dont give you extra contact area. The area of contact between the tyre and the road is determined mostly by the air pressure in the tyre. If you increase the width of the tyre without changing the pressure then you change the shape of the contact patch, but not its area (not much anyway). Wide tyres are useful because they are less affected by irregularities in the road surface and because they spread the load through a large area of rubber (so they dont overheat so quickly). The contact patch is also short and wide, which means that the front and rear edges of the contact patch are longer (and these edges carry a bit more of the load than the centre due to the bending of the rubber). An Ultra-wide (steamroller) tyre would not be useful. It would require some internal structure to transfer weight to the centre of the tyre (otherwise it would bend and just lie on the road surface in the middle with very little pressure). It would also cause cornering problems - how would you provide a differential? Wide tyres already have problems cornering due to the difference in road speed between the inside and outside edges - there is bound to be some slippage. Narrower tyres are usually more efficient. The only practical way to increase traction is to provide extra downforce (e.g. aerodynamic - which only works at speed) or to use all 4 wheels for traction (doing something to the materials of the tyre/road and the tread pattern also have some effect).
The silence of the electric motor is a very good add-on to make carmageddon style pedestian kills. Unless that feature is negated by downloadable car sounds when the car is in electric mode.
The loan Is a subsidy. If it wasn't, they'd have to get the loan on their own, and they'd be paying more for the money (e.g. interest). Otherwise they wouldn't have bothered getting it from the government.
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