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Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

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Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#181

Post by mcv »

arethuza wrote: post #54
parsimo2010 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much all modern cars will go faster than is useful and/or safe. Only a small set of public roads allow cars to go their top speed. I have a 1991 Corvette that will go 153 mph, and I've only done it twice. It scares the crap out of me. Top speed is a cool thing to boast about, but most people won't ever see it, and a few stupid people will hurt themselves with it. That's okay on the balance, because millionaire…

Also Bugatti is part of the VW Group - so it's possible that some day the engineering may trickle down to all of the other brands in the group (such as the humble Skodas I've been driving for the last few years).

> "some day the engineering may trickle down"

Do we also have trickle-down engineering now? Is economics not enough for that?

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#182

Post by safgasCVS »

mrleiter wrote: post #169

The milestone of reaching faster speeds with combustion engines seems to be a wrong goal in this day and age. Climate change is a fact, and the burning of material based on oil/coal is a major driver of this. The effects have been known for decades, but only now major impacts can be seen and felt. In German, there is this phrase, which describes the time period after a certain success/enjoyment/well-being. Literally…

The problem isnt the handful of hypercars but the hundreds of millions of 1.5-2 ton cars being used to ferry a single occupant from stop light to stop light. Its easy to point to these hypercars as being excessive but remember the reason we can drive a car that has the performance of a mid-80s sportscar that does 50mpg for not much money comes directly from tech trickling down from these machines.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#183

Post by Krasnol »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #38
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…

Pretty much all modern cars will go faster than is useful and/or safe. Only a small set of public roads allow cars to go their top speed. I have a 1991 Corvette that will go 153 mph, and I've only done it twice. It scares the crap out of me. Top speed is a cool thing to boast about, but most people won't ever see it, and a few stupid people will hurt themselves with it. That's okay on the balance, because millionaire…

To be honest, I'd be scared too in a 1991 Corvette. I wasn't even aware they could do this.

Today's cars do feel very different and much safer.

Living in a country where going 124mph+ is nothing special helps too.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#184

Post by dksbzmx »

lloeki wrote: post #166
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’m the complete opposite. I hate cars that have loads of torque on the low end then go down from there, it gives me the feeling that they get out of breath on the top half of the rev range. My daily driver FN2 Civic Type-R (stock, except for brake lines and pads) and whatever preconceptions are had about Honda, this is an engineering marvel. Torque is mostly linear, slightly going up on the top half, with a slight d…

Look up Tom’s garage “Thunderbolt” miata.

Mr. Tom put a V8 into a Miata while keeping it as close to the original in terms of handling as possible (I think the end result only weighs a couple hundred lb more)

Mr. Tom is a maniac of precision, so the videos are a joy to see how clean everything is (he’a a bit of a nerd though)

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#185

Post by mcv »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #141
toyg wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s futile to have quad-core laptops bought by managers who barely run office apps. But the world of commerce runs on dreams.

Quad core is entry level now, when did you last buy a laptop :-) Having a laptop with say a 16/32 Ryzen 3 (which believe is due fairly soon) would be pointless

> "Quad core is entry level now, when did you last buy a laptop :-)"

It may be entry level, but it's also overkill for what the vast majority of people need their laptop for.

But it does help drive demand for advanced in computing power, which helps drive prices down for the computing power engineers need.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#186

Post by edejong »

krapp wrote: post #122
edejong wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but there is an interesting difference between the two w.r.t. status.

Status is generally derived from the signaling of certain values. Wealth is one such value, but in general we assign status to a combination of values. Aesthetic + Wealth = Art. Strength + endurance = Athletics. Leadership + Vision + Knowledge + Intelligence = Innovation.

For me, at least, these super expensive cars have lost all signaling value, except 'wealth'. Because of that, I would almost call it tasteless, senseless and idiotic.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#187

Post by SECProto »

amelius wrote: post #164
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 think the fun comes from the acceleration, and thus the torque a car can produce. Roads don't like torque. If high-torque becomes a trend, expect to pay more vehicle-tax. Tires also don't like torque.

> Roads don't like torque. If high-torque becomes a trend, expect to pay more vehicle-tax.

This is a bit off-topic, but this isn't really accurate. (Not the fact that high torque causes more surface damage thing, that's probably defensible - though gross loading does much more damage to roads in most conditions). But the source of funding for road construction and maintenance.

Depending where you live, your vehicle tax doesn't do much of anything for the roads anyway. They're maintained and repaved using general funds, usually taken from property taxes and income taxes.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#188

Post by gavia1 »

geff82 wrote: post #178
gavia1 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are missing the forest from the trees. If we want to truly reduce climate change we should start by reducing international shipping, consumerism, and non-essential air travel for both pleasure and business. A 300MPH speed run in an ultra low production Bugatti car is more or less insignificant in the fight against climate change.

You write we should reduce: international shipping, consumerism, and non-essential air travel Sure you can but it will be heavily inconvenient (at least for many in the west). But do you know what reduces the carbon footprint by about 75% in a country like Germany? 1.) Electric cars/trains 2.) Electricity from renewables 3.) Heating using electrical power from renewables (heat pumps) Of the last 25%, there are 20% fr…

I am not disagreeing with electric cars at all, I think it is important.

But the carbon footprint created within the West is just a small amount of the carbon footprint that the West contributes to. We can't just reduce our own carbon footprint if it simply pushes that carbon footprint onto other, less developed countries.

I think it will be very unlikely that we will continue to live with the same luxuries that we enjoy today while still aggressively reducing climate change. It won't be a case of "we have electric transport, but I can still buy a new iPhone once a year". It will be a case of aggressively cutting back everywhere and and ultimately growth and our economy will suffer in the short-term for long-term sustainability.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#189

Post by edejong »

hvidgaard wrote: post #148
edejong wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

By that logic a top fuel dragster is pointless? For some racing is something that happens in a straight line, for others it involve turns - neither serves a purpose in the grand scheme of things and can be considered "pointless".

No, because a dragster has a specific function. It is a perfect counter-example to the senseless: 'look how fast our super-car can go.' There are many more values involved in dragster racing: knowledge, innovation, joy, creativity, competition, determinism, meaning, enthusiasm and playfulness. And it is all related to a singular goal: getting over the finish line faster than the competition.

But with such a super car, idk, I'm just left with an empty feeling: why? What is the point?

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#190

Post by spodek »

mrleiter wrote: post #169

The milestone of reaching faster speeds with combustion engines seems to be a wrong goal in this day and age. Climate change is a fact, and the burning of material based on oil/coal is a major driver of this. The effects have been known for decades, but only now major impacts can be seen and felt. In German, there is this phrase, which describes the time period after a certain success/enjoyment/well-being. Literally…

Glad to see this perspective as the top comment that this community upvoted.

Our values determine where we devote our engineering resources -- time, money, attention, brilliance. If we degrade the environment to where it can't sustain our population, people will suffer. What are the relative values of millions maybe billions of climate refugees versus a fast car powered by unsustainable fossil fuels?

Imagine we devoted those resources to solving political and environmental problems.

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