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Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

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Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#121

Post by sokoloff »

erikig wrote: post #73
MrGilbert wrote: post #48

It's pretty impressive. In terms of a daily driver, I think the fun comes from the acceleration, and thus the torque a car can produce. My daily driver is a Mazda 3 / Mazda Axela, which comes with 200 Newtonmeter torque at 6400 rpm. It's ok, it's fun, but yeah. So the other day I drove a 2013 Nissan Leaf (BEV), which gives you ~250 Nm torque right at the beginning. This was so much fun to drive. So for me, a car does…

I love acceleration but there’s also jerk - the rate at which acceleration builds up. It is is also a factor of the torque curve.

The next derivatives in the sequence of position, velocity, acceleration, and jerk are amusingly named “snap, crackle, and pop”, respectively.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#122

Post by krapp »

edejong wrote: post #117
krapp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pointlessness is kind of the point, along with a bit of juvenile thrill. These cars are a display of wealth and excess. You're telling the world you can afford this much power and don't need to worry about things like utility or efficiency, and maybe you'll just keep it in a garage or drive it around a track, but still you can have a car so powerful it's almost illegal and most people can't.

idk... I've always assumed that the pointlessness is in the playfulness: extending our boundaries, setting new rules. We value the daring, the boundless, the discoverers and the challengers. And I understand we connect a certain status to that and I also understand that certain people just want to be able to buy the status without putting in the time, knowledge and risk. But for me at least, this is so remote from an…

Some people buy million dollar watches because they appreciate the craftsmanship and quality, some people buy them so you'll know just how much more valuable their time is than yours.

It's a status display in either case, given that one could adequately tell the time on a cheap digital Casio.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#123

Post by afarrell »

edejong wrote: post #39
jlg23 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's futile .... But it is fun .

This got me thinking. Once I thought it was fun , but the more I look at it, the more I feel it is utterly pointless. A racing car has a function: to get around a track faster than other cars (over a period of laps). To do this, it needs to be versatile: turning, braking, acceleration, fuel consumption, range of vision and suspension (among others) play a role. That's the true engineering challenge. It's why it has w…

Fun is important because directing and motivating teams of humans is a difficult skill -- especially when you want to do things where the path forward is at all nebulous, like materials and design research.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#124

Post by usrusr »

jlg23 wrote: post #26
tialaramex wrote: post #13

It's futile to actually have road-legal cars that go this fast because you can't do very much useful with the speed. This is much too fast for the human operator (driver) to safely react to things outside the cockpit, which is why for example Britain owns trains capable of 140mph in service but deliberately limits them to 125mph. Tests suggested drivers couldn't be relied on to reliably observe and react to a linesid…

> It's futile .... But it is fun .

The speed is basically an excuse for an expensive car. Due to reasons (which I don't want to delve into) there are people who can and want to spend an absurd amount of money on a car, but if you just give them a perfectly fine people mover with more "gold and eagles" (sorry for the futurama reference), they'd feel ripped off. The car has to offer something that a less expensive car can't and that's where paper speed comes in. Even perfectly irrational purchases require some element of rationality.

PS: if you just want the joy of speed, the fix is not a faster car but a vehicle that allows you to experience the speed better, one that isolates you less from the road. A light roadster, a motorcycle, a roadbike (quite a few people actually "graduate" from a motorcycle to a roadbike because perceived speed is higher in lycra and with legs doubling as shock absorbers)

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#125

Post by mytailorisrich »

riffraff wrote: post #78
awesomepeter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going around 160km/h on highways in Europe is pretty common, also higher speeds for eg. in Germany

> Going around 160km/h on highways in Europe is pretty common is it? That is 20-50km/h above the limit in all european countries other than Germany. There are people going that speed, but in my experience across a few countries 99% of the traffic does not go that much above the limit. Sources: https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/knowle... . https://autotraveler.ru/en/spravka/max-speed-limits-in-euro…

From experience, in France there are stretches of motorway where you would simply fit in the fast lane traffic by going at 160km/h (and yes the speed limit is 130km/h and cars going that speed stay well on the right).

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#126

Post by blocked_again »

bscphil wrote: post #109
bartread wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ride bikes and from a practical standpoint, along with small size and manoeuvrability, the acceleration (a result of torque) is one of the most useful attributes. Much moreso than top speed, or even speeds significantly in excess of the posted limits. Bikes don't tend to have high torque in general, but their light weight and gearing are designed to maximise what torque they do produce. This means there are quite a…

I assume you're talking about electric bikes or motorcycles? This confused me a lot for a while because I don't usually see those referred to as "bikes". > This means there are quite a few that will do sub 3 seconds to 60, and sub 5 seconds is practically the norm. This was the give-away - pretty sure very few humans can do 60 mph on a bicycle, unless they're drafting.

Motorcycles are referred as bikes in many countries. And bikes are called as cycles.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#128

Post by LoSboccacc »

gavia1 wrote: post #88
MrGilbert wrote: post #48

It's pretty impressive. In terms of a daily driver, I think the fun comes from the acceleration, and thus the torque a car can produce. My daily driver is a Mazda 3 / Mazda Axela, which comes with 200 Newtonmeter torque at 6400 rpm. It's ok, it's fun, but yeah. So the other day I drove a 2013 Nissan Leaf (BEV), which gives you ~250 Nm torque right at the beginning. This was so much fun to drive. So for me, a car does…

You could get close just with turbocharging which will lower the torque curve such that max torque is somewhere around 1500 to 2000RPM.

a turbo with a torque that low will kill your engine high end

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#130

Post by colechristensen »

fasicle wrote: post #76
MrGilbert wrote: post #48

It's pretty impressive. In terms of a daily driver, I think the fun comes from the acceleration, and thus the torque a car can produce. My daily driver is a Mazda 3 / Mazda Axela, which comes with 200 Newtonmeter torque at 6400 rpm. It's ok, it's fun, but yeah. So the other day I drove a 2013 Nissan Leaf (BEV), which gives you ~250 Nm torque right at the beginning. This was so much fun to drive. So for me, a car does…

How would a Tesla's initial torque compare to the Bugatti? Would the Bugatti reach 30 mph much faster?

The fastest Tesla seems to beat the stock version of the Bugatti in question by about a quarter second from 0-60 (2.25s vs 2.5s) but the Bugatti handily beats the Tesla in the 1/4 mile by half a second and 25 mph, so the Tesla wins at acceleration for the first second or so.

The torque curve on the Bugatti starts out lower for the first 1-2k RPM and then sticks at a significantly higher torque that seems artificially flat, likely limited by the rest of the drivetrain to save on weight (or ripping itself apart as opposed to the Tesla which would light on fire if the limiters were removed).

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