>"We don't make pure electric cars because for the time being, we think they're too heavy, and they don't make a cool sound. And as long as we can be CO2 neutral and frugal and clean comparatively, we will push the combustion engine."
Impressive tech, but I'd by lying if I said this doesn't rub me the wrong way. How do you mean combustion being CO2 neutral? And cool sound, this is one of my pet peeves. Why does a rich guy's wish for a "cool sound" in his sports car justify being a nuisance to other people? Motorbikes are the worst offender here. Sound limitations should be a lot stricter than they are.
They are talking about their ability to run on biofuel (e85). They achieve the greatest performance on e85. The most recent research I’ve seen is that production of fuel ethanol is now carbon 0 or slightly carbon negative, for the whole chain (including production of raw materials, transportation etc). This won’t be the case for all plants, and it’s not clear to what extent production has reached this level, but it shows what is possible.
So yeah, burning things may not be necessarily bad. Unfortunately no one seems to be investing in similar technologies to apply to other sectors of transportation such as aviation and shipping. It would seem to me to be much more realistic to design an engine for a airliner that burns a biofuel than to design a battery electric version.
The people who have embraced biofuel (e85) the most are car guys looking for more power. E85 has good knock resistance (high octane rating) like race fuel, but is far cheaper. It also has a greater cooling effect upon injection (because you need to inject more, as it is lower energy density).
To counter, while ethanol production might be a net loss in atmospheric CO2, it competes with food production, resulting in deforestation from increased land use for crops. As far as I'm aware, in terms of land use, biofuel still doesn't compare to solar/wind.
We can't let perfect be the enemy of good, though.
If moving from gasoline to ethanol ultimately reduces pollution, it's going to be faster to achieve. We don't have to swap out everything at the consumer level, especially since many cars can run on E85 already.
Continuing to push electric cars is great, but it'll take a lot longer and require a high infrastructure investment to make it truly practical.
As I've stated elsewhere, the main problem is the supply constraint, and it's always a trade-off with food production. It means E85 is still expensive, and hasn't shown promise to scale to become cheaper. And the only way it can scale is to use more land, which must come from somewhere. Even if you don't care for the loss of biodiversity, the destruction of carbon sinks may nullify the purported carbon reduction of switching fuels.
Hybrid vehicles with regenerative braking don't require infrastructure changes and reduce carbon output, all while the consumer spends less on fuel.
I'm not against a reduction in livestock. It solves a bunch of ethical problems. I think if fast food restaurants alone slowly transition to higher percentage of plant based proteins in patties, it would have a outsize impact compared to grass-roots abstinence. But why not both, I suppose?
I'm a huge fan of forests, wetlands, bushlands, heathlands, prairies, and other wild landscapes. If land use in agriculture dropped, my preference would be to see that land go back to the trees, wild-flowers, and the many creatures that live with them.
We've not forgotten that the impetus for this thread is a 600-hp engine designed for the next Koenigsegg supercar, right?
The Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model 3 are here today and are already practical cars, and are down-right affordable compared to a Koenigsegg. If you take purchase price out of the equation, the other Tesla cars are also practical in terms of range and electricity costs.
I hope those buying a new ICE car in 2020 who could afford otherwise have taken a credible look at buying an electric car instead.
To counter the counter: solar/wind as an energy source for non-tethered transport (ie cars that require batteries) needs raw materials for the batteries. This will require mining of lithium and other minerals. This also has land use impacts.
There are serious challenges to recycling or repurposing lithium batteries:
The main issue with ethanol production is the supply constraint, and for that reason it remains a niche product as it's far cheaper to extract oil from the ground. There are perhaps other promising bio-fuel production methods with higher yields, with respect to land use.
Hybrid vehicles are still an economical option, preferably paired with high-efficiency ICEs, and could tide us over until better energy storage options become available.
A vast majority of deforestation for crop land occurs to feed the meat that we eat. How about this sweet car is only available to level 2 vegetarians and above?
> I wonder if hydrocarbons could be synthesized with a reasonable efficiency by using electricity and (solar) heat. Making oil a non-fossil fuel could be the best of both worlds.
> Biogasoline/Biopetrol is gasoline produced from biomass such as algae
>> Companies such as Diversified Energy Corporation are developing approaches to take triglyceride inputs and through a process of deoxygenation and reforming (cracking, isomerizing, aromatizing, and producing cyclic molecules) producing biogasoline. This biogasoline is intended to match the chemical, kinetic, and combustion characteristics of its petroleum counterpart, but with much higher octane levels. Others are pursuing similar approaches based on hydrotreating
> To counter, while ethanol production might be a net loss in atmospheric CO2, it competes with food production, resulting in deforestation from increased land use for crops
It doesn't have to, biogas/syngas and by extension ethanol can be synthesized from just about anything (with various levels of input energy depending on cellulose levels), all you need is basic bioreactors/fermentation from organic material to yield CH3CH2OH (Ethanol) [1}. I met a guy with a syngas company from Germany that was doing that and he told me things like switch-grass in Brazil were a boon for them.
I could easily see this being a viable use of compost material, I'm thinking of low hanging fruit like grass trimmings, and food waste found in local communities that's created and requires additional energy to transport afterward, and yield ethanol from when energy usage is low from local power stations/renewable energy sources. Also, eco-centric places like Boulder County compost bins are readily accessible and are separated (and fined if not) this includes the restaurant Industry, which have to use biodegradable bags, making separation relatively easy to other counties in the US.
In CO there is a startup/company that takes composted material, and creates rich potting soil to gardeners and the MJ industry:
When I was doing my farming apprenticeship in Switzerland, it was common for every Dorf/Community to have a distiller in some capacity; in my case it was the apple and pear orchid owner who would create schnapps for anyone who brought sufficient material for a fee.
I got to know him, and he brought me on his farm/orchid for a few jobs when he found out I had spent some time on a Vineyard in Croatia and had a background in Biology--I helped make wine and Rakija in Croatia, as it was a simple reaction, at scale to sell to support the farm as horticulture was only 15% of profit that season and a 'better use of my time.'
The language barrier with the Swiss farmer was intense at times, (Mundarts are hard) but I realized that this was all sanctioned with the local canton: such that if he collected a tax on their behalf on the yielded amount of alcohol everything/anything he charged per hour of labour was his to keep. He would then report that to the canton come tax time.
It's really a viable method to reduce (perceived) waste and turn into a Value Added Product--local farmers/residents brought batches of fermented cherries/apricots/apples/pears to this distiller that were unfit for Market or just local waste in their yard to make family schnapps. Rather than like the US where, as I found out during my undergrad, the State requires you taint the Ethanol synthesized in a lab to ensure its not consumable and deter 'bootleggers.'
Personally, at the time I thought it would be a viable alternative to using dirty diesel on the various amounts of farm equipment: tractors, combines, haulers etc... as MPG is not really a big concern as much as cost of operation/job is. But if E85 could be produced locally to run cars then all the better. I do love the sound E85 inline 6 engines make (JZ and RB series) at the track.
I promise that you don't have Koenigseggs racing up and down your block. These are perfomance vehicles that are rarely taken out, usually to tracks or shows, and contribute very little to the world's carbon pollution. Unless I missed something and they started making budget cars, it's really not a problem.
It's not a sleepy village raided by supercars. It's like living in Monaco and complaining about the cars and yachts. The noise and bustle is part of the culture of the area and is overall a insignificant part of global noise pollution.
Live in a dense city and the noise from construction and service vehicles is 100x worse than the occasional sports car.
All those poor people that accidentally decided to spend millions on a flat in Knightsbridge must be so upset because of all the sports cars they totally didn’t know would be there.
It does not happen “for the duration of the summer”, it is usually only for a few weeks and in a few locations (which, coincidentally, have a high percentage of Middle Eastern expats.). You do not see Ferraris cruising through Shoreditch and with the exception of one douche who drives a gold Lambo down my road every weekend as he heads off somewhere to show it off I have never seen one of these cars actually being driven. Parked near Harrods or Green Park begging for attention, yes. Driving around? No.
>These are perfomance vehicles that are rarely taken out, usually to tracks or shows,
Okay, if this is how it is, then why are they allowed on the road? Obviously I don't have a problem with people driving this in tracks or shows, only in public roads.
Besides, if the speed limit is, at most, 130kph, why do we allow (again, on public roads) machines that go to 250, 300, or above? Or that speed from a stop to that aforementioned speed limit in 5 or 6 seconds? Again, by all means enjoy them on the tracks (still, within reason with more relaxed emission standards).
Just about every vehicle allowed on the road today can easily beat speed limits and cause massive damage in a crash.
Vehicle capabilities are separate from driver responsibility. Nothing would be possible if we banned things just because they have the potential for harm.
I don't follow. We have a law setting a speed limit in public roads. We have fines/jail for people who break it. We spend billions on manual patrolling, screening, prevention, detection, etc.
Why is it such a bad idea to just fit in speed limiters and be done with it?
And that last part? It's pretty much an empty argument, as if we don't already regulate/restrict/ban many things with the potential to cause harm (cars included).
You said "why are they even allowed on the roads" which means banning them because of their potential. Now you've changed your argument to using speed limiters but cars already have these in certain regions to prevent reaching top speeds.
Beyond that it's not necessary because most people follow the law. The same irresponsible people who speed like crazy would also remove the speed limiter. Also there are general driving conditions, emergencies, private roads, and other situations where people use the full capability of their vehicles. And police are still need to patrol the roads for more than just speeding.
Overall a built-in speed limiter just limits freedom, costs more resources and enforcement, punishes responsible owners, and prevents them from enjoying their vehicles because of a tiny percentage of bad drivers. In fact Germany's autobahn with completely unrestricted speeds has a better safety record than other freeways which shows that fast cars at high speed are not the issue at all for safety.
because having a high top speed is a silly reason to restrict a vehicle from driving on public roads? being able to accelerate fast enough to safely merge onto a highway implies a drag-limited top speed much higher than the posted limit. most cheap sedans can already go about twice as fast as a typical highway speed limit.
do you also want to ban usain bolt from the sidewalk because he could run too fast if he wanted to?
There aren’t any in theory, but there absolutely is a limit in practice. Beyond a certain point if you’re caught you will be arrested and surely convicted for reckless endangerment.
And how do you plan to get up to that speed? If you’re going to use something with motorised assistance, it will almost certainly be a device that the State will class as a road vehicle. Driving on the sidewalk is illegal.
> There aren’t any in theory, but there absolutely is a limit in practice. Beyond a certain point if you’re caught you will be arrested and surely convicted for reckless endangerment.
Any "limit in practice" is not a prescribed limit. The whole point of posted, visible speed limits is that everyone knows what they are ahead of time. They're not a substitute for using your brain.
(Also in practice if you go too fast you'll run up against physics and literally burn up due to atmospheric drag.)
> And how do you plan to get up to that speed?
OP's example is a world-class track sprinter. Usain Bolt just runs fast (for 100-400m).
In my state, non-motorized bicycles may use the sidewalk freely. When riding on the sidewalk, cyclists are considered pedestrians. They (like all other pedestrians) must be courteous to other pedestrians, but there is no speed limit.
In theory, on a long enough sidewalk without ramps, alleys, obstructions, etc, a cyclist could plausibly exceed 30 mph without being discourteous to anyone or endangering others. There are some sidewalks like this in the industrial parts of my town, although I'm certainly not suggesting anyone try it.
> Any "limit in practice" is not a prescribed limit.
I don't understand the point of stating the blindingly obvious as though it could serve as a useful retort. Obviously there isn't a prescribed limit. That doesn't elide the point—a limit doesn't need to be a bright line in order to exist in practice.
>because having a high top speed is a silly reason to restrict a vehicle from driving on public roads
My argument is wrong because it is silly. Gotcha.
>do you also want to ban usain bolt from the sidewalk
When Usain Bolt can delete a family from existence with one wrong flick of the wrist, I'll support banning Usain Bolt from running in the sidewalk.
Alternatively, when Usain Bolts running in sidewalks are one of the leading worldwide causes of death.
And I'm pretty sure that if Usain Bolt were running at 30kph on a crowded sidewalk somebody would stop him, which is actually a pretty nice analogy to the obviously beneficial measure of placing a speed limiter on cars.
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... seems to suggest that speed isn't the major cause of accidents; there are a ton of other human related ones, plus other car related ones. IMHO, humans shouldn't drive the cars, but whilst they do, their max possible speed doesn't seem to make a big difference ;)
Very funny you would say that because you don't know me at all. I go to tracks whenever I can and I'm saving to buy my own track car as soon as I'm a more settled position in my life. So your ad hominem judgement hardly holds water, does it? I simply have the honesty and self-reflection capabilities to realise that "speedy cars" commit mass murder on a daily basis, and hence performance cars should probably not be road legal unless fitted with a limiter.
You can apply the logic of "having a problem with something" to anything one doesn't like. The current answer is it is allowed as it is legal, and it's sold as it is wanted, and there are penalties for misuse, incase that's not obvious.
FYI, I think this new car is estimated at over 500kph max speed.
I don't think it's estimated at 500+kph, not realistically anyway. It took 12 years to go from 408 kph to 447 kph (current record) in the production road car speed record, I doubt they're going to jump 53 kph in the record overnight.
> Why does a rich guy's wish for a "cool sound" in his sports car justify being a nuisance to other people? Motorbikes are the worst offender here. Sound limitations should be a lot stricter than they are.
My neighbor owns a couple of Porches with modified mufflers and a very loud motorcycle. I've argued with him at length about how his choice of noise intrudes on our peace, especially late at night. The bass vibrations travel further and will seem louder in different parts of the house, loud enough that two people conversing need to speak up. It's very bothersome.
My German friend with a harley tells me that loud motorcycles are very strictly controlled in his part of Europe, especially Austria, which is popular to transit through on long tours to the Alps. He says Austrian police will confiscate a motorcycle on the spot if it is deemed too loud and/or illegally modified. I wish they did that in my neighborhood, where some motorcycles are loud enough to set off car alarms right outside my window.
Europe has fairly strict sound limits on motorcycles (and they are getting stricter) in euro4/euro5. This constrains the manufacturers, but aftermarket enforcement really varies by location.
These days a lot of manufacturers homologate to meet multiple standards, so we get euro4ish stuff in north america too, stock at least.
Yep, it's not so much the production limits (still, they could be pushed gradually lower and I'm sure the manufacturers would manage), but it's the often grey-are of aftermarket modifications.
Also, I think European houses and apartment buildings are built from brick, stone and concrete, while in US most of "homes" are wood and drywall, which doesn't isolate as well.
You have to realize that these people want to inconvenience others. That's what gives them their kicks. So it really isn't the Porsches that's the issue here but rather your asshole neighbor. I live in the middle of nowhere but.I still have a neighbor who keeps two constantly barking dogs. One of his dogs died so he replaced it with a new puppy which he proceeded to train to bark constantly too.
I ride a motorcycle with a lightly modified exhaust and I promise you my neighbors are way more upset about the 80db parrot :D
The bike is less loud than an old car. Just don’t rev like a maniac in the evening when streets are empty and you’ll barely notice it above the normal noise.
Now the parrot ... that little dude is something else. We’ve tried everything and you can still hear him a block away if he wants you to.
Such a weird dichotomic view can only come from someone who’s never lived in Europe. Loud cars and motorbikes weren’t a thing in Germany, where I lived for 30 years, and yet I had the impression that my privacy was also much better protected and respected than here in the US.
Giving hefty fines, or even outright confiscate veichles, to people blatantly ignoring the law and infringing on other people's well being. That's not "big brother", that is trivial to accomplish with a well-organised vehicle inspection programme.
> Motorbikes are the worst offender here. Sound limitations should be a lot stricter than they are
Haven’t given that much thought until now, but I guess you are completely right. One person driving a loud motorcycle or car through a dense city at night, can potentially disturb/wake up hundreds of people or more.
And the problem is that they put loud mufflers on purpose. The stock mufflers aren't very noisy, or at least they're as silent as a 16k RPM engine can be.
They can and they do - I live in SF and it happens constantly. Especially with all the shitty cars with hypersensitive car alarms, so you get the double impact of motorcycles obnoxiously roaring by at 120db and then a few minutes of car alarms. Makes me nearly homicidal to realize how selfish people can be.
Here too, except in winter. I'm out in the country, in the northeastern US, in hilly country. Late at night, with the windows open, I can hear bikes for maybe 5-10 km. I can even tell which roads they're on.
Edit: In the winter, there are the snowmobiles, but our windows are closed.
> This is a flexible-fuel engine optimized to burn alcohol—ethanol, butanol, or methanol, or any combination thereof. Alcohol fuels are great for performance, but Koenigsegg says their use is also a key part of making the TFG clean, since they generate fewer harmful particulates than gasoline. And with sustainably-sourced fuel, the TFG can be effectively carbon-neutral.
I have no horse in this race (I don't ride a motorcycle; not interested), but these days cars and motorcycles both seem to be big offenders. If you want to hate on someone, probably the fairest thing to do is be equal opportunity about it and hate on both cars and motorcycles for this.
I discovered this after making the now-regrettable choice of living very near a busy major road. I hear a lot of vehicles. (Sometimes so loud that I can't understand the TV in my own living room.)
At first I assumed it obviously must be motorcycles. But one day I gazed out the window and watched traffic for a while, and to my surprise, I learned there really are a whole lot of cars which have been modified to be super loud. I didn't exactly collect stats, but it's not obviously more one than the other.
I actually just moved specifically because of this problem. The peace and quiet has been such a nice change. You should really consider it as soon as you can.
The biggest offenders here in the PNW are actually pickup trucks. Having worked in the automotive industry recently, I know that pickup trucks are one of the only profitable classes of vehicles left for dealerships. It's really an unfortunate situation. People are willing to overpay for gargantuan vehicles that make too much noise, use too much fuel, and pose a severe risk to pedestrians, so they can build some kind of macho identity. This really seems like an area where governments should step in and put upper limits on vehicle size and noise generation.
Hah, your timing is great. My lease is up for renewal, I've already toured some other alternatives, and I'm trying to decide right now (like maybe today) whether I want to put in an application.
The expense and hassle are both significant, but being away from that noise would be pretty nice. It's interesting to hear the perspective of someone with firsthand knowledge of the situation.
One thing I realized in this process is that you can find quiet and you can find walkability, but if you want both, that's way more difficult.
Also, in my experience, the loudest vehicles are all that way due to aftermarket modifications. And they're probably breaking noise laws that already exist but just aren't enforced.
EVs are going to be fantastic for this. Most of the buses in London are hybrids now (they have an engine, but it only charges the batteries), and it'a made them much much quieter than they used to be.
Most US municipalities have noise ordinances for a reason. If you feel someones vehicle violates that, file a complaint with the local non-emergency police line.
Because law enforcement will tell you they have bigger things to deal with, so while nuisance makers are learning to shut tf up, people triggered by noise can learn to chill tf out.
> Why does a rich guy's wish for a "cool sound" in his sports car justify being a nuisance to other people?
Not so much in pure sports cars, but some performance sedans have started to pipe engine sounds in through the stereo due to a combination of the engines being quieter and the sound isolation being better - but owners who pay more for the engines want to hear them.
I read elsewhere that they can run the engine on a wide range of fuels, so I think they mean it's CO2-neutral if you run on biofuels.
I'm not a big fan of biofuels, but I think they can have some role in a transition period if you have a mostly battery-electric drivetrain with an engine as range extender... and this car is a pretty good model for that. Remember that the production of batteries is limited, so it might be better to build 2 million cars that use a range extender once in a while, rather than 1 million cars that runs only on batteries (I say this as someone owning a pure battery electric vehicle btw).
But I think the key for this kind of transition vehicle is an ultra-simple and compact generator. Maybe something that is modular and can be swapped with a battery pack later. I think free-piston engines is what we need (I'm guessing they need something like Freevalve though, so maybe Koenigsegg's research contributes there)
This is a pet peeve of mine since moving to the US. All the loud cars and motorbikes revving up at night, even setting off car alarms. Don’t remember that ever being a thing in Munich (which, you can imagine, has plenty of high performing cars and motorcycles).
In another video he comments that they are pushing for owners to use Vulcanol (https://www.carbonrecycling.is/products) as the fuel for this car. I'd still rather a pure EV, but for people rich enough to buy one of these cars, I'm sure they could easily afford to exclusively use this fuel.
It's still a stretch. We need to try to be carbon negative, not just carbon neutral.
Although there is of course very obnoxious drivers out there, I believe a healthy level of sound from motorcycles can save lives; a lot of drivers complain they can’t see them. One of the reasons i was initially scared of ebikes
There are already sound restrictions in many areas, and for vehicle design. Also you only hear the noise during acceleration. They're not that much louder during normal cruising and this one even has an electric-only mode for soundless operation.
Laws are designed with a balance for freedoms. Any large city already has plenty of noise pollution beyond the occasional sports car going by. It's more about irresponsible behaviors like people revving at midnight than the car itself.
Construction is a public good. Loud cars are a private matter which provide a small benefit to vanishingly few and harm a larger number of people. And loud cars are not only driven in dense urban areas, in fact their owners often prefer to drive them on open roads, in the countryside, etc.
Loud vehicles are a nuisance to society, and an unnecessary one.
Loud cars are incredibly rare and do not cause serious harm. Focusing on them ignores most of the noise and makes it clear that you're disagreeing with their behavior rather than the noise itself. And that behavior is already discouraged or illegal.
The point is that you're against the behavior but you're calling to regulate the object. They're separate things.
People can start up lawn mowers and chainsaws to annoy you too, but we don't ban them either. Instead there are rules around when it's acceptable to use them so you don't do yard work at midnight.
Popular areas of London and NYC are loud, yes. Don't live in loud areas if you want a quiet place. No different than living next to an airport or freeway.
>Why does a rich guy's wish for a "cool sound" in his sports car justify being a nuisance to other people?
I'm not a rich guy, and I don't find it to be a nuisance in most circumstances; I appreciate the sound of high performance engines, and so do many other people.
i'm probably the biggest car fan i know in my personal circle, but a certain 370Z Nismo right outside my apartment does get annoying, after hearing that massively loud idle drone morning by morning.
can imagine non car people getting at least as mad, at louder cars.
I used to have the v8 C63 - a great car which sounded lovely, but I have to admit, on the rare occasion I started it in the morning I used to do so through gritted teeth.
I try to avoid these discussions on HN as I'm a petrohead and find myself often on the wrong side of the greater audience here.
That said, no car is really loud sub ~3000 rpm, at least not in the way I imagine you're implying. That is all this (or most any) car would need to muster for driving down the streets of London or any city.
The problem is that some owners get really aggressive with the throttle in places they really shouldn't. I'm with you, that is annoying, but that is by no means an isolated "super fancy car" problem. Motorbikes, modified scooters, tuner cars, trucks tuned for show instead of work.
This whole thing is about how some folks can't help but flaunt their opulence/excess. Talking it out on the car is like talking down to Tesla for including autopilot knowing that some drunk drivers will simply use the feature to take themselves home.
You can be a petrolhead -- among other like-minded petrolheads, in designated areas where you don't bother other people who simply have no choice whether or not they are subjected to your "taste". It's similar to smokers being inconsiderate and blowing smoke onto non-smoking persons. If I'm a "metalhead", that doesn't give me the right to blast music at 1 in the morning in my apartment, or during my morning commute.
> That said, no car is really loud sub ~3000 rpm, at least not in the way I imagine you're implying.
As someone who loves cars, I wildly disagree. There are modded cars that idle across the street that wake me up through my double-paned windows. A very popular mod is to add a downpipe to some cars, which is illegal in California (for emissions reasons), but people still do it and holy fuck it is just so god damn loud. It's great at the race track, not so great when you want to sleep. Sometimes cars are just loud and obnoxious.
> That said, no car is really loud sub ~3000 rpm...
In a past life, I had a '69 Ford 250 with a big-block 390 that would beg to differ... but it got between 4 and 6 mpg so even in 2001 that was too expensive to keep...
how do you know? I live in a major city and I find loud exhausts to be only a fleeting annoyance. I'll admit I hate when people put straight pipes on motorcycles and inline fours, but I love listening to porsches and amgs go by. you might not guess it, since I drive a pretty quiet car myself.
outside of hn, I've never really encountered anyone who was more than mildly annoyed by loud exhausts.
Sure, just as when I lived in a big crowded city I never really encountered anyone who was more than mildly annoyed by graffitti, trash in the street, minor vandalism (broken street lights, etc), and even petty theft.
It just adds up, you know? I own a Porsche and I purposely left the sports exhaust option out (even though you can turn it off, I wasn’t sure if it wasn’t still louder then). Because if using my fun car means annoying everyone else in a radius like they are annoying me when they pass my house, it wouldn’t be that much fun.
Can’t imagine what it must be for parents of young children, when some exhausts are loud enough to wake me up in the middle of the night (and the surrounding car alarms).
You really don't understand car enthusiasm. These are more than just toys for some people. There's a certain soul to them.
And this "nuisance" is overstated. The amount of harm that enthusiasts do in terms of noise and air pollution are absolutely negligible - don't clutch pearls.
I used to live on third Street in SF and quite regularly a huge swarm of insanely loud motorbikes would come by. We'd have to stop talking or rewind the movie we were watching, even with the window closed. With the window open it's literally painful. And that was likely not only impacting the entire building but hundreds of people who live on that street. All so that a bunch of man children can get attention. I can only some that it's a reflection of a general attitude in which they either don't care about the impact of their action on others or are completely oblivious. Either way, it's a poisonous attitude that we don't need in our society and should be punished accordingly.
Edit: why is it important to understand car enthusiasts? I don't understand people who are enthusiastic about fucking children either. I don't need to understand everyone's enthusiasm, especially if it's actively harmful.
>people who are enthusiastic about fucking children either. I don't need to understand everyone's enthusiasm, especially if it's actively harmfu
Because auto modification teaches discipline and determination and is practice for other general skills. This is nothing like fucking children and the fact that you'd equate the two is evidence of your [un]righteous indignation. Your rage is misplaced.
Edit: imagine being this pissed off at computer enthusiasts for buying multiple GPUs and overclocking their machines. It's about the same level of absurdity.
Nobody overclocks their GPU in order to make it more annoying to other people.
If the noise was a unwanted side effect, I'd find this a lot less offensive. Anyone who does anything with the main purpose of harassing others is an ass and should be punished accordingly.
>All so that a bunch of man children can get attention. I can only some that it's a reflection of a general attitude in which they either don't care about the impact of their action on others or are completely oblivious
Again, you don't understand enthusiasts. You have a single stereotype based on the most obnoxious motorcyclists. This is pearl clutching.
Your car creates external effects. No matter how much joy you're giving yourself, if you're causing harm to others, then you're creating the problem. I can buy an air horn and follow you around, but blasting it in your ears is illegal for a reason.
This screed is based on the falsehood that a loud sound is equivalent to a “nice sound”.
One of the loudest exhausts commonly encountered is unaffectionately referred to as a “fart can”
It’s nice in the way dog shit brown is a nice color
In that technically it is opinion that that defines if it’s nice, and if you ask enough people you’ll find some who like it, but most people (including car people) do not find it nice and insult their owners.
If anything car enthusiasts trying to get a better sound go to great lengths to cut some of the loudest resonant frequencies an engine produces (referred to as drone)
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My car is not exceptionally loud and won’t wake up even a suburban neighbor (I live in a city now so it’s parked in an underground garage). If I take it to a race track and wring it by it’s neck, shifting as close to redline as possible, it’s certainly not as quiet but not many cars are in that setting...
The Koenigsegg would probably not be loud puttering around, these cars are designed for refinement. If it’s waking up a neighborhood, it’s because the driver is treating said neighborhood as a raceway, and at that point sound is very low on the consequences that can have.
Sure dude. And as a driver on a motorbike, how about you stay off your cell phone while driving. And, as I frequently see here in California, how about you all also stop smoking blunts while driving?
I should mention that a lot of motorcyclists feel that loud exhausts are a way of protecting themselves from distracted drivers.
German driving is way-way-way better on average than anywhere in the US. The test here is a joke, there is no lane discipline, and most folks drive very selfishly: driving in Germany has always been a much better experience, I'd understand why you'd need to on a bike in the US.
Motorcycles are dangerously loud (to the point of causing hearing damage). They amplify traffic woes when they weave in and out of crowded lanes. Oh and there’s a reason the “biker dude” stereotype exists.
If generating incessant noise is your only way of staying safe on the road, maybe consider getting something not as risky. Drive a car or take the bus. It works for the vast majority of people, maybe they’re on to something eh?
SUVs are probably the safest option. You get your nice isolation and you also get a nice crash cage! I wonder why it's so hard to prove to motorcyclists that this is the most efficient option!?
...Because they don't care about that crap. They are way ahead of your efficiency, often even ahead of the efficiency of a bus. A bike can get 70mpg without very much trouble and some more than 100mpg, and they don't cause traffic congestion in the first place because they occupy little additional space beyond the rider.
Are we talking total environmental impact? Sourcing materials, manufacturing, shipping to point of sale, usage, maintenance and finally disposal?
Edit: just did some research on electric vs. gas vehicles and their total environmental impact. Nothing specifically on motorcycles, but some of the data would apply.
"In a 2015 study, the Union of Concerned Scientists found that gas-powered cars emitted almost double the emissions that contribute to global warming as electric vehicles, which can make up the difference from the manufacturing stage in six to 18 months of driving, depending on the size of the battery."
https://www.businessinsider.com/building-electric-cars-how-m...
Whataboutism at its finest. How to drivers using cell phones diminish the validity of complaints about excessive noise? They're two unrelated problems.
> I should mention that a lot of motorcyclists feel that loud exhausts are a way of protecting themselves from distracted drivers.
Not a motorcyclist, but I’ve heard this from many places. Can say that as a bicyclist, my best pieces of biggest safety equipment were in roughly descending order of importance: having my head in a swivel (vigilance), perfecting a barking shout, really good brakes, and in last place, a helmet. If the helmet comes into play you’re already at least a little fucked.
If I could make bikes louder I probably would.
The one time I’m aware I cut off a motorcyclist, it was his engine that kept me out of his lane (to be fair, he was nearly in my blind spot, which is partly on him)
You need to accept some responsibility when deciding to ride a motorcycle. You're essentially saying you're okay with your body acting as the crumple zone in a crash. If it's so dangerous out there that you need to rumble around at 100dB then maybe it's time to reconsider. Many cars have impressive sound dampening and those that don't have wind noise drowning out almost anything else on the road.
Yes, I choose to have my body be the crumble zone rather then using some innocent child for that purpose from the comfort of a 2 ton piece of armor with blind spots the size of Manhattan. Cars are about the most selfish ways to haul your rump around. I personally don't have loud pipes, but in the context of the damage your car does the complaint is laughable.
Do you really think that you wouldn't kill a child if you crashed into one on a motorcycle, or that the visibility on your motorcycle makes that outcome impossible?
Car safety for occupants and pedestrians has improved dramatically over the last few decades. The same cannot be said for motorcycles.
Yes I do. And what's more, both statistics and my insurance company agree.
The simple fact that my own life is at stake, makes me much more aware of my surroundings. This is a well researched neurological fact. Also, a 450lbs projectile has a lot less impact then a 2 ton one at the same speed. It is also significantly harder to hit a child with a 3' wide vehicle then with a 7' wide one..
Car safety for occupants has increased and due to a side effect of aerodynamic design survivability of a pedestrian crash has marginally increased.
Due to gigantic A pillars and a false sense of security, the amount of accidents has significantly increased and the safety of other road users is at an all time low.
Did you double check that your lower insurance rates aren't due to non-existant injury/medical and uninsured motorist coverage, reduced value of the vehicle, and the vehicle being classified as a recreational vehicle vs daily driver?
(450lbs motorcyle + 160lb rider) vs 60lb child = death.
Riding a motorcycle while impaired, is one of the leading causes of motorcycle fatalities. Failing to wear PPE accounts for a significant number of potentially non-fatal accidents becoming fatal. Distracted riding is also on the rise. This doesn't seem to imply motorcyclists are inherently more aware of their surroundings or making better decisions due to the increased danger.
Yes, I have all that. It's pretty much a legal requirement for any motorvehicle in any state I know off.
I am very aware of all the leading causes of death for motorcyclists. Your conclusion doesn't make sense though, there is a ridiculous amount of selection bias in there: they only looked at people who died...
By and far motorcyclists are very safety concious people, they have to be: those who aren't tend to quit quickly, one way or another.
Personally, I have ridden a motorcycle as my primary form of transportation for over 30 years without any meaningful incidents
I race motorcycless and so have some experience with high horsepower small engines. My first thought is I wonder how high the compression is to get this HP with only 3 cylinders? With high compression, everything wears much faster and components like pistons, connecting rods, and bearings need to be replaced at regular intervals for the engine to remain reliable. Additionally frequent oil changes become necessary as the oil breaks down more quickly under these conditions and metal shavings from wear build up in the oil. Things like connecting rods become stressed and need to be replaced at regular intervals for the engine to remain reliable.
I’d imagine that the Konigsegg buyer probably doesn’t care about maintenance costs but they might be irritated at the service intervals.
Interesting that they use the mean of the absolute value instead of root-mean-square as in other sinusoidal applications (63.7% of the peak value vs. 70.7% for RMS).
RMS has all sorts of interesting properties, being directly proportional to effects that result from the square of the quantity being measured such as force on the connecting rods or acceleration of the piston, but mean piston speed is easier to calculate from familiar quantities to an automotive engineer like stroke and RPM. I wonder if engine longevity is actually proportional to mean piston speed or RPM, it would be easy to mistake the 7% difference given all the confounding factors...
If they're only different by a constant factor, then both have the same interesting properties and neither is much more difficult to calculate than the other -- at least for sinusoids.
If something is proportional to one, it's naturally proportional to the other.
Almost anyone on this website could answer better than me for this, was always weak in math, but I believe they differ by a constant factor for a sine, but for a more complex waveform they will not (well, the amount they vary by would be different for each waveform).
It's true that the factor between RMS vs peak-to-peak is different for e.g. a sine vs a sawtooth wave, but for other waveforms its still a constant (just a different one), and for this engine it should be just about a sine wave anyway.
And Formula 1 engines are only meant to last hours (yes really, most engines don't even last one season), albeit at ridiculously high stress levels.
If we extrapolate from this, where high performance drag cars typically last minutes (20 years ago they only lasted seconds), that would mean this engine might only be good for a couple of hours of driving around the track. Assuming this is true (I am not saying it is), this engine would be pretty worthless for anything other than being a collector's item or being used for 1 or 2 races before it had to be retired.
and F1 tires only last a few laps. it’s all designed in. the F1 engines don’t expire in a few races because they can’t build them more robust, they expire in a few races because the rules require them to last that long. they could last all season (yes, with same performance) if they were required to do so.
Indeed. Back in the days they used to weld the cylinder heads to the engine block before qualifying, so they could run it that bit harder to get that extra bit of performance. Obviously not something that increases the lifespan of the engine...
Similarly in current F1, they know quite well how much life they have of the engine, and how much life a quali lap takes from the engine compared to a calm outlap.
If the regulations mandated a single engine per season they could do it, though they'd mostly just turn everything down.
I'd be surprised that they could build tires to go on for 22 GPs with the same performances, but who knows. The goal was raw speed when there were multiple manufacturers. The only year with a rule to forbid tyre changes during a race was 2005. Maybe you remember that Indianapolis GP with only 6 cars racing because thr banking destroyed the tires of the other manufacturer (which won all the other GPs.)
7 races per engine including Saturday practice and qualifying. It's about 5 hours per weekend times 7. 35 hours, which a commuter car does in about 10 days.
> yes really, most engines don't even last one season
"Even" one season? If they last more than one race it means they didn't push it hard enough so it makes sense that the engine last just marginally more than the race.
The new rules set the limit at 3 engines per season, which is 21 races plus testing. So it's a balancing act, but you definitely need to reuse the engine for more than 1 race.
And for those not in the know, a F1 race is ~305km, and they have do two days of practice plus qualifying in a race weekend using the engines they have (same engine for qualifying as for racing). There's some more detail in this[1] article, where they point out the Mercedes F1 engine did over 3000 miles (~4900km) during pre-season testing without issues (most in race-like conditions).
That said, from my impression it is usually the turbo or the hybrid systems that break down, it's rare for the actual engine block to be the issue barring specific production issues.
Koenigsegg Gemera use their direct drive system, with only one gear. So the engine will only see max revs when you're traveling at top speed, which will probably be quite rare since it's 400 km/h (249 mph).
Cars in the class of Koenigseggs are actually rarely driven, things like wear and tear are often not a concern at all, what's more important is exclusivity and exotic-ness. Maintenance is something a buyer in this class doesn't even consider in my experience.
I'm curious if it will be adopted. I assume cost is a big issue. Hyundai considered it, but decided to roll their own (of course they were already pretty invested in their own technology, but Hyundai is known for reliability and Koenigsegg is not).
Exactly. VVT (variable valve timing) was promising for decades, starting back from the early 1900, then in the 1980's VTEC ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTEC ) was much more promising, and now this. The delay between each major step is approximately half the previous one, let's plan for a new one in ~20 years.
1.0 litre 3 cyl petrol engine in my car makes 120hp and gets 50mpg extra urban. It has dynamic servicing and first service is currently shown as 550 days away. Obviously the 2.0 konigsegg makes 5 times the HP, but maybe double the cylinder volume and half the service time and you can ramp up the compression enough to multiply the hp by 5?
That's relatively low hp for the displacement, so it's harder to extrapolate.
For another comparison the 3 cylinder 765cc engine from Triumph (street version) does about 120 or 125 with a red line of 12.5k if I recall correctly. In racing form (i.e. the moto2 engine version) it pushes about 140 (I think mostly via tuning and a bit higher red line). This is naturally aspirated but probably a good rough guestimate for bounds of what you can do on regular fuel and air. This also shows you why just ramping up the compression won't get you there, you need to change the air pressure too.
For the street version of the triumph engine the service interval is something like 10k miles, valves every 2nd one.
If you scale that linearly you still "only" get close to 350 , so you have an idea of how much stress is on this design to push 600 on 2l.
By comparison the inline 4s in motogp make 250+ from 1 liter, so that's getting closer. They do probably represent something close to what is possible without induction though.
> If you scale that linearly you still "only" get close to 350 , so you have an idea of how much stress is on this design to push 600 on 2l.
-Removed, I misunderstood the original post, still you can design an engine with more power if torque requirements are low, and they claim 280hp at 2l which is a lot but doable if you don't intent to run it like a roadcar and have infinite budget like with those super/hypercars-
Agree low torque requirements help, which has a lot to do with the rest of the drivetrain, i.e. how you want to actually deliver power and at what speeds.
It’s also a high rpm motor, which will still require lower tolerances and better materials. I don’t recall but don’t higher rpms have a lower rate of wear than higher compression?
Tolerances are like margins of error. As the error range goes down, the exactness of the specification goes up. Or as the others said, the precision.
If it makes you feel any better, I have to pause for a beat any time I try to put an adjective in front of 'tolerances' to make sure I don't sound like a dope.
The cylinders are especially large, but the displacement is still only 2ℓ. I think the unusually high horsepower for a 2ℓ engine is not just because of high compression but also because ⓐ they normally run it at especially high revs, like your motorcycles; ⓑ they run it on a two-stroke cycle at low speeds, up to 3krpm; and ⓒ they optimized it to run on alcohols, which as you know have lower energy density but are better at keeping the engine cool.
Car oil can get additives that motorcycles cannot get because the engine and transmission share oil. Friction modifier can extend effective oil lifespan. 600 hp also requires e85.
EngineeringExpalined has a great video[0] on the overall mechanics of the system.
Sadly, I don't expect to see this in regular Ford or Toyotas any time soon. The cost benefit combined design upgrade and tooling change is just not practical.
Well, yes. But I've never ridden a triple that wasn't quick. A triumph street triple has plenty of power and a good top end, a triump __speed__ triple, or MV Agusta Brutale has ludicrous power and a good top end. A triumph rocket 3 is, well, its' a cruiser, so it's never built for a top end. A Yammy MT-09 is lower on top end, sure. But it's the cheapest of the bunch and has lots of torque.
They only lack top end power compared to the 1000cc inline-4 engines which sit in track-focused supersports.
Which is like saying, "I found the Ford Focus RS lacking in power compared to a Porsche 911 Turbo S".
It's interesting that in naturally aspirated mode, the engine creates around 280hp. That's right around what SUVs and Crossovers are currently producing.
This engine has a real potential to be a game-changer; if the freevalve tech can be made cheap enough and reliable enough for mass production, it could really improve average efficiency and emissions for a large number of cars. Great Tech!
The turbocharged peak power was said to come at 7500rpm, with peak torque of 443lb at 3000rpm which is pretty good! I would expect NA torque to be somewhere in the mid 200lb region, which is comparable to the 2020 Nissan Pathfinder in both V6 and I4 petrol variants. The I4 Turbo diesel obviously putting out far more torque at lower RPM making it more usable. But there is no doubt that Koenigsegg has made a huge leap here. The only missing datapoint is reliability. How aggresive is the tuning on the engine to get these numbers and does that effect it's long term robustness?
You're right, I wouldn't expect this level of performance from a commuter car with similar displacement.
That said, Hyundai recently developed their Continuously Variable Valve Duration system, which looks to solve changing valve duration more affordably in an all mechanical system.
You might be thinking of VVT or variable valve timing, which changes when the valve opens. Variable valve duration changes for how long it opens for and I think is a recent innovation. The latter allows for more efficiency as the engine at different speeds and loads requires more or less lift duration. It's also continuously variable across the RPM/load table, wheras most VVT systems just swap between two different activation timings and as such are always a compromise somewhere in the range.
I have also seen a system that swaps between two different cam lobes entirely, offering two different cam profiles which can also vary valve duration and not just timing, but you're limited to two settings again, where these newer systems offer complete variability.
I might be misremembering, but I thought the new bmw system was dual cam - so exactly what you are suggesting, a trade off in the middle, but not vvt.
At any rate, variable cam systems in bikes have certainly been around since the early 80s with one of the 400c cbrs. They never really caught on but there are a bunch of variations.
Not anymore. F1 cars use just 3 engines for the whole season. Lots of other categories use one single engine per seasone. The "one engine per event" era is long gone.
Internal combustion is over. There's no future to be improved in it, it's going away. We simply can't afford to use it any more, and it is being phased out.
You're right, but for wrong reasons. Internal combustion engines will go away, because electric vehicles' cost curve will destroy them.
IIRC, batteries get 13% cheaper per year, and that means price halves every 5 years or so. Right now 1 kWh of batteries (including BMS) costs about $100. So in 2025 one kWh of batteries will probably cost only $50.
Electric vehicles purchase price will simply be cheaper unless ICE vehicles get subsidies. At that point, for economical consideration you'll need to have pretty compelling reasons to buy an ICE vehicle.
Ultimately even gas station network will be decimated and gradually fade away.
I agree ICE are never going away, but I do think we're seeing the last "innovations" on ICE engines.
No OEM is going to sink billions into R&D when they know everything will go electric in the near future.
So while you may be able to by an ICE Catapillar D10 or a John Deer Tractor or other machinery in 2050, I'd bet it's engine isn't any different to the 2020 version. Same goes for sports cars.
ICE technical advances are in the same territory as advances in CRT, film based photography and coiled coil light bulbs. Nobody took LCD screens, digital cameras and LED lights seriously in the 1990's but here we are today where we only use the new stuff.
Flat panel yield was a problem in the 1990s, every screen had dead pixels. The magic of film grain and a Pentax SLR wasn't that special, kids today don't even know or care. The warm colours of old lightbulbs are forgotten too. Yet there was amazing analog engineering and precision mass manufacturing with these products.
ICE is going that way. The yield on the battery part is being solved, aka range/price. For performance the electric motor has no equal and things like regen are game changing. In time ICE will have specialist applications such as for creating electricity to charge a battery in remote locations, that will be about it. The tech innovation and investment has moved on to electric power trains. The horse has gone and it is too late to shut the gate. Nostalgia is not enough for ICE particularly when the baby boomers have moved on.
"The warm colours of old lightbulbs are forgotten too"
This is obviously not true; when I go to a hardware or home improvement store, there is all sorts of information on the color temperature and purported color reproduction quality of the light bulbs. And "warm white" LEDs that are supposed to imitate incandescent are ubiquitous.
The kind of batteries that we're talking about simply do not operate outside of the 0-35 degree Celsius temperature range. It will never be "ICE to charge batteries" because the batteries will not cycle in those conditions. North of 16C is optimal. The limitation is the chemistry.
If you look at the temperature variance across the planet, you'll realize that there's vast numbers of people for whom batteries are never going to be an option.
I look at it a different way, from a first world perspective, the power still occasionally goes out. As a comfortably middle class American, you wouldn't say "I have a $200K house and it's the latest tech and therefore it must run only on electricity". For the sake of argument, let's say you don't use natural gas or heating oil. You still are not going to say "oh, I won't buy a Honda generator because it's more important to maintain my electrical purity than to not freeze after a storm".
Not everybody needs or buys a generator, but there's no trend to eliminate them, and in the big picture, using them is the exception, so it's not what we should be focusing on to cut CO2 emission.
So, my opinion is that most people who have a comfortable first world lifestyle in the long run will end up with PHEVs. Not as a transition to all-electric, because it's just as dumb to have a battery that goes 400 miles to avoid range anxiety as it is to have an ICE that makes 400 hp to avoid "acceleration anxiety". All people need is a very small ICE, a very small battery, and a fairly large electric motor.
All the arguments about why pure electric vehicles are the future are based on emotional feelings about purity, not logic, I think.
Except that maybe I'm wrong because big multibillion auto companies are betting on BEVs. Like, Ford and Chevy disagree with me. But Toyota seems to think differently, for now.
the end is in sight, but we're still at least a couple decades away from having ICEs totally phased out. if we're gonna keep building new ones for a while, why not try to improve them?
It's even more impressive that this is only a three-cylinder engine. It is super exciting to see Freevalve in a production car (even though it is generally unobtainable for the vast majority of people). I have high hopes that this tech will be licensed out and used in more affordable ICE cars.
>AI engine management software for Freevalve engines like the TFG. "The system will learn over time the best ways to operate the valves, what's most frugal, what's cleanest… It will eventually start doing things we’ve never thought of," Koenigsegg says. "It'll float in and out of different ways of combusting by itself, eventually in ways not completely understandable to us."
sounds like the blue-collar jobs of the future like car engine mechanic would need a Stanford AI degree.
Camshafts definitely got to go. Like carburetors it has been a solution from pre-electronic age. The variable timing has been a workaround for the last 3 decades, it is kind of a complication on top of the camshaft approach. These days though i don't understand while mainstream car manufacturers wouldn't just go for the fully independent valve approach like that "Freevalve", i.e. each valve is driven by its own solenoid/pneumo/hydro actuator controlled by the computer - such approach looks simpler and cheaper to me (may be because i'm in software :)
This is just dumb marketing speak for a simple hill climber with a handful of dimensions and a few heuristics. Ecu's have been doing this for like 25 years.
Basically, AI=bullshit in any marketing copy at this point.
This is really cool tech, amazing that somebody's managed to get dynamic valve action working reliably. What I'm wondering, though, it what the benefit is of using it on a hybrid car.
It sounds like they did connect the engine mechanically to the drivetrain, with the electric motors mostly assisting. But why not have it just directly drive a generator, with some decent sized batteries? An engine that only runs at full power at a single RPM to charge batteries doesn't benefit much from elaborate valve technology.
Looks amazing, I guess it simply wasn't possible (or extremely difficult and expensive) to create something like this before the advent of miniature+powerful computing. I wonder how else can ICE's be improved with more onboard processing power
Probably totally possible with late 80s tech in ECUs. They already had dynamic spark retardation and fuel maps that changed based on rpm/speed/other factors. Freevalve to me is another natural step after that. We already see dynamic valve timing with VVT and the like. Now it's just infinitly variable. Another benefit is that you are able to tune at all RPMs and produce more horse with less power. I love it
So, this is all fascinating and nice advertisement for this racing company which might want to compete in Formula 1... But: what problem is actually solved by this thing?
These engines remind me of the wankel rotary era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine
Great idea that really worked but let down by reliability issues. I hope the Koenigsegg gets into some sort of mass production so we can see how reliable and durable it is though!
This is really cool, but estimating 280HP at 2L when naturally aspirated has already been beaten. The party trick here is definitely the pneumatic valve control being able to switch combustion cycles on the fly. If you just want max power per liter, Nissan's 3 cyl from 2014 claims 400HP at 1.5L [0]. I'm guessing this high-output small engine tech will never come down to the consumer level since they all rev at 7-8k rpm. If there was a way to build a 3cyl SUV, I'm sure someone would have done it by now.
"If there was a way to build a 3cyl SUV, I'm sure someone would have done it by now."
Ford's new Escape has a 1.5L turbo I-3 on the base model.
And Ford also used to have a 1.0L turbo I-3 in some models of Fiesta and/or Focus, although it was kind of obscure and may have only come with a manual transmission (in the US).
That Nissan is also turbocharged, so 280 isn't the right comparsion. you should compare 400hp/1.5L to 600hp/2l. Or perhaps 500hp/2l on regular gas - either way they are similar.
I really love the idea of a camless engine. Is there some fundamental reason it hasn't been more widely adopted other than tooling change costs? I can't imagine the solenoids are that much more expensive than a ground camshaft and all of the supporting hardware at volume.
This very much feels like the transition from brushed to brushless motors to me - super cheap compute power and sensors unlocking a much more efficient way to drive electric motors. As far as I know there's no _real_ advantage to brushed motors except in dirt cheap applications where a potentiometer is the most expensive speed controller you can afford.
Software-controlled valves have been a holy grail for ICE for a long time, and now they're here. This is an amazing accomplishment. Unfortunately ICE are rapidly becoming obsolete.
There are already plenty of good 2.0 liter engines that represent little compromise. If the tax regime hasn't adjusted to punish Audi S3 buyers, well, there would be even less to be gained by making special accommodations to tax a small handful of supercars based on displacement.
I just got a Boxster, and while the engine in it is amazing, this would be a hell of a swap (not at all easy, perhaps next to impossible, but the idea of a 600hp engine that actually fits in the Boxster... whoa).
Edit: I knew their cars were expensive, but it seems Koenigsegg cars start around 2mm and up to to 10mm? I'm gonna guess that there's zero chance of just buying an engine for $10k and throwing it in another car like an LS swap
Pancake axial flux is a really compact and powerful combination. If they ever get them weighing so little that they could be unsprung weight there will be a revolution in drive trains.
Not really - the Boxster Spyder and Cayman GT4 variants are already in the 400s, and use transmissions capable of much much more than that (as seen in other Porsche vehicles).
I love these way out of the box thinking approached for super cars because that type of innovation can lead to break throughs "down the road" pun intended. Having said that, a configuration I have thought about is the idea of a hybrid that uses a turbine with magnetic bearings turning a high efficiency generator. Probably been thought of but I have not seen it. HN will point me to something I bet :)
Pneumatic valves are expensive. They have been used in F1. Similarly, despite overhead 𝚟̶𝚊̶𝚕̶𝚟̶𝚎̶𝚜̶ cams being invented in 1902, they weren’t popularized until the 1983 Toyota Corolla, and you can still find pushrods in the 2020 Corvette.
Seems you misspoke. We've been using overhead valves far longer than 1983. Overhead cam is probably what you meant. Though depending on how mainstream it needs to be in order to be considered 'popular', the first dual overhead cam engine was in production in the 20s, IIRC.
Thanks for the direct link! I can't find any vimeo reference in the page source, perhaps it depends on country or adblocker or whatever.
I guess part of my confusion stemmed from mixing up the camshaft and the crankshaft (the former seems relatively straightforward to replace in a conventional motor, the latter not so much...) O:)
OT, but kind of related: Would it be possible build an air-cooled engine that runs on alcohol, and uses water/methanol spray in the intake air such that the temperature of the engine is controlled by the amount of water/meth?
I wonder if this is an interference or non interference design. If it is the former, one glitch in the valve timing and the engine would need a rebuild. Hopefully it is the later.
Computer controlled valves are an old idea. It's been a "can be done, but not worth the trouble and added complexity" thing for years. This is more like the last gasp of fuel-powered supercars, as the IC engine people try to stay relevant.
> "We don't make pure electric cars because for the time being, we think they're too heavy, and they don't make a cool sound. And as long as we can be CO2 neutral and frugal and clean comparatively, we will push the combustion engine."
I read that as "we don't give a fuck about emissions because we like vroom vroom and we plant a few trees to not feel bad about it".
I agree about the weight problem of large lithium batteries, and light hydrogen fuel cells may not deliver enough pick power, so I don't have a good solution for hyper cars. I just think that ICE engines shouldn't be in cars ASAP.
More like “we don’t care about emissions because we only make 20 cars per year.”
It makes no sense to get all up in arms about carbon emissions from sports cars. As a fraction of the market, even if you include more mainstream manufacturers like Porsche, they’re totally inconsequential.
But of course, if you are really just using carbon emissions as a way to preach and brag about your morally superior lifestyle and/or political positions, expensive sports cars are a great target.
It's a philosophical question. Is the rarity actually a good excuse?
I'd say no. We should not burn carbon without serious need, as rarity or not. This particular case is more complicated though - they are developing technology which may be a net saver in CO2 emissions in which case it sorta pays for itself.
No ones needs a sports car. Or a 40” TV. Or to go golfing. Or Broadway shows. Movie theaters - for that matter, no one needs movies at all! Recreational international travel - totally unecesssary. Why does anyone need more than one house? A house larger than 2,000 square feet? Why does anyone need more than 2 kids?
Given the cost of Lithium Ion batteries, especially the human costs of mining Cobalt, I would argue that hybrids are the better technology today.
You reduce the Lithium-Ion battery size, and then increase the range of cars. Li-Ion is also extremely heavy, reducing range, increasing wear-and-tear on the road.
In overall costs, hybrids make sense today. We need another magnitude of improvements before Li-Ion batteries can completely replace ICE.
But we are absolutely at the point where Li-Ion can augment cars in hybrid form. Maybe in a few years, a Cobalt-free battery would be mass produced (or other chemistry that doesn't need to be sourced from war-torn nations).
And in the meantime, increasing ICE efficiency by 30% (on TOP of the Hybrid savings) is only a good thing.
I think the human cost of gaz is underestimated. Between the wars, the pollution, the destruction of nature, it's not great. True some cobalt mines are a shame, some are even using children. I don't think any car manufacturer wants to be associated with that, so they try to use providers from "ok" mines.
The range isn't really a problem for new electric cars and the weight will hopefully go down. Personally I think that the hybrids I can afford drive like shit compared to the fully electric cars I can afford.
This car has 3 electric motors and one of the smallest combustions engines ever in a hypercar while also running on carbon-neutral/clean fuel. Plenty of other hypercars also have electric assist and advanced engine management that gets them higher fuel efficiency and lower emissions than your average family SUV. Your concern is entirely misplaced.
Also you should focus on industrial uses like container ships and coal power plants that create 1000x more pollution if you're really that serious about it. The world is moving as fast as it can, but oil is used for more than just transportation and it's not changing overnight.
If you produce ethanol from locally sourced biomass using renewable power, you’ll get as close as you can. The figure 60% CO2 emission reduction (compared to gasoline) is often floated.
Completely carbon neutral is difficult for any product of course. E85 is 15-24% gasoline too, which is neither renewable or carbon neutral.
I still don’t think its a very good idea (cars are thirsty, infrastructure expensive, worse than both biogas and EV’s for climate etc).
There are far bigger things to worry about than a limited run hypercar from a boutique manufacturer that uses the smallest gas engine, advanced engine management, and 3 electric motors to improve fuel efficiency and exhaust vastly beyond your typical family car.
ICE doesn’t necessarily mean fossil fuel. In Sweden where these cars come from you’ll find E85 (85% renewable ethanol) at every gas station. Not sure what the situation is like in other countries, but for someone who can afford a car like this, it should be possible to run it carbon neutral or nearly so. CO2 isn’t the only emission from an ICE vehicle however.
Why taking away lands from the nature or the food production to produce ethanol so people can enjoy ICE engine sounds ? Just use the fake engine sounds on the speakers (yes it's a thing).
You might want to reference what actually causes the most pollution. Massive container ships, coal power plants, and manufacturing facilities make consumer ICE vehicles insignificant in pollution potential.
That is to say, a 4500 lb Tesla Model S has 5x the road-wear of a 3000lb Toyota Camry.
If all Tesla Model S drivers were willing to pay 500% the road-taxes to make up for their 5x damages that their cars do to our roads, I think I'll be cool with them using their road-destroying heavy batteries.
You are generally correct that a 4,500lb car will do 5x the road wear per mile than a 3,000lb vehicle. (Although some studies find damage increases closer to a power of 3 not 4). However it’s extremely important to ask... 5 times what number?
The cost per mile in terms of road damage is mainly a function of axle weight and designed load and volume of the road surface. The damage per mile per ESAL (Equivalent Single Axle Load) can vary from $0.03/ESAL-mile to $5.90/ESAL-mile when you exceed the design load of the road. Low volume roads will have a higher ESAL because of natural wear exceeding use-based wear.
Since passenger cars will never exceed the design load of a road, this is not a factor in our analysis (but it’s a very big deal for heavy trucks, particularly on rural roads). Since low volume road wear is predominantly due to natural causes and not road-use we should probably exclude those as well.
Just to put this in perspective, the cost per mile per ESAL of $0.09 (a relatively high volume road that operates within vehicle weight design spec), gives us road damage for a light passenger car (3,000 pounds) or 0.0002 ESAL which equates to $1.80 per 100,000 miles.
Increasing to an ESAL of 0.001 results in a wear cost of $9.00 per 100,000 miles.
Basically all road wear comes from heavy trucks with an ESAL > 1. This is compounded when those trucks exceed the design load of the road, which can add another up to 500x multiplier on the damage per mile driven.
The damage/road wear cost for passenger vehicles is a barely even a rounding error by comparison.
Based on this simple analysis, I do not believe it is at all justified to claim that Teslas (or EVs in general) have “road-destroying heavy batteries.”
This is true. The real problem is trucking, and the way roads are paid for it amounts to a massive public subsidy to that industry, with lots of market distortion around that (see also, state of US rail systems).
In the sense that passenger cars aren’t causing really any wear and tear to our major roadways, this is absolutely true.
However, the value of having those major highways is still extremely high to passenger cars and trucks alike.
I benefit greatly from well maintained roads, even if my use of those roads is not damaging the road basically at all.
So you need a weighted analysis of use and value as well as wear & tear to come up with a “fair” allocation of costs.
Even people who don’t own a car benefit greatly from those roads, due to their logistical necessity for everyday life, not to mention mail and package delivery to their homes. To the extent that passenger car drivers overpay for their commensurate road wear & tear, car owners are subsidizing non-car-owners because the goods they buy are cheaper than they would be if they had to pay for the true fully loaded logistics cost.
You could charge the trucking companies more. Then prices of transported goods would just increase to compensate and we’d all be roughly back in the same place maybe? Non-car owners would be worse off.
To the extent that roads are being subsidized more than rail then this would distort the market and limit freight volumes. I have a feeling that the markets are not tremendously out of balance, and that it’s not like we’re sitting on massive unused rail freight capacity that just can’t operate profitably because roads aren’t expensive enough? But that’s a whole different topic.
Righ, the system as a whole is useful. But if truck traffic wasn't as heavy/damaging, you would pay less to enjoy the same benefits, give or take.
I think the argument made by some transport people is that if we made (particularly) the trucking industry pay more directly, as you say we would be roughly back in the same place except variant freight methods (e.g. rail for long distances) might become competitive enough to bring overall costs down.
I don't know the truth of this, but we've been subsidizing trucking long enough that I don't think current rail capacity is a good indicator one way or another. It seem plausible - it's clear there is a market distortion but not clear exactly what it is.
One nit-pick, it's not clear the non-car owners would be worse off so long as whatever payment mechanism we used didn't create a free-rider class of passenger vehicles.
To the extent that car owners are subsidizing the trucking industry, and to the extent that trucking industry subsidies flow through to the cost of goods delivered by trucks (the same thing as saying that increased trucking costs flow through to goods delivered by truck), then shifting the balance necessarily means car owners paying less and non-car owners paying more.
I will admit I stumbled upon this conclusion and felt it was ironically juicy and a bit provocative, but it seems like pretty solid macroeconomics to me!
Agreed, I worded that badly - what I meant is that non-car owners could still save more by not driving than the delta on the goods, potentially, as they are paying only the fractional cost that they are actually consuming, if everything else was "correctly" redistributed.
This is all complicated though by the way we actually pay for all of this, so it's not as simple as car owners subsidizing. It's not like the gas tax covers this.
This is a performance car company. Weight is 100% relevant, it will help with acceleration and deceleration performance, cornering especially at speeds low enough that down force isn't determining your grip, and general responsiveness.
The average exotic burns about 1/3rd the amount fuel per year as does a typical hybrid vehicle. The reason being, exotics are driven 1/10th as much. And the environmental impact of all exotic cars in existence combined would be easily lost in a rounding error. They're essentially irrelevant to environmental impact. Nobody uses them as primary transportation.
I think a main reason why people in Europe don't buy the huge American pickup trucks to commute is because of that. They know everyone will joke about their penis size all the time, forever.
The roads in European cities are generally speaking much smaller than in the US. You'd have real difficulty navigating the roads in a pickup truck in Europe.
And European wallets. That side of the pond prefers spending less on cars to begin with, and is also usually taxed on CO2 on top of the high gas prices. I doubt the average Asda has a dozen late model 5L+ V8 vehicles out front with prices >$50,000 USD. But the average Walmart in the US does.
hauling a large trailer (we have ones that attach to a platform installed in the middle of a pick-up truck bed, like a smaller version of commercial truck transport)
hauling dry ice, compressed gas, liquid nitrogen, or anything else that could displace the air in a cargo van
hauling roadkill, especially things like skunks
hauling small vehicles such as ride-on lawnmowers, ATVs, go carts, motorcycles, etc.
I don't see how they fail in such things. I know I have been in a cargo van that was hauling motorcycles in the back of it, so I don't really see how that's an issue either.
Impressive tech, but I'd by lying if I said this doesn't rub me the wrong way. How do you mean combustion being CO2 neutral? And cool sound, this is one of my pet peeves. Why does a rich guy's wish for a "cool sound" in his sports car justify being a nuisance to other people? Motorbikes are the worst offender here. Sound limitations should be a lot stricter than they are.