Bugatti's Latest Veyron, Most Ridiculous Car on the Planet? 790
Wired has an amusing writeup that accurately captures the most recent ridiculous addition to Bugatti's automobile catalog. The $2.1 million Veyron sports over 1,000 horsepower, a 16-cylinder engine, and a top speed of 245 mph. The guilty conscience comes for free. "That same cash-filled briefcase could buy seven Ferrari 599s or every single 2009 model Mercedes. You could snap up a top-shelf Maybach and employ a chauffeur until well past the apocalypse. Hell, in this economy, $2.1 million is probably enough to make you a one-man special-interest group with some serious Washington clout."
Re:If I ever see.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently the thing to do is wake up at 4 AM, cross the causeway into Malaysia and point the car at Kuala Lumpur. Two hours later you are having breakfast in KL. The drive back would be after the traffic cops have woken up for the day so you take a bit longer for that leg, and carry some cash
Re:"Guilty conscience" (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, like they gonna sell millions of these. Keep your commie green cool aid to yourself, eh, monkey boy?!
"Commie" is a bit inappropriate, considering the immense environmental damage caused by communist regimes. It kinda figures, considering that they were all about "progress", technology and industrial "victory". The Nazis, OTOH, were relatively "green", at least in theory. Hitler was even a vegetarian (sort of). Cue Godwin!
Re:Top Gear Veyron goodness (Score:1, Interesting)
What about last week's episode, where they ran the Veyron against a McLaren F1?
Bugatti brand (Score:5, Interesting)
brand nobody had heard of
Are you kidding? Bugatti has been around forever.
Nowadays Bugatti is owned by Volkswagen and the Veyron is it's "gimmick" (for the car illiterate, this is an understatement) to show the world how bloody good they are. The "Volk" (people) part of VW is prohibitive in marketing luxury cars. The Phaeton for example just doesn't get the attention it deserves in the limousine segment.
IMHO the pedigree isn't there anymore. Bugatti was very successful in the old days but ever since Ettore Bugatti passed away in 1947 the company just didn't have a sense of direction. In 1987 the name Bugatti -and not the expertise and craftsmanship- was bought by an entrepreneur which produced the horrible Bugatti EB110. Now VW produces the Veyron and it's currently the technically most sophisticated car around but the blood line is definitively cut.
Re:Yeah but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
does it run linux?
I don't know about the Veyron, but the Tesla Roadster does. I have one of the logs right here. 2.6.11.8-1.3.0, BusyBox 1.00, 32 megs ram, Philips-LPC2294 CPU, etc.
I did the top speed in an S4.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have an unrestricted S4, and removing the limiter is the only mod it has ever had.
Now it is 4 years old, I finally had the time and safe place to test the top speed (well, "top" as in "got clamped by the rev limited instead"), and I got to a GPS measured 268 km/h before the rev limiter kicked in. It was somewhere in Germany, I happened upon this 5km stretch of perfect viewable road by chance (and had to drive another 5km before I found a chance to return and USE it :-).
Overtaking a row of 8 (I think) police vans at 220 km/h on cruise control during the run up was just a bonus (you know you're legal but still the nervousness remains).
There is, however, a good argument why you won't do this for long even if it's entirely legal and you find a safe bit of road to test. With a fuel consumption of just under 60 (yes, SIXTY) liters per 100km you will need a MUCH bigger tank to get from A to B. It's ridiculously uneconomical to push such a large amount of steel over 4 wheels against the wind.
Having said that, it's also good fun annoying BMW drivers who don't seem to know that "S4" means "brutally large factory sports tuned V8 in front, gripping on 4 wheels on sport suspension". Fnarr fnarr..
Conversions (all approx):
268 km/h = 166.5 mph
60l/100km = 1.67km/l, 4.7 MPG(UK) or 3.9 MPG(US)
Final notes for wannabees: I have had extensive high speed training. Don't try this stuff unless you're (a) stone sober and in top physical condition, (b) are 100% sure of the condition and capabilities of your car (and even then), (c) on location where such speeds are legal and (d) can do so without causing any risk to other road users (on circuit is even better) - and that's after doing some test runs.
Re:Veyron? Meh. (Score:4, Interesting)
In a straight line yes, but with any kind of turns on the road the bike gets owned.
I mean, I have a Mazda MX-5, pretty much the cheapest roadster you can get. It has 160 hp on 950 kg, and I've left a bike with 120 hp on 200 kg behind on a very squiggly road. Bikes don't handle. And with a car, if you lose grip you have the possibility of getting back control. Lose control with a bike, and you are an organ donor.
Re:Guilty conscience? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In real units... (Score:4, Interesting)
A single wind turbine, the really big kind they use in wind farms, generates about 1500 kilowatts.
Uhm, no. In wind energy, that's close to ancient history. Let's say 5000 kilowatts: http://www.repower.de/index.php?id=237&L=1 [repower.de]
And that's a model that can be bought now, there are >8MW models in development.
750kW in a car is still a lot though.
Re:Guilty conscience? (Score:4, Interesting)
Google is your friend [portfolio.com]. The figures quoted in that article don't completely bear out the original claim (the very rich give a higher percentage of their incomes than the averagely wealthy), but the poorest do indeed seem to give more than anyone else.
Re:Guilty conscience? (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, the fact that it is able to shut off half the engine at low speeds only points out the fact that the engine is grossly over sized and powered for those speeds.
You do understand that your average commute only uses 15-35hp, right? The reason hybrid and gas-electric vehicles are so much more efficient is because their generator only needs to be sized and optimized for average power consumption, rather than peak.
Re:Yeah but.... (Score:3, Interesting)
It probably runs VxWorks from Wind River systems. A RTOS. It must have a lot of processors and as the price is not a concern, it must be high end (and shielded) PowerPC stuff, a lot of them.
Of course, I didn't hack the car :) Just guessing.
Re:Guilty conscience? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Guilty conscience? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Guilty conscience? (Score:2, Interesting)
All cars use a lot of energy (Score:3, Interesting)
That's one of the reasons why there's so much interest in making them more efficient. Small percentage gains can equal a lot of energy gains. You will find that an average house can be serviced quite nicely by a smallish car engine. That is, in fact, precisely what medium sized backup generators use. They are automobile engines modified to run on propane or natural gas (sometimes they are diesel but usually NG for smaller units since you have a feed to your house). A 4 cylinder, 1.6 liter engine running at 3500rpm will give you 30kw of power and thus power an average house no problem.
Cars use a ton of energy compared to most other personal uses.
Re:Yeah but.... 1/4 the price alternative (Score:5, Interesting)
At that speed, you don't have to ... if they can't read the license plate, or even see if there IS a license plate, they can't do a whole heck of a lot. 300 to 400 mph is FAST. A friend of mine actually managed to make a stock car street legal, and he told me that, at the speeds he would do once a year (he only did about 1,500 miles per year with it, since it needed a complete engine rebuild after a few "runs"), "you know the striped lane dividers - at that speed, it's a solid white line." He blew by a radar trap, drove for a few more minutes, and parked in a restaurant. 10 minutes later, the cops came in, arguing as to whether the car in the parking lot was his. After they told him that they couldn't make a positive identification, they asked him to open the hood, just so they could take a look-see. They were impressed.
Re:Guilty conscience? (Score:3, Interesting)
What's the "guilty conscience" wisecrack for? This thing is not only incredibly cool, but if you can afford it, you already pay enough taxes to support a small mid-American city. Get over it.
The top ten taxpayers in 2000 (the last year I looked up) paid taxes on less than 50% of their income. Clearly, the poor bear a disproportionate tax burden, regardless of what percent of the taxes are paid by the rich. Hint: They own more of the country than they pay a percentage of the taxes. The guilty conscience wisecrack is there to indicate that this is a fucking useless car, a big fucking waste of money and energy that could better be spent almost anywhere else. How much energy is wasted every year so that some rich cock who probably got his money by crushing those beneath him can have a shiny penis substitute in his garage, that might get driven once or twice? I don't care if you think you earned the right to defile the planet or not, you didn't.
I don't give a flying fuck HOW much you pay in taxes... as if economic activity was a valid measure of the worth of a man's soul. Money really can't buy you happiness, it only lets you rent a surrogate for a time. At the end of your lifetime you remember the things you did, not the things you own, but the economic reality of the world is that anyone who can afford one of these cars is effectively a mass murderer; their economic choices have likely led to the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands. ALL of us are harmed when needless manufacturing occurs! You do NOT have a right to go over 200 MPH!
I guess the message here is remember Marie Antoinette.
Re:Guilty conscience? (Score:3, Interesting)
How much energy is wasted every year so that some rich cock who probably got his money by crushing those beneath him can have a shiny penis substitute in his garage, that might get driven once or twice? I don't care if you think you earned the right to defile the planet or not, you didn't.
LOL, the funny and ironic part about your stupid post is that according to someone in a third world country, YOU are the rich and wasteful fuck driving around in your shiny "penis" substitute (instead of a clapped out Yugo.) Got forbid you've got a 2nd car, a nice one that you keep put up to drive occasionally. Get off your fucking high horse.
Re:Play on player (Score:3, Interesting)
What bothered me was never the gap, but the way that gap was both created and maintained. Over the last 30 years, that gap has widened considerably. And most of that gap is made from the rich getting a LOT richer under a system of rules stacked in their favour. There is very little chance of any poor person with talent and drive making it to the top, and there is almost no chance of someone with no talent, or skills, and little worth of falling from the top under any circumstances.
Witness golden parachutes for the people who brought the world economy to its knees, while people who actually work for a living get fired left and right. This is the logically inevitable conclusion of the system that has been promoted for the last three decades.
Re:Top Gear Veyron goodness (Score:4, Interesting)
Fuel and overall weight makes very little difference in the speed of an aircraft, just pretty much effects the burn rate of the fuel itself and extra load effects other performance factors such as speed during a high G manuver.
Helicopter speed is limited due to the problem of the speed of the leading edge of the rotor as it moves through the air. The tip travels far faster than the root of the blade. That in and of itself is no problem.
What is a problem however is that the tip is moving at say 400 mph or so, and the base is moving at next to nothing. Again, by itself this is fine.
When you add 150 to 200 mph of forward airspeed to it however, you have a tip speed in forward motion that is rapidly approaching the speed of sound. Now you have a problem. You have the problem of part of the rotor operating in supersonic conditions and part of the rotor operating in subsonic conditions. That in and of itself is extremely stressful, couple with it the fact that each rotor blade is transitioning into and out of supersonic mode every rotation and you rapidly run into the problem of having a airfoil that is extremely weak overall transitioning in and out of supersonic conditions hundreds or thousands of times a second. The end result is generally that the helicopter tears itself apart due to vibration and stress in an extremely short period of time.
We've just relatively recently come up with the technologies and materials to allow us to deal with the stresses of that sort of flight, but I'm pretty sure about the only people with that information are bound by DOD contracts, and as such you're not likely to find a non-military helo that would be able to withstand those speeds.
The extra weight and aerodynamic drag arent' a problem for helos and haven't been for a while, transitioning between subsonic and supersonic modes of flight a thousand times a second on the other hand, doesn't go over so well.
Re:Guilty conscience? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you grossly underestimate the amount of power that the "average" commuter uses on a daily basis.
Most commuters will use at least 60+hp accelerating away from a stoplight. Double that if they're driving a heavy truck/SUV.
Sure, once they're up to to speed, say 65-70mph, horsepower requirements are only about 25-50 depending on the vehicle (quick google search reveals that a Corvette probably uses about 25hp at 65mph and 40hp at 70mph). But add any acceleration at those speeds, say to pass someone and you're going to need a lot more power.
Yes, downsizing the engine in a gas-electric hybrids does let them eke out a bit more fuel economy. But the real gains in fuel economy with the best gas-electric hybrids come from running the engine on the Atkinson cycle [wikipedia.org] instead of the typical Otto cycle [wikipedia.org]. While the Atkinson cycle is significantly more efficient, peak power output does suffer compared to the Otto cycle (an optimization as you say).