[HN Gopher] Electric fan car shatters the Goodwood hill climb re... ___________________________________________________________________ Electric fan car shatters the Goodwood hill climb record Author : Element_ Score : 111 points Date : 2022-06-27 14:54 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com) | smm11 wrote: | That's a hill? | toss1 wrote: | Yes | | Video cameras _really_ flatten out slopes. | | This is especially so where snow or consistent surfaces are | involved. I've raced on yikes-steep hills that later you see | the video -- and it doesn't matter if it's just some coach's | camera or network sports coverage -- it just looks like barely | a notch above the novice slopes. A cameraman needs to really | work to show the steepness anything close to being there. | | The only situation where the slope might really show up is | where there are dramatic changes in slope like a sudden drop- | off, flat, crossroad on a slope, etc. Then you can sort of see | a good comparison, but it still doesn't rival the reality. And | the Goodwood course is a fairly consistent grade with no sharp | features like that. | [deleted] | TylerE wrote: | It's not super steep compared to some, but yes. Climbs 300ft in | just over a mile. | notacoward wrote: | FWIW, that's a 5.7% grade. If anyone thinks that's not a | steep mile, they should try running up it and see if they | change their mind. | [deleted] | prmoustache wrote: | Even by cyclists standard, 6% is pretty mild. | notacoward wrote: | That's funny. There are a couple of Strava segments | around town that are relevant here. One is 4.4% for only | 0.4 miles (i.e. very similar to "Heartbreak Hill" on the | Boston Marathon course); the other is 3.8% for 0.7 miles. | As a runner I regularly pass cyclists on both, and that's | from the minority who will even attempt them. I see many | more walking their bikes, and I suspect the next street | over from the shorter one has three to five times as many | cyclists precisely because it goes around instead of | over. Simply put, 5.7% for a mile is out of most | cyclists' and runners' range, never mind the vast | majority of the population who aren't either. I doubt | even those who can handle it have "this isn't a hill" on | their minds very much. Yes it damn well is a hill, and | it's very noticeable even if you're one of those easy- | mode folks who can build up speed at the start and coast | down the other side at the end. | TylerE wrote: | Well, for a hillclimb it is pretty mild. Some of them have | sections as steep as 30%. But it's def. not flat, | especially the second half, starting with the left 90 and | then the run up to the chicane by the wall. | justin66 wrote: | The driver of this car, Max Chilton, deserves a lot of credit for | really going for it with a very fast car that looks pretty | squirrelly. | | With regard to taking records away from the VW ID.R, a much more | interesting benchmark would be its performance at Pike's Peak. I | don't imagine they're ready for that yet. | toss1 wrote: | Squirrelly indeed! Max was definitely leaving extra room and | not going for every last 1/100 sec. - It made a record but he | still left some on the table - would probably want a lot more | seat time and data on the car before pushing it harder - it | looks like a handful - and tons of fun! | jackmott42 wrote: | Why is Pikes Peak much more interesting? The altitude there | would seem to give its electric and fan properties even more of | an edge. | [deleted] | mrcartmeneses wrote: | Not OP but Pikes Peak would be more interesting because it is | infinitely more interesting than Goodwood. And it's much | longer so would be much more difficult technically for an ev | to perform well. | | The differences are mainly intangible but the events are just | not in the same league | jackmott42 wrote: | Pikes peak doesn't present any challenge to it in terms of | length at all. Its designed to do ~30 minute track sessions | and Pikes Peak is only 8 minutes. | cgrealy wrote: | Not my area of expertise at all, but I would imagine 8 | mins on a track is easier than 8 mins climbing a steep | mountain road. | | Just as a very unscientific benchmark, looking at the | instant fuel consumption on my car shows that driving | slowly up a mountain road (i.e. to a ski field) consumes | about 3 times the fuel as flat driving at highway speeds. | justin66 wrote: | It's an infinitely more sophisticated race course, if you are | interested in that sort of thing. | | More to the point, in terms of testing an electric car | there's a stark difference in the amount of storage (and | therefore, mass) needed to climb Pike's Peak and to climb the | hill at Goodwood. If VW had to beat the Speirling's time at | Goodwood tomorrow, they'd make the run with less battery | storage. I honestly don't know if the Spierling could even be | set up to make it all the way to the top of Pike's Peak. | Their stock car surprisingly has, on paper, _more_ battery | storage than the VW (60KWh vs 40KWh) but they need to spin | those giant fans... | | I would not want to make any guesses about how Spierling's | ground effects would perform at a much higher altitude. I'll | be the first to watch if they set it up as a proper race car. | | edit: intriguingly, a Top Gear article suggests the VW ran at | Goodwood with a smaller than normal battery. No idea how the | Spierling was setup. Pike's Peak, or a sprint race at any | proper sports car track, would be a more realistic test for | both cars. I actually don't have any doubts about who would | win that, short of some very real development on Speirling's | part... | jackmott42 wrote: | The McMurty as normally configured is good for 30 minute | track sessions, and I haven't heard anything about it | having a small battery for the day, nor did the weights | being quoted indicated it was a small battery. A smaller | pack could also reduce power potentially so they might not | be able to do that for a net win. | | >I actually don't have any doubts about who would win that, | short of some very real development on Speirling's part... | | It is a team that figured out how to absolutely shatter the | goodwood record that VW had set, seems strange you are so | confident they can't figure out Pikes Peak. | theluketaylor wrote: | Pikes Peak (especially in an electric car where altitude | doesn't matter) is primarily a test of the driver. 156 | corners in 12 miles is incredibly hard to learn and there | are almost no safety barriers (or reference braking | points). The goodwood hillclimb is simply not in the same | category of complexity or challenge as Pikes Peak, which | stands alone as the toughest and most dangerous hillclimb | event in all of motorsport. | | Pikes Peak is also extremely bumpy and was only paved all | the way to the top in 2011. A car like the Speirling | relying on fans for downforce would really struggle to | maintain grip throughout a Pikes Peak run as each bump | would cause a momentary loss of aero (not dissimilar to | this season's F1 porpoising issue, just bigger and worse) | justin66 wrote: | Hey, are you there right now? Do you know if the Gen3 | Formula E car Mahindra brought set a time? | | > seems strange you are so confident they can't figure | out Pikes Peak. | | I meant what I said: they would need some real | development to make that car into something that could | win at Pike's Peak. I'm pretty sure VW spent seven | figures preparing their car for that race. Don't get me | wrong, I hope these guys do it. | | If they're taking publicity seriously, they'll do | something at Nurburgring once they've made their street | legal version available. Of course it would be | interesting to see how the current car performs there as | well. | sdfjkl wrote: | The most famous fan car was the Brabham BT46, which used a skirt | and fans to suck itself to the ground, leading to a ban of fan | cars in F1. | | "when the drivers blipped the throttle, the car could be seen to | squat down on its suspension as the downforce increased" | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabham_BT46 | pengaru wrote: | The Chaparral 2J [0] is the one that comes to my mind as most | popular, but I wasted years of my life playing GT3/4 on PSX | where the 2J was the only thing I had unlocked as ridiculously | fast as the turbocharged 787B. | | The other thing that was really exceptional about the 2J, at | least as simulated in GT4, was how tall the 3-speed automatic | gearing was. Between the car seemingly never changing gears, | barely varying RPMs despite accelerating like a rocket, and | essentially not needing to brake for turns, it just seemed like | the epitome of buggy arcade physics. Through a 2022 lens that | description sounds apropos to an EV, despite it being a rather | old ICE machine. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaparral_2J#2J | causi wrote: | An F-1 race with no rules other than "go around the track the | fastest without wrecking other drivers" might actually be worth | watching. | Syonyk wrote: | That was the 1980s Group C cars. | | Turns out, it's fairly straightforward to build a car that | rather radically exceeds the physical limits of the driver. | | I would love to watch the autonomous version of that, though, | with "no restrictions" (or nearly none - melting the nose of | the car behind you with a flamethrower isn't quite in the | spirit). You want to have a driver in a sim booth drive it | over wireless? Great. You want to have a self driving | algorithm? Great. You want to generate gobs of downforce with | upward firing jets? Great. Just define some basic fan safety | based limits, or... don't, and have a closed track. | | I would love to see what some of the race teams could come up | with, unrestricted from all the various "Hey, let's keep | drivers and fans alive!" limits out there. | jl6 wrote: | The vehicle would probably be less like a car and more like | a missile with manoeuvring rockets. | pixl97 wrote: | Now that's what I call podracing! | | I mean, things like X-games get a lot of viewers, why not | the above? | themitigating wrote: | Group b | Someone wrote: | If you're going to race, rather than time-trial, you | probably want limitations on car size, too. | | Also, formula one for years has cars leave a so highly | turbulent wake that they had to introduce a system that | gave cars close behind other cars some leeway as to their | aerodynamics to make overtakes possible | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_reduction_system) | | I guess you'd need something similar, too. | bombcar wrote: | You could also "golf" it where each contestant runs on | the track with nobody else present, and you compare | times. | maigret wrote: | That's basically called Qualifying and is a part of | almost all race weekends. | aerostable_slug wrote: | Some years ago Racecar Engineering magazine had an excellent | editorial that touched on the rising costs of F1, the | technological benefit to consumers these programs can have | but also the rising difficulty of keeping up with the Joneses | and that perhaps we might be reaching the budgetary limit of | what racing teams can realistically finance. | | The author proposed "Formula Zero," where teams would be | national rather than purely sponsor-oriented. Team America | (cue music) vs. Team Japan vs. Team Italy etc. Note that this | was years before the zero-emissions effort of the same name. | Cool idea, and one might imagine what could emerge from | efforts where NASA helps with aerodynamics for Team America, | DLR for Germany, etc. (and/or DOE's combustion engineering | experts consulting on Team America engine design: the | potential collaborations run long). | | Fun fact: a major limiting factor for racing speed is the | allowed size of the brakes. Let F-1 cars have titanic wheels | with low profile tires and lap speeds would shoot way up. Of | course, brake too little or too late and the resulting wreck | will almost certainly be fatal -- it's pretty tough to | protect against coup-contrecoup injuries no matter how | energy-absorbent the car may be when speeds get really high. | Scrambled brains are good for breakfast, bad for drivers. | jeromegv wrote: | The issue is: the drivers would die. In large quantity. | whartung wrote: | Actually, it's not. | | It's been tried in all sorts of endeavors and eventually | falls apart. | | Back in the day, there was a motorcycle series "Formula USA", | with rules essentially "must have 2 wheels, no alcohol", and | it was all well and good with folks running their hand | crafted, bored out Superbikes until Kenny Roberts showed up | with a pair of factory Yamaha Moto GP 500cc two stroke | machines (which is, essentially, "unobtainium"), and, in | time, dominated the field. Things like that lead to rule | changes in F-USA. | | Also, consider the origin of modern MMA. The "Ultimate | Fighter Championship", which was a "no rules" bout. Royce | Gracie dominated those events early on. | | I will never forget UFC 4. Dan Severn, a very powerful | wrestler, was dominating his bouts (3 as I recall). His | fights were over very quickly. | | Meanwhile, Royce, who was a skilled grappler, while winning | his bouts, they were taking quite a bit of time. | | At the end, Royce had just finished his 3rd bout and then had | to stand up to Severn, with very minimal rest. Combining | Severn's fast bouts, with Royce long bouts gave Severn a lot | of time to rest and recover between fights. Royce was | obviously quite tired going in to the final round. | | Severn dominated that fight, but it drew on...and on...and | on. Over 15 minutes. | | In the end, Gracie prevailed, upside down, pinned against the | fence, with Severn bent over him. It was an extraordinary | encounter. | | But in the end, it led to rule changes. 15m fights don't | really work with the broadcast schedule. Seeing two guys | tangled in knots for 10m straight with minimal movement isn't | very interesting to watch, either. And now we have modern MMA | with combined striker and grappling skills. | | Turns out competition is only fun when it's fair. While its | technically interesting to see folks exploit the rules, and | even dominate, it's more interesting when they have to work | within them. | | In the end, you (most folks, I know I do) want the man behind | the wheel to be the deciding factor, not the machine beneath | him. | justin66 wrote: | The problem is that you'd immediately have wrecks. | colechristensen wrote: | Many of the rules are there for safety, it's not that hard to | make a car so fast that the limiting factor is the driver and | then the race becomes a contest of how willing to die your | driver is. | causi wrote: | Exactly. Modern F-1 is like watching a footrace where | nobody is allowed to exceed a heart rate of 150bpm, i.e., | boring as hell. | voakbasda wrote: | I would love to see those rules removed along with the | drivers. I expect it would be amazing to see the self- | driving version of these races. | amenghra wrote: | Self-driving race car crashes straight into a wall from | the starting line during the world's first autonomous | race series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4fdUx6d4QM | dharmab wrote: | It was tried with Roborace, but was unsuccessful. The | racing was unimpressive and unprofitable. | kube-system wrote: | Even with humans driving remotely, it's not very | profitable. Drone racing is about as successful as RC | racing has become. People don't take sports seriously | without humans being directly involved. | michaelt wrote: | And people who want a contest of how willing to die your | driver is can already just watch motorcycle racing. | crubier wrote: | More specifically, Isle of Man Tourist Trophy. 250 dead | pilots and counting. | bwanab wrote: | Jack Brabham was an amazing innovator. Constantly, just ahead | of the rule makers. | peanut_worm wrote: | The driver is brave, that thing looks like a plastic bag blowing | in the wind | themitigating wrote: | The previous record was in 2019, 39.90, from the electric | volkswagon IDR. That car also broke the pikes peak hill climb | record. | twawaaay wrote: | I believe these should be illegal, just as it is in F1. | | The basic problem with this concept is that if it ever stops | working you are now driving way over the limit (not just a tiny | bit) of what the car can handle and are unceremoniously thrown | out of the track at a dangerous speed. | | It becomes basically the contest of who can create more | downforce. | | The cars resulting from this have very little clearance and very | hard suspension. Add a huge, changing downforce and you can | imagine how anything failing like a suspension or a tyre can | immediately put the driver in danger. | | I think allowing this creates unhealthy, dangerous incentive to | escalate the downforce until something fails -- the driver due to | G-force, some component in the car or an object on the track that | causes the car to bump up, etc. | jackmott42 wrote: | What if a wing fails on an f1 car? Or a suspension component? | Or a tire? | | Cars that get their downforce from traditional aero elements | are also susceptible to catastrophic failures if they hit bumps | too big for the design to handle. Mercedes famously | demonstrated this at Le Mans. | | Anyway this car is designed for people to have fun with at | track days, so their are no rules, so you can't make it | illegal. | omginternets wrote: | Each of those things you list are orders of magnitude more | reliable than a fan system where a slight chip in the skirt | can instantly send you careening off the road. This includes | tires. | leereeves wrote: | The article says "a road-legal version of the Goodwood fan | car is in the works" | jccalhoun wrote: | I'm no expert on cars but according to this article it seems like | a "fan car" uses fans to pull air in from under the car to create | down force rather than as a primary means of propulsion. | https://electrek.co/2022/06/26/watch-electric-fan-car-record... | ummonk wrote: | Right and it's specifically used for cornering downforce, since | the coefficient of friction isn't high enough to justify | generating downforce like this in a drag race. | cjbgkagh wrote: | If you're not going to use grip on the road for propulsion you | might as well make an airplane. | Bendy wrote: | From an engineering perspective, racing cars are much closer | to aircraft than they are to road cars; they just have their | wings upside-down. | cjbgkagh wrote: | Totally, but I still got downvoted a bunch... Using air for | propulsion only makes sense if you're saving weight by | which point you're better off cornering with wings instead | of dragging wheels around with you. | blendergeek wrote: | These fans are to create _down_ force to increase the | "weight" of the car. | cjbgkagh wrote: | I am very much aware. I was pointing out why using fans | for propulsion would not be a good idea. | [deleted] | olliej wrote: | I went to the article wondering if it was about a record using | a class of cars driver by fans (thinking cartoon style giant | fan on the roof :D) | eptcyka wrote: | That's exactly right, the term usually refers to cars that use | fans to generate vacuum for better grip rather than propulsion | to go faster. Cars today can easily go super fast in a straight | line, the hard bit is putting that power down in corners. | masklinn wrote: | > the hard bit is putting that power down in corners. | | Or even just getting it from tyres to ground. Traction | control exists to avoid the car just spinning its wheels in | place as it's completely lost grip. | | At high speed downforce can do the job, but at low speeds not | so much. | BizarroLand wrote: | How scary would it be to be in one of those 1,400+ | horsepower supercars and to hit the gas just to immediately | see all four wheels start spitting smoke as they spin in | place and start abrasively cutting through the asphalt? | masklinn wrote: | > How scary would it be to be in one of those 1,400+ | horsepower supercars and to hit the gas just to | immediately see all four wheels start spitting smoke | | Not very, unless the car suddenly gets a patch of grip | and launches you into a tree. | | > to hit the gas just to immediately see all four wheels | start spitting smoke as they spin in place and start | abrasively cutting through the asphalt? | | You'd have to wear down the entire tyre first, which | isn't going to happen unless you're already at the thread | (though supercar tyres do wear down very quickly). | | Tyre rubber is much, much softer than asphalt, and for | good grip you want pretty soft rubber. By the accounts | I've seen, even cold F1 tyres feel sticky. And drag tyres | outright crinkle on takeoff. | lstodd wrote: | Based on experiences with 72hp Suzuki SV650 all you need | to do is grip the front brake and give it some gas. Digs | asphalt at about 5mm/sec just fine. The tire gets | totalled pretty fast too. So it's not rubber being too | soft. | pengaru wrote: | Apparently you've never walked on hot asphalt or been a | hooligan doing donuts and/or burnouts in asphalt parking | lots. The tire rubber and asphalt binders/tar basically | become one and the gravel comes along for the ride caught | in the crossfire. | SECProto wrote: | I've seen both (as I work in civil engineering). That is | all dependant on the asphalt mix. Parking lots are | usually not done with a proper performance graded | asphalt, so they'll deteriorate very easily under | strenuous loading conditions. Roads (in well-regulated | jurisdictions) use strong asphalt mixes with a lot of | large granular aggregate and a lot less asphaltic content | (and asphalt that's stable at higher temperatures). This | makes roads a lot tougher in these loading conditions, | but also tough (and therefore expensive) to put down - | need to roll it fast while its still hot, with both steel | drum rollers and rubber tyre rollers. | | Not saying they can't be damaged, just that a parking lot | is a poor comparison | karlkatzke wrote: | It's scary enough in a 400hp/3600lbs RWD car. Even with | traction control enabled, the car likes shaking it's ass | any time you tap the gas and turning the wheel on | anything remotely slick with power in will break the | traction wheels loose. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | Four wheel burnouts from a roll aren't that impressive | from inside the vehicle. It's basically like being on | "high traction" ice but with more noise. The vehicle | mostly continues doing whatever it was already doing | before you stomped on it. | ortusdux wrote: | The 3rd paragraph in the link also explains that. | jccalhoun wrote: | Ah! I somehow missed that paragraph! | fatboy wrote: | Thanks for that. I'd taken it to mean it was propelled by fans | and couldn't figure out how that could possibly work. This | linked article on the road legal version confirms what you say | in one of the image captions: | | https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/mcmurtry-launch-... | | "It will feature a track mode, which will turn on the | downforce-creating fan" | MrFoof wrote: | Exactly this. One of the bigger "fans" of them -- Gordon Murray | -- is actually producing a road legal one. The T.50, which is | Gordon Murray's attempt to "revisit" the McLaren F1 and do | everything he couldn't do (or hadn't yet realized was possible) | back in the 1990s: https://youtu.be/NT8PMXCMrsM | | For those who aren't aware, Harry Metcalfe was the founder of | EVO magazine and had an outsized behind the scenes influence of | Top Gear's new format in the early 2000s. While Gordon sticks | to some of his script, the two get VERY nerdy at points digging | into all sorts of non-obvious minutiae and detail. 53 minutes | is a lot, but by far it's the best interview about the car by a | large margin. | | Harry is also a very big EV and renewable electricity nerd, and | loves digging into those topics with tons of research. | gerdesj wrote: | "is actually producing a road legal one" | | The one at Goodward FOS was cleared by DoT and is road legal. | The driver announced it in an interview on TV. | jackmott42 wrote: | the T.50 has a fan, and it is used for aerodynamic benefit, | but it does so by helping speed up air through the under car | diffuser, which allows them to use a more aggressive diffuser | than would otherwise work. It all adds up to a modest | downforce improvement and/or drag reduction. | | The McMurtry by comparison is more like the old F1 fan car, | in that it is literally sucking itself down to the road, with | tons of force, with a skirt and so on. | MrFoof wrote: | Yep. As Gordon said about the Brabham, the McMurty is, | "more of a blunt instrument." | | When I watched it do the hill climb I was thinking of all | the drivers they might've approached, and thought that if | Mark Webber hadn't hung it up a few years ago he would've, | "noped out" of that conversation immediately given his | history of flying for Mercedes in the beginning of his | career. | AtlasBarfed wrote: | I know that the "spacex package tesla roadster 2.0" is a | running Elon hype joke, but the discussed thrusters would be | revolutionary in extreme car design. Fan cars can only suck | downward, but thrust vectoring would be a whole different | ballgame: it can push down, directly thrust, push counter to | the g force in a tight curve, brake faster. | | Thrust vectoring could serve as a safety system to | dynamically produce downforce in case a high speed car starts | to go airborne, can counter spin-outs, etc. | btilly wrote: | That is also the purpose of the wing on the back of the car. To | generate more downwards force at speed. | jeffbee wrote: | Right, but the wing doesn't start to work until you hit | serious speeds, whereas the fan gives the car extreme | traction at launch, which is pretty important in a race that | only lasts 30 seconds, especially when your electric car has | ~infinite torque. | binbag wrote: | Infinite torque...? | jeffbee wrote: | ~ much more torque than can practically be delivered | between the tires and the ground, which is why using a | vacuum to improve the traction and eliminate the | transient squatting motion of the vehicle is so important | in a short race. | | Drag racers have had this problem for a long time; those | races last less than 5 seconds. This hill climb is | interesting because it's only a bit longer, half a | minute, which really changes the equations for electric | race cars vs. something like Pikes Peak which is 8 | minutes to the top (and is now also totally dominated by | electric cars). | B1FF_PSUVM wrote: | Probably thinking of | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerk_(physics) | | If acceleration were an instantaneous off-on step, that | would be a | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_delta_function | mywittyname wrote: | This is a weird car guy myth that gets tossed around. The | thinking is that, electric motors make uniform power | output at any RPM, and torque = some_constant * | power_output / RPM. Thus, as RPM goes to zero, torque | goes to infinity. | | Obviously, this is wrong in the real world for so many | reasons, but that doesn't stop this from getting | repeated. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | Repeating it is a great way to paint yourself as one of | those dolts that likes to act like they care about EVs | for the virtue points. | | Everyone who's ever used a drill knows that while speed | and torque are inversely related in most of a motors | normal operating range you don't get insane torque at low | speed. Of course you can wind a motor differently to | mitigate this somewhat but still, not a huge improvement. | You wouldn't see reduction gears on all sorts of things | if this were the case. | ht85 wrote: | Aero also has the issue of creating a ton of drag. An f1 at | 300kph will decelerate around 1g if you lift off the | throttle. | jeffbee wrote: | Did you see Pastrana's ridiculous Subaru with active | aero? It puts the wings away when they're dragging and | they pop back up when the downforce and/or drag is | wanted. | jackmott42 wrote: | The wing starts to work immediately. Just not much. This is | a pedantic but important point. Even low speed motoring | events aero can be very very important if sufficiently | large wings are allowed. Aerodynamic gear for cyclists is | advantageous even if you are a slow cyclist, etc. | loeg wrote: | Popular "wisdom" in cycling is that aerodynamics are not | a factor below 10 mph and not much of one at 15. It | becomes pretty noticeable in the 15-20+ mph range | (increasing with the cube of speed, or something like | that). | jackmott42 wrote: | Yes, but the physics is that the _amount_ time saved over | a fixed distance is actually _more_ for the 15mph cyclist | than the 20mph cyclist. | | However the _percent_ of time saved for the slower | cyclist is less, but only a little. | | Basically at cycling speeds the aerodynamic curve is | pretty flat so it doesn't really matter if you are fast | or slow. | omginternets wrote: | The main issue is more so that they produce incredible | downforce at the cost of incredible drag. | jjav wrote: | > the wing doesn't start to work until you hit serious | speeds | | I don't know what you consider "serious speeds", but wings | can produce meaningful downforce at pretty low speeds. | Check out the various unlimited class autocross cars which | carry giants wings for downforce, even though autocross | events are typically very low speed events (2nd gear most | of the time). | mywittyname wrote: | "Meaningful" on order of 100lbs at 60mph. Which isn't | nothing, but a Viper ACR has a peak downforce of | 2000lbs@177MPH, or basically half the total weight of the | car. | | Plus, with extreme aero, there's a top-speed vs downforce | tradeoff to be made. The big fan trick doesn't have that | issue. | haunter wrote: | I was watching Goodwood this weekend (it's still ongoing btw [0]) | BUT holy moly that brick wall at 0:27 in the video after they | leave the Grand Stand. Or here is it | https://i.imgur.com/7TyNsP0.jpeg One slight mistake and you are | dead and oblitareted into atoms. No official FIA sanctioned event | track have anything like this. | | 0, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC6fQ8EkASE | LandR wrote: | Here is my local hill climb course. I used to love going to | watch this. Hillclimbs are almost always thin courses lined | with solid walls in sections. | | https://youtu.be/9kufacVXlSc | | Not sped up (he launches at about 1m37, cuts beam at top about | 2m12 for a 35 sec run. | | Crashes can be pretty serious. | jeffbee wrote: | The British seemingly prefer their motorsports to be dangerous. | | https://www.visordown.com/news/general/isle-man-tt-investiga... | adwww wrote: | Isle of Man is tenuously British. | [deleted] | jackmott42 wrote: | This is an old school thing with tradition and stuff. Can't | bother with safety! Sorta like pikes peak where you go off a | cliff instead of into a wall. | alamortsubite wrote: | American race-car driver Jim Hall pioneered a number of ground | effects in the mid to late 1960s, including the use of fans like | on this car. I think McLaren also used them on a Formula One car | in the 1970s. | | It's worth reading the comments section of the article as it | includes some observations from spectators at the hill climb. It | sounds like the car in motion is quite a sight to behold! | sjm-lbm wrote: | It was actually a Brabham: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabham_BT46 | | I find the whole concept fascinating, just because it seems | ridiculous in a way. | alamortsubite wrote: | That's right. I knew there was a Gordon Murray tie-in | somewhere, but it was for Brabham, not McLaren, that he | utilized a fan on a Formula One car in the late 70s. | | Edit to add a link to Jim Hall's "sucker car" that predated | the Brabham: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaparral_Cars#2J | Bubble_Pop_22 wrote: | It looks ugly as sin though. | | It is my opinion that the current generation of supercars (not to | mention hypercars) not only exceeds the driver skills but also | the driver's ability to properly function for 7-10 days after | bringing said supercar to the limit. | | Makes sense to have both the V12 and a small electric motor | because the rich folks would buy the car for the option (but not | the obligation) to use the V12 but in reality it's gonna be the | electric motor doing all the work while proceeding at 7mph around | Harrods/Piccadilly or the Burj Khalifa. I think the environment | can handle a couple of V12 revs per week when rich folks get out | of Harrods. | 1024core wrote: | An electric fan sucking your car downwards sounds all nice and | lovely for a street-legal car, until you hit a speedbump and womp | womp womp..... | fmakunbound wrote: | Reminded me of Jim Hall and his Chaparral 2J | https://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/a32350/jim-hall-cha... | | > ".. and we calculated, we could actually drive it on the wall | around Sebring." | saalweachter wrote: | > In fact, it's so quick that it almost looks like the video is | set on fast-forward. | | It totally looks like an old 1960s/70s/80s low-budget TV show | special effect. | Tozen wrote: | Something these types of high performance electric cars are | continually proving now, is you don't need fossil fuel cars to go | fast. It's helping to change how people think about cars, | gasoline, and internal combustion engines. Someone's next sports | car can easily be electric, beautiful, and fast. | logicalmonster wrote: | > Something these types of high performance electric cars are | continually proving now, is you don't need fossil fuel cars to | go fast. It's helping to change how people think about cars, | gasoline, and internal combustion engines. Someone's next | sports car can easily be electric, beautiful, and fast. | | As far as I'm aware of how things work, compared to ICE | vehicles, EVs currently have better instant torque but lower | top speeds. That said, is there anybody who doesn't appreciate | many of the nice qualities of electric engines? Just from the | perspective of the engines, they're extremely fun toys and I | think that opinion is close to universal. | | I think that most of the skepticism of EVs doesn't have | anything remotely to do with the engine performance, but many | of the complicated infrastructure and social factor questions | surrounding their usage. | dharmab wrote: | There's no reason an EV can't have a high top speed, it's | just that most road going versions omit a transmission for | weight and cost savings. Formula E cars can be configured for | 200 mph. | saalweachter wrote: | At the same time ... there's (almost) no reason you _need_ | a car to go faster than the 90mph you get out of a Nissan | Leaf or Chevy Bolt. It 's like, neat that you can make an | electric car as fast as anything else, but if road-going | cars basically couldn't do more than 90 it'd be no great | loss. | mywittyname wrote: | > EVs currently have better instant torque but lower top | speeds. | | Some also have limits on battery output. The Mustang MachE | can only go full speed for 5 seconds before power is cut | really drastically. So much so, that in a quarter mile drag | race, the Mach E is as fast as a 5.0 to 60 MPH, but slower | than a 2.3L to 100. Not that every EV has this weird limit, | but it does exist. | | Plus, EVs are all quite heavy, and even though the weight | balance is much better, they don't handle nearly as well. The | writing is all the wall though, there will never be an EV | Miata or GR86. Future vehicles are all going to be gigantic | cars with hypercar acceleration and numb handling. | WorldMaker wrote: | My understanding is that _a_ factor in making EVs seem like | they have lower top speeds is because of increased safety | standards /laws in some countries. Those countries require | speed limiters for speeds too far above highway speeds. Many | ICE engine designs were grandfathered in without needing to | be updated with such speed limiters, but EVs are new designs | and don't meet any such "grandfathering" criteria. | jackmott42 wrote: | Some EVs have lower top speeds because they don't bother with | a transmission. If you wanted a high top speed, just add 1 or | 2 gears and you are good to go. | | Imho the infrastructure required for them will be much | simpler than the existing infrastructure required to power | gasoline cars. All those underground tanks with trucks | delivering toxic flammable fluids are replaced with modest | upgrades to the grid (it doesn't take much, as refining a | tank of gasoline requires as much electricity as charging an | electric car). | | This transition is already well underway and many of us have | been doing road trips with minimal or no pain for years | already while others are still skeptical! Granted, there are | still use cases that are difficult, like towing large things | a long way. | akira2501 wrote: | "The grid" is not a uniform piece of infrastructure with | similar capacity or use patterns in all areas. I think | people drastically underestimate the amount of time it will | take to absorb these changes to a point where "critical | mass" is reached. | | I'm very skeptical on the road trips part as well, it still | appears you're going to spend 15% to 30% of your total trip | time sitting at several chargers along the way. For day | trips this might not be an issue, but for long range multi | day trips, the patchy availability still seems to be a real | problem. | | The intersection of Hotels and Motels with Supercharging On | Site is still a very narrow proposition. I'm excited for | the future, but I believe it's further away than most | people readily acknowledge. | akira2501 wrote: | No.. but gasoline is still dominant in the "going far" and | "recharging quickly" category. I think that's the more | important issue to tackle with respect to the current consumer | market. | [deleted] | dymk wrote: | Cool, reminds me of how some small racing maze solving robots | (micromouse) work - little fans on them to create downforce, | letting the robot change directions incredibly quickly. But | scaled up for a 2000lb car. | | http://greenye.net/Pages/Micromouse/Micromouse2015-2016.htm | calebegg wrote: | Fascinating link, I've never heard of these micromice before | dymk wrote: | They're a lot of fun. I built one as part of my college's | IEEE chapter. It was nothing fancy, certainly not fast or | nimble enough to warrant a downforce fan, but one learns a | lot going from concept -> schematics -> hardware -> software | -> working mouse in half a year. | cardiffspaceman wrote: | Technically F1 cars don't weight that much: | | >* Brabham BT45 was an overweight and bulky car, initially | weighing 625 kg* | | From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabham_BT46, linked in | other comments. | david_acm wrote: | Today's F1 cars have a minimum weight of car + driver of | 795kg excluding fuel. | | https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/2022-f1-cars-set-for- | furt... | olivermarks wrote: | Details of the ground effects car with some staggering | statistics. | | I'd be very concerned about trapped energy thermal runaway fire | risk with the batteries surrounding the driver especially at | impact, but this is an absolutely spectacular machine imo | | WILD ELECTRIC FAN CAR BEATS GOODWOOD HILL RECORD! | EXCLUSIVE | TOUR https://youtu.be/qTgL8_1GDI0 | quercusa wrote: | Be sure to go down into the comments below the article to see | just how tiny this car is. It must be quite the ride. | w0mbat wrote: | I am thinking you could flip a switch, which lowers a skirt and | runs the fan in reverse : instant hovercraft mode for crossing a | river, or even just deep mud. You'd need a steerable outlet jet | on the back for propulsion. | | Then once on firm ground, flip it and go back to racecar mode. | gorgoiler wrote: | Hill Climbing is a fantastically old competition. The heritage | extends well beyond the vehicles. The culture of everyone from | The Scrutineers to the burger vans is well worth looking into, if | you can. | | An example, continuously running since pre-quake SF: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelsley_Walsh_Speed_Hill_Clim... | jmartin2683 wrote: | Just in case anyone thought gasoline powered cars were still | relevant in a performance context... | | There's no metric by which an electric motor, sufficiently | supplied with everything it needs to function, doesn't embarrass | them. Very exciting future. | [deleted] | crubier wrote: | Energy density/range. | | Long races like Formula 1, Le Mans, Dakar Rally are far from | being won by Electric cars, because of the range/enormous | batteries it would require. | originalvichy wrote: | If you unleashed 5 full F1 teams to solve EV F1 racing they | would most certainly come up with record-breaking solutions | to tackle issues you mention. With how good the F1 car aero | is and how good the batteries' low centre of gravity is, I | would't put it past them to be able to create magic. | ummonk wrote: | Oh yeah F1 teams will magically outdo the energy density | that chemists, physicists, and material scientists have | spent decades achieving with battery technology. | in3d wrote: | Formula E cars are currently not just slower than F1 cars but | also F2 cars (a new generation is coming but it still won't | come close to F1 speeds). | engineer_22 wrote: | considering how paltry electric vehicle range is... | ChrisClark wrote: | Yeah, only 650km. So paltry. And if you actually owned an EV, | you'd know range isn't an issue, even on road trips. ;) | esjeon wrote: | It's funny that the only technical downside - recharging time - | is quite critical to the people's life style. Solves all the | problem but fails at one mundane problem. | ummonk wrote: | Is it? Most people do daily commutes significantly shorter | than EV range, and tend to take meal and bathroom breaks | every few hours when commuting long distances. | dagurp wrote: | For most people the charging time isn't a problem because you | usually charge it at home or at work when you're not using | the car anyway. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-27 23:01 UTC)