The article says that the speed is a record, but besides 'supercar' (which is what?) it does not say for what kind of car on what kind of track for what distance. Can anyone here explain it to me?
Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier
281–290 of 302 posts
Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is the "300mph barrier" even a thing when we're talking about a French-turned-Italian-turned-German automaker doing test runs in Germany? They only barrier they need to care about is the metric one at 500km/h.
I'm sure it would have read "500km/h barrier" if they managed to break it.
Exactly.
However, 300mph is a valid goal as that was the milestone Sir Malcolm Campbell also barely passed in his final world-record run in the Bluebird.
Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why I've always loved big turbos. A little bit of lag, followed by being thrown in your seat like a rocket taking off. You can get the same with a big naturally aspirated engine, but a turbo is often cheaper and more feasible than an engine swap. The biggest problem with this is having too much torque. If the car isn't designed for it, you'll just spin the tires at full throttle, and you'll have to settle for…
AWD Camry?
Yep. From 1986-1992 there was a model SV25 that used the All-Trac drivetrain with a 3S-FE engine. Almost the same powertrain as the Celica GT-Four, the first Japanese car to win WRC titles. You find the Camry, swap in an MR2 Turbo engine (a modern version of the Celica GT-Four's) and you have an old beaten up grandma car with the powertrain of a rally car.
Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only thing they need to be concerned with is being faster than everything else. Units are arbitrary, even kilometers (1000x the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299792458 of a second). Once they go past 500 km/h people will start wondering about some other round number until we get to relativistic speeds.
Going faster than the speed of sound would be interesting and a somewhat "non-arbitrary" target.
At these speeds there's more to be said about how good the tyres are. You can add more power and better aero up until the point where the rubber shreds. It would be interesting to see what the car could do with solid wheels on a salt flat.
Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier
#285Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier
#286It'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…
Every improvement made of expensive cars luxury or sports ones were eventually adapted to cheaper cars.
The ABS is one of those examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system#Moder...
Will their owner often if ever use them at their full potential? Probably not but if they can afford it, who cares?
As long as the research can be funded through it.
Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 t…
This!
So called "hypothecated" taxes (supposedly dedicated to a specific purpose) are rarely actually restricted to that usage.
In Australia, even if the tax is supposedly restricted in what it can be applied to, I believe that the parliament can legislate otherwise at any time.
Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 t…
> though gross loading does much more damage to roads in most conditions
Yes, and remember that batteries are quite heavy so torque + electric vehicle = bad news for roads.
See also: https://www.inverse.com/article/53612-electric-cars-cause-cr...
Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier
#289It's kind of interesting to look at the first car to go 300mph in 1935 https://craighill.net/2012/09/03/september-3-1935-sir-malcol... vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcM740YDgzs Not sure if it doesn't look cooler than the 2019 version though probably it would be harder to park at Sainsbury's.
Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier
#290I'm sad that, on HN, I had to read thru 50+ comments about how impractical 300 mph is, before I found any discussion of the engineering challenges.
Right? I mostly lurk here but for some reason almost everyone is like "well you can't drive that speed on any normal road anyway". Yes, thank you. You won't typically launch yourself to the Moon either but it's nice that someone is trying to do it instead and it is okay to marvel at the engineering that is needed to do so.