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First Arab Supercar Costs $3.4 Million, Has Diamond-Encrusted Headlights
cartechboy writes "If you're looking for bling, you can always count on Dubai. At the Dubai Motor Show this week, Lebanon-based W Motors unveiled what is billed as the world's first Arab-built super car. The Lykan Hypersport incorporates jewels and precious metals in its construction, suicide-style doors, and an interactive holographic display system. (Yes, drivers will be able to adjust radio volume via a holograph.) The 750 horsepower car accelerates to 60 mph in just 2.8 seconds and has a top speed of 245 mph. The cost: $3.4 million, but owners will also receive a Cyrus Klepcys watch, said to be valued at around $200,000. W Motors plans a whopping 7 units for production."
Not that it is relevant to anyone who could possibly buy this.
From reading Slashdot I understand that 3d printers can only be used to make guns.
And none of these "HE EARNT IT FROM THE SWEAT OF HIS BROW" lies, please.
1) Hard workers are poor - smart workers are rich;
2) Arab oil magnates CERTAINLY didn't work for it.
Some people just really have more money than they know what to do with, don't they?
I can think of a lot of better uses for $23.8 million dollars then some toy car...
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One has to wonder how much faster it would go if you got rid all the unnecessary opulence built into this car.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Conspicuous consumption is the spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury goods and services to publicly display economic power â" either the buyerâ(TM)s income or the buyerâ(TM)s accumulated wealth. Sociologically, to the conspicuous consumer, such a public display of discretionary economic power is a means either of attaining or of maintaining a given social status.
Moreover, invidious consumption, a more specialized sociologic term, denotes the deliberate conspicuous consumption of goods and services intended to provoke the envy of other people, as a means of displaying the buyerâ(TM)s superior socio-economic status.
Nothing new.
Personally I suspect that anyone who has amassed such riches is a selfish person. It's not like you wake up one day and suddenly are a multimillionaire. I don't know any millionaires personally though, so who knows.
perhaps not the best marketing terminology for a vehicle, in that area of the world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And those wobbly suicide doors are hilarious.
Why can no modern car maker design something with the beauty and elegance of an E-Type or Muira?
Because, obviously if you can afford a 3.4 million dollar car, you can clearly afford the gas for it. Although, for that kind of money, you could probably buy a Tesla and still have plenty left over to hire someone to follow you with a generator, for the entire time you own your car.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
It seems that the uber wealthy run out of ways to flaunt it, so they have to come up with more and more outlandish displays to let others know how much more they have than you. These aren't even improvements in quality or aesthetics. Tooling around in a Bugatti is passe, apparently.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
And none of these "HE EARNT IT FROM THE SWEAT OF HIS BROW" lies, please.
1) Hard workers are poor - smart workers are rich;
2) Arab oil magnates CERTAINLY didn't work for it.
Not sure what you are intending to slam ... capitalism, or Islam?
Or rather, how many tens of embedded CPUs running Linux are hidden within components of that car.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
But the production run is seven. $23.8 M for all seven, buy one for each day of the week...
-- Alastair
Arseholes of either or both religions.
Yeah, rich royals are the perfect reason to be a socialist. How brain dead.
Capitalislam
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Suicide doors are doors with the hinges at the rear, so that it's "suicide" to open them if the vehicle is moving at any speed. In a regular car, the slipstream will tend to push the doors closed. With suicide doors, the slipstream tends to rip the doors fully open. If you're not belted in (the term dates to before mandatory seatbelts), and holding onto the door handle, you're likely to get yanked out too.
-- Alastair
I'm sure you can, for your own personal definition of Better. Then again, the Sheikh probably thinks he knows better than you how to use his people's money because he is mandated by God, fate, and destiny to rule whatever land it is we're talking about here. I'm sure there's a distinction in viewpoints here, but I realize I'm failing to grasp it.
Doors that hinge in the back instead of in the front. Won't shut themselves by aerodynamic pressure at speed like normal car doors. Hence, "suicide" doors.
I wont say they don't have the right to spend their money on what they want, but with people starving in the world this is offensive.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
From the video, the door hold-up mechanism needs work. When they open the "suicide doors", which rotate backwards and upward, it looks like the counterbalancing system isn't quite right. The demonstrator has to adjust the door to keep it open, and then it shakes.
There is a web site for the company with more specs. The engine is a 6-cylinder boxer type, which seems undersized for the claimed performance. Most supercars have from 8 to 18 cylinders.
Surprisingly, it's not an all-wheel drive vehicle. Most supercar-class sedans are. I'm surprised they can get that acceleration with rear wheel drive only. There are rear wheel drive race cars that can do it, but sedan-sized cars usually need all-wheel drive to get enough traction. The rear tires aren't especially large. There's nothing like Formula I aerodynamics to get huge levels of downforce. I wonder if this thing's claimed acceleration just reflects performance on a dynamometer.
No active suspension, either. That's a real problem with supercars - if they're low enough to go fast, they're too low to go anywhere. See Top Gear's evaluation of the Bugatti Veyron, where it takes them an hour and wooden blocks to get it out of a driveway.
Maintenance: "a team of qualified W engineers will fly to anywhere in the world to service your Hypercar or to help with any problem you might encounter with the Lykan at any given time."
Great idea. For sure nobody will try popping the diamonds out from around the headlights.
Fun fact: Saudi Arabia prohibits women from driving cars, has imported some half million Pakistanis, Indians and Bangladeshis drivers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I see a lot of CGI, and this:
If W Motors manages to pull it off, the Lykan Hypersport could potentially be the first car to feature an interactive holographic display system
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I think you are missing out lucky, you don't have to smart to be born int wealth.
Even then their wealth was not originally created by hard work, or even smart work, it created by taking resources that belonged to everyone and using it to benefit themselves. Ok their ancestors where smart thieves, but not smart workers.
3.4 million. US dollars.
Hmmm ...
Naw, I doan' need no steenking watch.
Modern technology can prevent this problem. Electric latches controlled by vehicle speed and some sensing to ensure positive latch operation.
One advantage of this configuration is that the hinge, spring, counterweight assemblies are closer to the center of the vehicle. Important for a high performance, lightweight design.
<rant>Doors that swing upwards are also an advantage for smaller, lower vehicles parking in tighter spots. The "Compact Car" marked spots are nearly useless for smaller and lower two door cars (compact cars) with normal outward swinging doors. In fact, in some tight spots, the only vehicles that can be exited or entered are SUVs. You can crack the door and get in or out standing straight up. Where its not possible to open a door far enough to lean over and enter a standard sedan.</rant>
But I suspect that the Lykan incorporates these because they look cool.
Have gnu, will travel.
1%? 1 out of 100 can afford this? Right.
This is for the 0.001%.
If it's for the 1%, why advertise it?
At the other comment points out, this is for the 0.001%.
But, generally you advertise such products to a wider audience, because why would the 1% (or 0.001%) buy stuff like this if the rest of the world couldn't tell how expensive it is? How big would the appeal of a Rolex watch be, if nobody else could tell that it's not some random no-name watch bough from a market selling chinese junk products (which, ironically, most "Rolexes" are).
It'd be more impressive if they weren't building their country with slave labor.
I wonder if it has Oculus Rift support?
I don't see how the grandparent was suggesting socialism but anyway.
Just because you don't believe in socialism doesn't mean that having people who do effectively no work and waste huge amounts or resources is right.
There are many things in between pure socialism and pure capitalism, and maybe even other ways that are not either.
I believe in both hard work, intelligence, risk taking, ... should be rewarded, but their also needs to be a level of fairness as well. It does not have to be totally fair life's tough get over it, but the extremes can be eliminated. The top 10 CEOs in the US earn other $100 million the average wage is about 0.04 Million you are in a dream world if you think these people work 2500 times harder, better, smarter than the average worker.
Also the reward does not necessarily need to be money.
The Gulf Arab states are massive examples of the state "plowing the mony back into their own society and peoples". If you are a native, life is good: free universities, high-salary jobs that don't require much work, all kinds of subsidies. It is the migrant workers from mainly the Indian Subcontinent that have it bad, but even the simplest UAE native enjoys a very high quality of life.
Your vision of poor masses held down and turned against Israel and the US may hold to some degree for Saudi Arabia or pre-revolutionary Syria, but it does not hold for the welfare states of the Gulf.
Don't worry, after the oil runs out in a few decades they'll be back to humping camels in tents.
When the oil runs out, the smart ones will follow the example of the Roman Catholic church, set up an Islamic version of Vatican City, and then the oil income they are no longer pulling in can be replaced by offerings from their Muslim followers throughout the Western world. They could pull in hundreds of billions per year that way.
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two words: fungible commodity.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why OR/OR why not AND/AND. Perhaps he has $6 million to spend and he give $3 million to charity.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You must be arguing from a theistic position. It's sure not supported by the genetic code as expressed by wolves, seagulls, sharks, or dragons.
Because the human greed gullet sometimes takes years to complete the swallowing motion, we're the dancing bees of declaring "dibs".
A highly popular dance move is the puerile head fake of vapid collectivism.
It's certainly true that all life on earth shares the destiny of our damp blue marble, which should give pause to the greedy algorithm running amok.
Another highly popular head fake is the display of flagrant excess. Gives the chattering classes a focal point having nothing to do with reforming the "heads I win, tails you loose" gravy train known as Wall Street.
It can't be considered a super car. It is missing one key ingredient...
A proper super car requires a magic horn to transform it into its super form.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQnnZOJSlh0
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with a production of only 7, it's not like they can cut it for spare parts
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Should it look like the oil is going to run out and/or something else is going to replace it I might invest in Dubai.
I think my "Come and laugh at the ragheads and kick them in the ass until your foot hurts" themed holidays will go down a treat.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You are right. I would just replace "educated" with "bought a diploma from", that is all.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Didn't the doors look a bit flimsy/wobbly when it was first opened?
The end of the video links to the Devel Sixteen that claims will have 5000 hp, go from 0-60 in 1.8 sec., with a max speed of 348 mph. I don't know about you but these cars seem like they're for autophiles who use Franklins as toilet paper. Who knows how well they will perform.
This article only goes to prove that large inequalities in wealth don't lead to anything good. The Arab market is chasing the ultra-rich, because that's where the money is at. If money were distributed more equitably, the car manufacturers would work on things that actually move humanity forward (like producing better technology). This kind of opulence just goes to show that when the market is twisted to chase after the ultra-rich (because large wealth inequalities exist), it goes to nothing good - just diamonds and opulence and conspicuous consumption designed to let princes show off how big their "dick" is. (Yeah, I can already hear the Republicans saying that mining diamonds produces jobs - but they are worthless, non-helping-humanity-move-forward kind of jobs. We are rich not because of the amount of rocks we dig out of the ground, but we are rich because of our technology.)
It sounds to me like liberal policies designed to reduce wealth inequalities are the only thing that will move humanity forward.
On a related note:
TED Talk on Income Inequality by Nick Hanauer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIhOXCgSunc
TED Talk: Richard Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html
If you have $6 million just lying around and have just given $3 million to a good cause, that still leaves $3 million you could give to a good cause.
this is an old right wing attack on Socialism. It's based on the assumption that the ruling class 'earned' their wealth. It's easy enough to disprove just by pointing out the huge amounts of gov't contracts, free money and support nearly every one of the ruling class gets. Heck, last I heard the British still hand their Royalty something on the order of $100 million a year in free money. Basically, we all rely on 'other people's money', because money == labor in a modern society (like it or not there's not enough gold for it to be a standard) and sorta the entire point of having a Civilization is to work together for the common good. Otherwise it's just dog eat dog slavery.
The hard part isn't pointing all that out, it's boiling it down to a nice sound bite like Margaret did. Yeah, I can bang on all day about how we already produce enough food to feed 10 billion people, how automation is making the even 40 hour work week obsolete and about how single payer healthcare works better than the mess in North America. But that doesn't hit you in the gut like Margy's comment. It might be right (it is) but it doesn't _feel_ right. It doesn't appeal to common sense and emotion.
The problem socialists have is the right wing has simple answers to complex problems. Sure, they're self serving answers at best and horrifically wrong at worst, but given the choice it's much easier to get people to go along with them.
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I say auction it off and use the proceeds for charity. Get the Sheiks all together in a room and see which 7 walk out with billion dollar cars. Hype the auction enough and you could sell it on pay-per-view to make back the initial investment.
(The only condition is that after the auction is final the Stig takes one around the track.)
Shift happens. Fire it up.
Minimum Sheikh Royalty Prices?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
The only problem with Thatcherism is that eventually you run out of state infrastructure (council houses, utility companies, railways, etc.) to sell off at fire-sale prices to appease your wealthy donors.
a penis. http://www.wmotors.ae/hyper_styling_images/1376466478lykan_styling01.jpg
Many shieks give a lot to charity, if by charity you mean schools and facilities with the guy's picture everywhere and loyalty oaths before receiving largesse. It's how you build a power base. Christianity worked the same way quite some time ago, and Islam still works that way in poorer regions (that is: "Charity" in return for personal loyalty, not just faith in the religion).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Hey, if you ever win the lottery, you'll know what to do. But to each his own.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Oh, I'm not trying to force anyone. Nor do I play the lottery :P.
You'll just believe anything, won't you? Yes, it's unfortunate that we prop up the Middle East to ensure reasonably low oil prices, but that's no excuse for crazy conspiracy theories (my favorite being: we went to war to ensure low oil prices so that oil companies could make higher profits - how it that I don't even?)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
you are in a dream world if you think these people work 2500 times harder, better, smarter than the average worker.
Pay has nothing to do with that. At all. This is a common misunderstanding on Slashdot. Your pay is based on what the market says you're worth. The more skills a job requires / the fewer people there are with those skills = more pay.
There are a lot of people willing to work checkout counters, sweep floors and run the fry machine (BTW I have done all three at one point or another) because they don't have the skills or experience to get a different job. By contrast, there are a comparatively very very small number of people with the expertise and experience to justify putting a company with tens of billions of dollars in revenue and jobs of tens of thousands of workers and the money of tens of millions of shareholders in their hands. Many of them suck at the job once they are given it, but you have only a small pool of people with even close to the right experiences and skills to pick from, so there you go.
I don't think that star NFL running backs are worth what they are paid, nor plumbers, nor wedding photographers. But you know what? They make that money because of the market, and I don't begrudge them that money since it's a lot better way to handle it than a socialist government picking how much money people should make for them. BTW I do think it's probably time to raise the minimum wage, but I think your point was more concerned with lowering the top of the scale than raising the bottom.
"95% of all Slashdot
Doesn't usability suffer horribly from parallax?
Twinstiq, game news
Because going to war to ensure profits has never happened right?
Oh wait, it has http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
Already done...Haj is big business.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If doesn't fly and go underwater, it's not Supercar!
Charity still works that way in the Capitalist religion, too. Consider the stipulations that, e.g., the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation has placed on third-world countries pledging loyalty to "intellectual property" laws to protect Big Pharma before "charity" is rendered. Indeed, US foreign aid "charity" generally comes with strict requirements of loyalty to the interests of global megacorporations; nations that attempt to cut Wall Street profits out of the loop of uplifting their own people are generally faced instead with sanctions cutting into food and medical supplies of the general populace (who must prove sufficient loyalty to Global Capitalism before being worthy of largess).
Oh, geez, another asshole who will dredge up any reason to hate Bill Gates. When you save 100000 children, you get to criticize.
Why should "US foreign aid" even matter? Don't you give significantly to charities which no such restrictions? Far more that the government gives on your behalf? I mean, I assume you donate a lot since you have such strong opinions on how the money should be used, right? You're not just trying to enslave random strangers to your personal values?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Sure, it has happened, but at least spin a crazy conspiracy theory that makes some kind of damn sense! Was the war supposed to raise or lower oil prices - which would oil companies like? If the war benefitted some specific corporation, at least pick one that had amazing profits during or after the war. At least tell a story that fits!
Sheesh, at least if I claim that Obama couldn't produce a long-form birth certificate because he's a shape-shifting reptoid from Mars, it's at least consistent with available facts (you'd have to wonder why advanced aliens couldn't just hack the records, but at least it's a start of a funny story, not just outright contradictory).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The price of ONE if these cars can elevate 300 Saudi poor to owning a modest home that is comfortable and has clean water and sanitation.
You have no idea about Middle East. Saudi Arabia is a 19th century theocracy strongly influenced by Wahhabi style of Islam (they are super right wing wacko birds following Sharia.)
But Saudi Arabia is not a poor country, its one of the richest countries in the world. The stuff you imagine - clean water and sanitation for Saudi poor - does not exist. Because Saudi poor does not exist. There are unemployed Saudi youth...but they are not poor.
Do you know how the Arab Spring did not make a presence in Saudi? The kingdom increased the monthly allowance to citizens. Meaning the whole country is bribed and kept happy. (How can you blame the citizens? The Al Saud family makes money, but also shares the spoils. Most of the oil rich states in middle east are super welfare states - so an internal revolt by the poor will not happen.
http://cjpp5.over-blog.com/article-al-ahram-weekly-online-egypt-riyadh-escapes-the-arab-spring-by-omayma-abdel-latif-111103275.html
Tat Tvam Asi
I can't wait until these shitheads run out of oil and thus money. The massive human rights violations these fuckheads are responsible for are sickening. They don't deserve this decadence. They barely even deserve to be alive.
Also fuck moral relativism. Jailing gays is wrong. Forcing women to cover themselves is wrong. Imposing their religion through force of government on people is wrong.
This is the budget version.
I'm sure you can, but why don't you then? Part of a free market or even capitalist society is that you can do those things. The better the ideas are the more people you can help with employment or providing goods and services to them.
Of course if your ideas suck then you go under and don't get to continue getting funding for things that are not sustainable, useless, outdated or all of the above.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
So many posts yet no one has commented on the fact that the car is just seriously ugly. It reminds me of a Corvette C7, what with all the cut-outs and creases.
Hey, for all I know it's super-duper in the wind tunnel but it sure looks like something from the sketchbook of a motorhead who's still in junior high.
My opinion, of course. In all seriousness, though, if I'm going to spend that much money on something, I want it to not just work well but be pretty to boot.
And yes, "pretty" is a valid criteria for choosing a car. If you're spending that much, you should be able to get everything, including "pretty".
Does anybody actually think this car is pretty?
Straw man. We're talking about having $3 million spare cash, not savings in general.
Have you?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Not to mention at the price and locations of probable storage they'll probably have 24/7 armed guards who are all distantly related to the purchaser...
I don't read AC A human right
For the glint eyed fanatical retard who has almost everything.
No blue carpet or gold curtain rods?
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Arabs don't do manual labor, so how exactly is this Arab built. Arab designed maybe.
They say it has a self-destruct button, but no ejector seat...
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
I always thought it referred to when you are getting out of the car after parking. If a car drives too close while you are getting out of the car and they hit the door, normally it would tear off and away from you. With suicide doors they'd smash you between the door and car frame.
since if we don't 'deserve' anything then the world is dog eat dog, winner take all. But then what's the point of Civilization? As a rational person I rather like it.
Also, I'd like to believe that humanity as a species is capable to taking care of each other (e.g. providing food, shelter and health care to all) without resorting to starvation. If we're not, again, we're not much better than Monkeys. Heck, we might be worse. Monkeys don't torture each other for fun.
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you're never going to get rid of cronyism. So rather than trying to fight it in vain you should be asking how you can get yourself a piece of what Civilization has to offer.
I don't see the middle class and poor screwed by socialism. I do see them screwed by fascism (Stalin, Mao etc) which is usually what people mean when they say 'socialism'...
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where do those profits come from, and what did the current generation of Royals do to 'earn' 8 million pounds a year? What ever it is I'd like me to do some of that... :)
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Is this just wrong? It lists $55 million US as the figure for the payout. Still half what I assumed but pretty good pay for being an 'owner' that contributes basically nothing (unless you count tourism, and I know that matters).
I've never really suggested we get rid of them (I don't think we have the power) I just want to use the gov't the same way they do: to improve my lot. The only difference is I want to improve everyone elses lot too while I'm at it. Like I said, socialism.
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Socialism is an attempt to address the societal symptoms, and not the cause. The cause being an authoritative statist form of tyranny and oppression. Ironically, the idealism of socialism quickly turns into the disease that it was set out to nullify in the first place.
The solution is capitalism. What we have now in the US is anything but. However, you can blame the ignorant masses for letting the system degenerate over time. Adam Smith must be turning over in his grave by now.
Life is not for the lazy.
Well, in that case they would be called murder doors. At least "culpable homicide" doors.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Am I the only one that want's Top Gear to get a hold of it?
(and possibly ruin it!)