World's Fastest Hybrid OK'd For Production 208
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 this one pays for itself... (Score:4, Funny)
And in only 150 years, the gas you save pays for the car!
--Assuming you drive an earth mover to work today.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Problem is, if you're out driving on the autobahn, all this achieves is wasting fuel to haul around a whole lot of pointless & heavy batteries.
At some stage you have to exit the autobahn, and that is when fuel consumption goes up and the hybrid advantage kicks in. Just because you have decided to focus on the one section of road that doesn't see a great improvement doesn't mean that it is not worth bothering with electric motors or that overall consumption will not go down.
Re: (Score:2)
if you've ever been on the autobahn, you know the on-ramps are ridiculously short in some places (annoyed the hell out of me). Now i wasnt driving a 500hp V8 at the time, but i would have loved the extra torque from two serious electric motors to help me accelerate
Sure, if 99% of your traveltime is spent at 100+ mph on the autobahn, this might not be your most efficient vehicle, but who buys a porce for efficiency?
Re: (Score:2)
Because the only point in not wasting fuel is to save you money.
Re:And this one pays for itself... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Silence... (Score:2, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
At the proposed price of roughly half a million US$, that shouldn't be modded "+1 Funny" but "+1 Insightfull"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If I'm paying a lot of money for a car in order to have threesomes with barely legal chicks. I'm getting a gas guzzling Bugatti to attract shallow hot chicks that will shave their legs and pits.
Well, for starters, the hippie chicks have shaved all the hair off their bodies to donate to the gulf clean up effort.
Next, this is the perfect car. First, it's an insanely expensive and fast Porsche, so you still get the hot, shallow chicks. But in the off chance you see that college student chick with a fresh dolphin tattoo who is in the experimental stage trying to define herself at the local "Save the Blind Salamander" protest (yes, a real protest I saw in San Marcos, TX), you also stand a chance with
SI units (Score:5, Informative)
78 miles per gallon is about 3 liter for 100 km.
198 miles = 319 kilometers
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
\ How many Joules are used by an electric car? Which losses are we including (transmission, storage, motor efficiency)?
I'm seriously asking, because I'm not sure a Joules to Joules comparison would necessarily be any more helpful.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fuel density calculation ist standardised for 15C
Re: (Score:2)
If it is the european cycle that is being quoted, then it will be British gallons, not American ones. They are bigger, so you get more miles out of them.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The standards to which the EU are trying to move are litres/100 km or kWh/km
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
FWIW there are about 34 megajoules in a litre of petrol. So that's about 9.5kWh/litre. BUT that's not so useful if your fuel supplier doesn't charge you in kWh. After all what most people would want to know is how much it would cost them. For a hybrid car the fuel may be converted to electricity, but it als
Re: (Score:2)
It might be handy to do that through the suspension. That way you could at least measure increase in weight while filling. Sensors for that purpose could be used for traction control (force on each wheel).
Re: (Score:2)
Plus, unlike the float, you don't have to put the cells *in* the tanks, running a voltage through gasoline vapor and hopefully not much else.
Considering how easy it is to make a strain gauge, for instance (they can be as simple as just a folded up length of fine wire), I'm putting money on "the float is cheap enough, and we've done it for years and we don't want to confuse (the stupid) drivers with an accurate reading" being reason, rather than the real cost.
Similar to the reason that new traffic lights do
Re: (Score:2)
78 miles per gallon is about 3 liter for 100 km.
That'd be 33 km per liter. That's pretty good!
Deceiving. (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess that's for some kind of efficiency or to make the manufacture of the gearbox / differentials. It's kind of too bad. With an engine that large, it should have some spare capacity under normal driving to keep the battery charged. If there was someone I expected to make a car that really used the electric motors to make the car really take off and be able to recharge that ability, it's someone like Porche. I wonder if they at least
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty sure Toyota is all over it actually.
*goes off and checks*
Yep, the new Supra hybrid is optimized for performance, has been in development for at least 4 years, and should be available long before the Porsche.
Re:Deceiving. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, for the idiotic mass public:
"Miles per buck"
Really, that's all people care about. Multiply by the average cost of a gallon of fuel, or kwh of charge, and spit out a number any cousin-fucking retard can understand. Maybe then people will become a tiny bit more conscious about efficiency, and/or take arms against the energy cartels (a nerd can dream, can't he ?)
Re: (Score:2)
bucks per 100km would be much better, even bucks per 100miles would be better.
Re: (Score:2)
I never understood why people are so pedantic about the $/100km metric. It's not better, it's different. I'm assessing how far my money can take me.
If a car gets 10 miles per buck, and I have to drive 20 miles to work every day, I know that commute is costing me $2 each way. If it were instead "10 bucks per 100 miles", the math is simply inverted: I can travel to or from work 5 times for 10 bucks. One is more intuitive for short trips, the other for long ones, but it's the same damned thing.
Frankly if p
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Subtraction is just addition using negative numbers. Why not skip subtraction altogether and just do addition? And hey, multiplication is just addition done over and over, and division is just subtraction done over and over, so we could simplify all those operators down to just one.
We don't do that, not because we're too stupid, but because it's terribly inconvenient to work everything out in terms of addition alone. We pick the notation that's most convenient for the given purpose.
Doing the faction in term
ADD r6, r5, #1 (Score:2)
Subtraction is just addition using negative numbers. Why not skip subtraction altogether and just do addition? And hey, multiplication is just addition done over and over, and division is just subtraction done over and over, so we could simplify all those operators down to just one.
Someone paid attention in assembly class. ;)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't get you. If I have to travel a distance of 15 km each day, and I know my car uses 6 litres per 100 km, I know that it uses 0,06 l/km * 15 km = 0,9 litres for the trip, which I can do in my head... a simple multiplication. Where's your problem with that?
Re: (Score:2)
It's a question of inverting the number, adding it, then inverting it again, as opposed to just adding it. People are stupid. They won't realize that you'll use less fuel moving from a 10 mpg vehicle to an 11 mpg vehicle than going from a 55 mpg vehicle to one that gets 100 mpg. Even if they know it's supposed to be inverted before compared, few can do the math in thei
Re: (Score:2)
With that system, the more fuel you use to go the same distance, the higher the figure. So doesn't that measure uneconomy?
Re: (Score:2)
In the real world, which of these scenarios is more likely:
Re: (Score:2)
bucks per 100km would be much better, even bucks per 100miles would be better.
(With respect to GP...) Right, 'cause all that math stuff to convert between units is like, you know, hard.
Re: (Score:2)
"Miles per buck"
For the idiotic mass public? That measurement (distance per dollar) is the most important, and is about the only way to correctly analyze the efficiency of hybrid cars (consuming both gallons of gas and KwH of electricity). If that's for the 'idiotic mass public', than they've got the right notion.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It is accurate if you remember that the "G" in "MPG" stands for "Gallon", as in, gasoline. Yes, additional energy is required, but energy isn't the main problem - gasoline is. If you live in France, for example, most of that extra energy comes from a nuclear power plant, doesn't contribute to global warming, and doesn't sponsor terrorism.
MPGe (Score:2)
I think that's the point. (Score:2)
It being a plug in car, you may get to town and back without every burning any fuel. If you're close enough to town (less than 8 miles, if I understand it does in fact go 16 miles on a charge without using fuel). If you only go back and forth to work, you might never buy gas. If you live close enough to work. Which, if you own that kind of car, you can probably arrange.
I want one. Let me just start shuffling through the couch cushions.....
Re: (Score:2)
We have the Thrust SSC around somewhere, If we fit it with an electric drive that would beat this ... .. it does 763 mph @ 0.04 mpg U.S but the electric motor uses no gas so as a hybrid it's really economical, right?
A Porsche is very uneconomical, a Porsche with an electric drive is just as uneconomical when driven fast or beyond the range or the electric drive system ...it's just it uses zero gas in a traffic jam?
The Tesla does infinite mpg - does that mean it cost nothing to run, and produces no CO2 ?
What am I missing? (Score:2, Insightful)
The other modes (Hybrid, Sport Hybrid, and Race Hybrid) sound interesting, but consider:
Ahhh, who cares - ju
Re: (Score:2)
>If you've got a 500-horsepower, 3.6-liter V-8 under the hood, do you really need a "push to pass" button?
You still need it to pass the other guy with a 500 horsepower V-8 under the hood!
Fitting since Porsche made the first hybrid (Score:2)
[wikipedia.org]
Re:Fitting since Porsche made the first hybrid (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry about that [wikipedia.org]
16 whole miles on battery? wow. (Score:5, Funny)
If I put a couple of extra batteries in my old Chevy I think I could get that far on the starter.
Re: (Score:2)
That's nothing. My Honda gets infinite miles per gallon, and in heavy traffic. How? Well, there's a very popular route over the hills to the beach here. Sometimes I shut off the engine when it's backed up on the downhill. You just have to be aware of the fact that you don't have ps/pb anymore. It's harder on the brakes too, so there's always some cost. Of course, divide by zero is undefined, but it approaches infinite so let's say I burn a token molecule at the top of the hill. Quick, somebody calcul
Big deal (Score:2)
My Nissan can do the same. Even better, I can go really fast and get the same mileage! Oh did I mention this only works when the car is traveling straight down from very high up, like when I drop it from an airplane.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Which is another reason you should change over to litres/100km.
My European car says "0.0" when coasting.
Re: (Score:2)
Diesels do, at least modern ones. I've seen the instantaneous consumption drop to zero when rolling downhill in gear. Depressing the clutch causes it causes it to rise slightly, since the engine now needs to turn itself, rather than being driven by gravity.
Re: (Score:2)
Some newer automatic transmission vehicles are also programmed to shift in such a way to maximize the fuel cutoff.
Question for car engineers (Score:2)
Re:Question for car engineers (Score:4, Informative)
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!").
Re: (Score:2)
I think you mean IAAE...AARCD
Also, I think that makes you ineligible by slashdot rules, on the basis that you probably have some idea what you're talking about on a subject other than programming languages or Linux.
Re: (Score:2)
But is he an automotive engineer, or a civil engineer who realized that he could get better pay if he was walling to risk his neck driving unspecified race cars (stock-appearance cars? actually-stock cars? F1 cars? drag racing? oval racing? crash derby "racing"? "monster truck" "racing"? out-running the cops "racing"? ...)?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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 di
Need $ to save $ (Score:2)
Did anyone else notice that in order to save gas money with this car, you need to be rich to buy it.
Give them credit (Score:2, Insightful)
Missing the point (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Any word on pricing? (Score:2)
I imagine this thing's going to be astronomically expensive. Because the truth is they don't really want people to buy it. It exists so that they can meet the EU requirements for average fuel efficiency across the range. This car's so much more economical than all the others that it pulls their range up to the required level.
It's a problem all niche manufacturers are facing. Aston Martin are getting round it by reskinning the tiny Toyota iQ and calling it the Cygnet. It's only for sale to those who alr
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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 [motortrend.com]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Comparing a 155K car to a 61K car isn't exactly fair...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The Spyder was $72.5k. But it won.
Re:Tesla (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called flashblock, use it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's called "voting with your custom" and it's much more fair tha flashblock. Their price for the article was the obnoxious ad. GP didn't want to pay that price, and is stating he wouldn't have read the article if he knew what the price was.
If you go to a store and you don't like the price for something, you don't just walk out with it and leave what you wanted to pay unilaterally, do you?
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the warning, just managed to close the tab before the domain resolved.
Re:Tesla (Score:5, Informative)
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/ [nexus404.com]
Re: (Score:2)
How about some apples to apples? (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, and I strongly suspect that -- don't know, but think about it -- the Tesla, with 288 hp, running against the Porsche at 218 hp... would kick its ass. That's about a 25% difference in power in favor of the Tesla; also the Tesla weighs 2690 lbs, and the Porsche weighs 3300 lbs... another 18% win for the Tesla.
Yeah, I think the Tesla is a better car all around. Gasoline... LOL.
Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Whoosh, and I don't mean the car.
By comparing apples to apples, I meant, electric to electric. Which I would have thought the numbers made obvious, but you managed to surprise me.
Now read my post again. :)
Re: (Score:2)
Note to any people from the website you linked to tracing referrals back out of curiosity: One new tab opened. One new tab immediately closed again.
Websites that immediately start playing music, do not get read. Nor is it worth my bother to start looking around for ways to turn it off.
Too fast (Score:4, Funny)
It accelerates so fast they can't even stop the timer before it reaches 62.
Re:0 to 62? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Europe is a big diverse place, My car is European and shows mph.....
Which side to drive on, which side the steering wheel is on is also an option ....
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite true. The UK also uses miles and mpg and I wouldn't be surprised if a few former colonies and protectorates still do too.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It was to 100kph. It is a German car.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah horseless carriages and space planes never really worked out. But they do help people with their thought processes during the transition.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Because, YOU TWIT, 198 mph and 0-62 in 3.2 seconds isn't really fast.
Sheesh.
Re: (Score:2)
That's probably the street-legal version that comes with a governor.
Seriously. Any sedan with 200+ hp can go 150 mph (and that's usually due a governor), so I don't see any reason why this thing shouldn't be able to go much, much faster than 198 mph other than being artifically limited.
Re: (Score:2)
At that level, the limits are usually to stop things like tyres and gearboxes falling apart prematurely under the stress (the reason they limited the original Veyron to "just" 1000bhp, at 250mph "the tyres will only last for about fifteen minutes, but it's okay because the fuel runs out in twelve minutes"), plus you start running into real problems with air resistance (The Veyron Super Sport is 1200bhp but only 14mph faster than the 1000bhp model).
Re: (Score:2)
plus you start running into real problems with air resistance (The Veyron Super Sport is 1200bhp but only 14mph faster than the 1000bhp model).
/. and that reply wasn't pedantic enough. The real reason it is harder to go faster is that the drag force is proportional to the square of velocity.
I'm sorry this is
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Ho hum (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Then why can't they make the cars any cheaper?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Ho hum (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't be concerned with that, the batteries are generally placed low in the car, meaning that they don't move the center of mass upwards. Placed correctly they should have no impact on the ability take a hard turn.
Yeah, weight has never affected handling ;)
Porsche's designers have more control (Score:2)
...but remember that the concept car always looks much better than the actually production car.
Porche's production models are often very close or exactly like the concept cars.
They're not a mass-market manufacturer like Honda or Chrysler
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Informative)
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 [google.com]
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.
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
You're absolutely right, so far as you go.
But if you want to talk about economic rationality, you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick here. The question isn't whether Tesla could have got the loan from the private sector. The question is whether the government could have made a better return on the capital tied up in that loan. That includes (in fact is primarily a question of) externalities arising from what Tesla planned to do with that loan.
Yes, the government could have loaned that money on the
Re: (Score:2)
Flower power?