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Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

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Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#101
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you don't know about track days or drag strips. That's the way to enjoy a car that goes faster than 150km/h fully. A 300mph Bugatti is still way above any speed you'd reach, though.

Even in that case a much lighter (and cheaper!) car like an Atom or Caterham will be a lot more fun than one of these hulking great monstrosities. Often faster as well, depending on the track.

Bugattis aren't meant for motorsport enthusiasts anyway. They are too expensive and complicated to be track day cars and an enthusiast would buy something more driver oriented rather than stats oriented.

You could definitely enjoy one on a track if you had one. But you would probably spend more time just enjoying the thought that you own it, keeping it safe, then you would take your actual track car to the track.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#102

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…

Even if it could be operated safely by a person, it still would have no practical value. This is not a transport feat, it's an engineering/brand feat.

I love engineering feats.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#103
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of things humans do are pointless, but all the same we do them. Doesn't stop it being fun does it?

0-180 in the same time and hitting a speed limiter is going to be just as much fun for everyone. Unless you happen to have laid out a strip at Bonneville Salt flats. That seems poor justification.

I thought he meant that the design work was fun. The challenge. What is the point/justification of Olympic sports?

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#104

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…

Hmm, I'm not a biker but I always assumed your legs determine statistics like acceleration on a bike. Learn something new everyday...

I suspect that bike was short for motorbike - not too many humans can do 0-60 in 3 seconds. ;)

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#106
post #47

Does anyone have any insights to if this brings any interesting science to the table that is applicable outside of this context? I personally have zero interest in a fast car going fast, but it's always interesting to see how these sorts of difficult feats help humanity in more general ways.

For the Veyron they had to work a lot on aerodynamics. The aerodynamic lift at 400km/h would usually make any car go airborne, so they had to find ways to prevent this without increasing drag too much.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#107

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…

Sometimes, things don't have to really make sense for people to love it.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#108

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…

No one decides to marry their spouse based on how punctual they are. Cars like these (and just sports cars in general) are things you buy with your heart

Not like you'd get anywhere any faster when there's traffic around. Punctuality is a sign of planning, and that's a desirable trait, so I don't know about no one.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#109

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 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.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#110
post #87

Earlier 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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThrustSSC
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