Entry-level motorcycles too often feel like beginner bikes. Even if they don’t have training wheels, they have the vibe of first bicycles that are quickly outgrown and forgotten.

BMW has escaped this trap with the G 310 R, which is an ideal starter bike because of its affordable $4,995 price tag, its rider-friendly low seat that makes it easier to plant both feet on the ground, and its 349-lb. curb weight. The company even trimmed its regular $495 destination fee to $245 to help keep the price within reach for buyers on a budget.

BMW tells me that the G 310 R is a favorite at Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s Basic RiderCourse. It is easy to see why, considering the bike’s combination of racy styling and ease of use.

But anyone who decides to start out on a G 310 R shouldn’t feel like it is a temporary ride, waiting to be replaced by a “real” bike once the owner gains some experience. That’s because the G 310 R provides “real” big technology like standard anti-lock brakes (ABS) and a sophisticated suspension that includes an inverted fork for the front wheel and a long-wheelbase cast aluminum swingarm for the rear.

Inverting the fork (also called “upside down” forks”) bolts the heavy forks sliders into the triple clamps that secure them to the bike’s steering head, leaving the lightweight tubes to stretch down to the axle. That leaves the lighter tubes as the unsprung mass that has to travel up and down with the road surface while the heavier part is fixed in place. This contributes to more responsive front suspension.

Meanwhile, the lengthy swingarm to the rear axle lends the bike greater stability compared to a short swingarm.

The value of anti-lock brakes should be self-evident, but to recap, the BMW’s computer prevents riders from locking a wheel under heavy braking. In a car, this produces a slide and prolongs stopping distances. On a bike, if the front wheel locks, it tends to immediately slip to one side or the other and pitch the rider to the ground. 

If the rear wheel locks, the bike will start to slide sideways. Riders’ typical response to this is to release pressure to the rear brake. Doing so while the bike is not pointed in the direction of travel when the rear tire regains traction causes the bike to catapult the rider off in a spectacular and painful “high side” crash. 

ABS is worth its weight in cryptocurrency because it prevents both kinds of crashes by ensuring that the wheels keep turning until the bike comes to a complete stop. It is also important because most riders, when faced with a potential crash, fail to apply the brakes hard enough. Ideally, knowing that they can’t lock the brakes will encourage more riders to brake harder so that maybe more of them will stop short of hitting the obstacle ahead.

Regardless, riding the Cosmic Black G 310 R test bike was enough fun to put such sober considerations in the background. I had the opportunity to test it alongside BMW’s sexy S 1000 R and I can confirm that the smaller bike held its own while slicing through mountain switchbacks, courtesy of its advanced suspension and light weight.

It also highlighted the G 310 R’s user-friendliness. While the S 1000 R has a very abrupt clutch friction point and brakes that grab aggressively with the slightest application of pressure (very much like Ferrari’s brakes), the G 310 R has a wide, easy-to-engage clutch friction point and brakes that grip progressively, making it very easy for even beginning riders to pull away from a stop and then arrive at the curb like pros instead of the amateurs they are.

Like most of today’s generation of starter bikes, the G 310 R has only one cylinder in its 313-cc engine, when earlier small bikes would have had smoother-running twin-cylinder engines. But the BMW’s 34-horsepower single incorporates a counterbalancer, so it revs to its surprisingly high 9,500-rpm redline with unexpected smoothness. This makes it easier to keep the engine spinning out as much power as possible while clicking through the six-speed transmission, letting the G 310 R feel adequately powerful.

The bike’s engine has an unorthodox configuration, with the cylinder tilting rearward like the back half of a Harley-Davidson V-twin. As with the Harley’s rear cylinder, that puts the BMW’s intake system in front, with the exhaust pipe trailing off the rear, which is the opposite of most single-cylinder bikes.

The rear-leaning cylinder lets the bottom of the engine and the heavy transmission shafts that live there slide forward, shifting the bike’s balance onto the front wheel for greater stability. It also clears space behind the transmission for the aforementioned long rear swingarm.

All of this speaks to the benefit of rethinking the engineering challenge from the beginning of a project and dismissing convention to deliver a superior result. The G 310 R is fun to ride for riders of all levels, not just beginners. But it treats them especially well, just as the Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s rider’s school. The BMW engineer team should be proud of their clever solutions to creating an affordable bike that is a true BMW.

The post 2024 BMW G 310 R review: A starter bike you won’t outgrow appeared first on Popular Science.

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There used to be a joke that if Microsoft made cars, your car would crash twice a day for no reason at all. But the reality of software-defined cars (that is, vehicles in which clever coding has as much say as masterful machining in determining a car’s characteristics) is demonstrated by the 2024 Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray, whose smart software lets the car’s new electric motor deliver supplemental power to the front wheels so imperceptibly that the driver would have trouble guessing that the latest version of America’s sports car has all-wheel drive.

That’s because the Corvette’s signature 6.2-liter, overhead-valve, LT2 small block V8 is still roaring, powering the rear wheels with its 495 horsepower, just like in the base Stingray model. But now there’s that 160-hp electric motor up front, running off a 1.9 kilowatt-hour array of LG lithium-ion batteries deftly tucked into the car’s central tunnel.

This $104,295 vehicle is a regular hybrid-electric, with no external power plug, so the battery is small and gets its juice entirely from the gas engine and from regenerative braking that turns the electric motor into a generator when the car slows. Having that extra 160 hp and 125 lb.-ft. torque on tap is “like having a nitrous oxide tank that fills itself,” remarked chief engineer Josh Holder, referring to the “NOS” gas made famous by The Fast and the Furious movie franchise for giving combustion engines a burst of extra power.

The quickest Corvette ever

But rather than the explosive power delivery from NOS, the E-Ray’s omnipresent electric motor “torque fill” just makes the car constantly more muscular. This power, combined with the traction of all-wheel-drive, makes the E-Ray the quickest Corvette ever, with a 0-60 mph acceleration of 2.5 seconds and a 10.5-second quarter mile time.

Those times are achieved using the E-Ray’s Performance Launch mode, which uses the car’s various software-controlled systems to optimize power delivery from the gas and electric motors to deliver the fastest possible acceleration.

The driver can keep the E-Ray’s battery topped off so that it is ready to deliver that boost by pressing the Charge+ button. If you ever watch Formula 1 races, you’ll see a car’s rear light flashing when the driver is building the state of charge in its battery in preparation for a passing attempt on a car ahead. The E-Ray’s Charge+ button on the center console, down by the driver’s right thigh, ensures that the battery’s virtual NOS tank is fully topped off with electrons.

The Corvette Z06 we tested last year is nearly as quick, but that car produces its power with more noise and drama. The E-Ray appeals to the enthusiast who wants a comfy ride that also happens to be ludicrously fast. And if you need to sneak out of your neighborhood in the morning without annoying the neighbors, let the small block V8 sleep late and cruise out on electric power alone using Stealth mode to reach speeds as high as 45 mph.

Other driving modes with pre-set performance parameters include Tour, Sport, Track, and Weather. Each of those optimizes the car’s sound, power delivery, stability control, traction control, and dynamically adjustable magnetic suspension damping to match those conditions. Additionally, drivers can select their own preferences in My Mode and Z Mode.

Driving the Corvette E-Ray on and off the track

The E-Ray rolls on the same wide wheels wrapped in meaty Michelin rubber and enclosed by the same 3.6-inch wider fenders as the Z06, but the rubber on those wheels is Michelin’s Pilot Sport all-season tire to make the E-Ray compatible with rain and snow. I didn’t encounter those conditions on the roads around Denver or during my track drive at Pikes Peak International Raceway, but I could feel the E-Ray’s stability and surefootedness.

In addition to the all-weather tires, the E-Ray is also available with the same Michelin Pilot Sport 4S summer tires as are used on the base Stingray version. And as on that car, these excellent tires provide the consistent grip, comfort, and durability drivers want in everyday driving. And as I found track testing the Stingray, these tires are really not at home on the track, where they quickly turn hot and greasy compared to true track tires, losing their grip after thrashing through just a few hard corners.

No matter, that’s not the E-Ray’s purpose. Yes, it is fast, but the similarly priced Z06 ($111,295) is the weapon of choice for track rats. The E-Ray is for drivers who want that kind of speed in a car they can enjoy every day in comfort.

Even with its all-wheel-drive traction, the E-Ray is not penalized by sluggish steering response on corner turn-in, as is typically the case with cars that route power through the front wheels. That’s because the computer is smart enough to know when and how much power to send from the electric motor to the front wheels.

It can even let the driver induce a drift in corners, spinning the rear wheels without the front-drive power interfering with the sideways-sliding fun. That car-straightening front power is welcome when driving home from work in bad weather, but it can spoil the fun on the track, so the E-Ray knows when to have the electric drive step back and let the V8 do the work.

A weighty issue 

Just as the E-Ray rolls on the same wide wheels as the Z06, it also packs the same Brembo carbon ceramic brakes inside them to help slow the car. This is in addition to the E-Ray hybrid-electric regenerative braking, which does much of the car’s stopping. 

But the big brakes are important, because while the hybrid system adds braking power, it also adds mass. Chevrolet says the E-Ray weighs 3,774 pounds as a coupe and 3,856 pounds as a convertible, which means that it is about 350 pounds heavier than the Z06 and 400 pounds heavier than the Stingray.

This is in spite of a huge effort by the car’s engineering team to minimize the weight penalty of the electric motor and battery pack. “We put the highest bounty on weight of any car we’ve ever done,” recalled Holder. Even with that effort, electric motors and batteries are still heavy. “It is the heaviest Corvette we’ve ever done,” Holder acknowledged, adding, “but it is the lightest hybrid we’ve ever done.” 

The E-Ray matches the slower Stingray’s EPA fuel economy rating of 19 mpg in combined driving, with a score of 16 mpg city and 24 mpg highway. The Z06’s rating depends on the exact equipment, but it is either 14 mpg or 15 mpg in combined driving. City driving in either case is a dismal 12 mpg.

The added mass is low in the chassis, with the electric motor between the front wheels and the battery pack in the central spine running between the seats in the cockpit, so the center of gravity is low. Engineers mask that weight with savvy chassis control with the magnetically controlled adaptive dampers and the aforementioned massive brakes, so the E-Ray never feels heavy on the road.

As with the seamless power delivery, credit the brainy calibration by the Corvette team’s programmers in creating the reality of their choice rather than the one suggested by physics. It turns out that software-defined vehicles are far better than the old Microsoft joke predicted.

Take a look at my track drive, below:

The post The new electrified E-Ray is the quickest Corvette ever appeared first on Popular Science.

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Here’s a fast fact you may not know: the Brits have dubbed driving 100 mph “doing the ton.” So it is perhaps appropriate that the British supercar-maker McLaren provided me with the opportunity to go two tons—yes, that’s 200 mph—in the company’s Artura hybrid-electric V6 model.

You remember the Artura from my test drive; it’s a $289,000 mid-engine supercar with 671 horsepower and 531 lb.-ft. torque. McLaren says it’ll accelerate to 60 mph in 3.0 seconds and through the quarter-mile in 10.7 seconds. For reference, if a car can do that run in less than 10.0, drag strips require a protective roll cage.

But when people look at a supercar and ask, What’ll it do? they mean top speed. Could the Artura reach the two tons of 200 mph?

It is hard to achieve top speed because, well, it is illegal on public roads outside portions of the German autobahn, and most race tracks don’t have straights long enough to achieve terminal velocity.

Enter the Sun Valley Tour de Force. This is an annual fund-raising charity event in Idaho’s Sun Valley ski region. With a hiatus for Covid, this year’s event was the sixth running of the Tour de Force, which, in exchange for a $2,950 entry fee, lets drivers take a blast along about a mile and a half of state route 75 just north of Ketchum to see how fast they can go. GPS transponders provide official results. The organization raised $1,000,000 this year for the benefit of The Hunger Coalition in Idaho.

I don’t know about you, but when I envision top speed runs, I think of the vast, desolate salt flats in Nevada and Utah. That’s not this. Route 75 is a rural two-lane highway, the sort that adventurous travelers seek out when avoiding the monotony of interstate driving.

[Related: An inside look at the data powering McLaren’s F1 team]

The road is relatively narrow and has little in the way of a shoulder on either side. The surface is old and uneven. The route isn’t even straight. Or flat!

Instead, the cars launch from a start line and drive about half a mile up a slight hill into a fast, gentle left turn that ends with a quick blind crest and then a drive onto the slightly downhill mile straight that is called Phantom Hill to the finish line. The checkered flags marking the finish are in a place called Frostbite Flats, which sounds like where your game piece goes for punishment in Candyland.

The prospect of driving faster than I’ve ever gone before in this setting is daunting. However, the event’s speed record is 253 mph, set by a driver in a Bugatti Chiron, so it is possible to go very fast on this road.

It is the sort of drive I’ve long since decided I wouldn’t do. Cars tend to become like aircraft with no control surfaces at speeds higher than about 150 mph. A generation ago, Car & Driver magazine senior technical editor Don Schroeder was killed during a 200-mph run on a test track, maybe due to a blown tire or seized wheel bearing.

I’ve briefly touched 180 mph at the end of the front straight at Estoril, former site of the Portuguese Grand Prix, in a McLaren Senna and a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ. Both of those cars have thoroughly sorted aerodynamics that kept them stable and on the ground at those speeds. The McLaren engineers were similarly thorough with the design of the Artura, which gave me confidence that the car wouldn’t take flight. This, and the chance to hit 200 mph, sealed the deal. I’d do it!

There is no practice run, though I did have the chance to drive on the highway the day before to scout the lay of the land and the condition of the asphalt. Talking it over with retired Formula 1 driver Stefan Johansson, who McLaren has brought in to drive another one of their cars, I set the powertrain mode to “Track” and put the suspension model on “Comfort” for compliance on the bumpy two-lane highway.

Event organizers station spotters along the route to watch for wildlife or spectators getting too close to the route and provide me a radio for reports of any trouble ahead. The police close off the road at both ends of the course long enough for each run. Mine will take 52 seconds.

Sliding into the Artura’s driver’s seat, I realize the benefit of gull-wing doors, which open the space above the seat when the door is open so it is easier to get in and out while wearing a helmet. I struggle to get my helmet-clad noggin under the roofline, but I’m comfortable once inside.

I’ve made sure to drive the car in the battery regeneration mode on the way to the event, so the hybrid-electric drive system’s battery pack stands at an 80 percent state of charge for the run. As a plug-in hybrid-electric, the Artura’s battery pack could have been fully charged ahead of time, but I couldn’t get a place to plug it in in the hotel’s garage. The ambient temperature is 50 degrees, perfect for making maximum power from the combustion engine.

Sitting behind the wheel, I can see spectators watching from the boundary 100 yards back from the road. In the tall grass, they look like wildlife photographers on the African savanna. By tradition, the first car away is the fellow with the vintage Volkswagen Rabbit pickup truck. He gets close to 90 mph every year and keeps coming back for more.

Next away is a woman in a modified McLaren 720S, whose 218-mph top speed proves to be the fastest time of the day, as warmer temperatures later prevent her father, the car’s owner, from topping her speed.

Then is Johansson, in the brand-new McLaren 750S. He hits 200 mph on the official scoreboard. Two tons!

Then it is my turn. Officials wave me off from the start line, and the Artura squirms, fighting for traction on the launch. It is at triple-digit speeds almost immediately and I ease off the gas as I bend into the left turn, looking for a clear view when I top the peak of the blind crest.

As I clear the hilltop and mat the accelerator pedal, I can’t even make out the finish line flags in the distance, out there on Frostbite Flats. But I do steal a glance at the speedometer: 172.

That seems like a solid foundation for building speed over the next mile. In the cockpit, the Artura sounds great. A hundred yards away from the road, McLaren Houston general manger Pablo Del-Gado is watching. After my run he excitedly reports that from the sidelines, the Artura’s 120-degree V6 was the best-sounding car of the day.

Now at serious speed, I place the Artura in the center of the road. Fortunately, as an arid area, Idaho builds very little water-draining crown into their roads, so there is no concern about getting too far from the centerline and having the car tug its way toward the ditch.

The Artura’s suspension absorbs the bumps and the steering tracks true, with the car going exactly where I want, but things have gotten busy. The drive plays out like a scene from the original Mad Max, when budget-limited director George Miller sped up the film for dramatic effect.

Modern sports cars are programmed to deliver maximum performance for the situation, so I’ve left the transmission in fully automatic mode. Most cars do not achieve their top speed in top gear because that takes the engine rpm out of the peak of the power band. I didn’t realize the Artura would shift to top gear when my foot was on the floor, seeking more speed, so in retrospect, I wish I’d shifted manually and left it in sixth gear rather than letting it upshift to seventh.

Hammering down the straight, the Artura pulled quickly from 172 mph to 199 mph on the speedometer. And stayed there. Thanks to what felt like time dilation in my situation, the digital display seemed to sit maddeningly near 200 mph for minutes. Finally, “199” flickered to “200.”

The speedometer stayed at 200 mph all the way through the finish line. That seemed sufficient to ensure the official results captured that outcome.

Coasting down from 200 mph, previously ludicrous speeds now seem pedestrian. Organizers have warned us to make extra effort to shed speed so that when we approach the parking lot at the end of the run, we are at a speed that is actually safe rather than one that seems safe to a driver who is pumped up on adrenaline and whose perception is distorted by having recently hit two tons.

I get to the parking lot, where attendants point me to my parking slot. Heading over to the official timing and scoring display, I get crushing results from the GPS: 194.98 mph. Not two tons. Dammit. Apparently, the Artura’s speedometer is slightly optimistic. By 2.5 percent, it looks like.

But the in-car GoPro captured the dashboard display, which shows “200.” I have photographic proof of having achieved that speed, even if it comes with a really big asterisk.

Weeks later, organizers whimsically sent me an official-looking speeding ticket from the Blaine County Sheriff’s Office, citing me for my official top speed of 194.98 mph. It is the first time I’ve ever wished for a bigger number on a speeding ticket.

Watch a video of my drive, below:

The post Driving a McLaren at 200 mph is a thrilling, dangerous experience appeared first on Popular Science.

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The divide between the motorcycle and scooter communities has long been deep, as illustrated in the classic 1979 rock flick Quadrophenia, which depicted the strife between the scooter-riding mods and the motorcycling rockers.

Today, there probably aren’t any actual brawls, but you don’t see a lot of crossover between people who ride scooters and those who ride motorcycles. I’m evidence of that because after decades of motorcycling, BMW’s innovative CE 04 electric scooter is my first scooter ride. It was worth the wait to ride the 2023 model, after the bike debuted for the 2022 model year.

The transition is eased by the fact that the CE 04 looks more like a spaceship than a scooter. Think of it as your dainty beach rental scooter augmented by Star Trek tech. Its size and bodywork fooled a good many motorcyclists into giving me the wave as they passed, an acknowledgement not generally extended to pilots of mere scooters.

There are other aspects of the CE 04 that make it much more than a Bermudan rental ride. There is the price tag, which starts at $11,795, as much as two or three times the cost of conventional scooters. And there is the curb weight, which at 509 lbs. is hefty as two or three beach scooter playthings.

To aid with that bulk the CE 04 has a reverse setting, making it easy to back out of the garage or parking space. The CE 04’s low-speed power metering means that twisting the grip only a little in such circumstances makes it easy to move the scooter microscopically. Seriously, it is possible to move the CE 04 a millimeter at a time.

The CE 04’s top speed and range

Fortunately, on the road, it covers ground a bit faster. BMW says the CE 04 is not intended for highway travel, but curiosity got me onto the interstate with it to see what it would do, and when riding in sport mode the CE 04 easily zooms up to 70 mph and holds that speed effortlessly. BMW says the top speed is 75 mph, but I have reason to believe it can actually go a bit faster than that.

Of course, the faster and further you go, the more you’re going to burn through the battery’s storage. Much distance at that speed will have the rider testing the CE 04’s Level 2 240-volt charging speed to refill the depleted 8.5 kWh battery pack. The battery is mounted at the very bottom of the frame for a lower center of gravity. It uses air cooling through the attached finned heat sink on the pack’s underside, benefiting from airflow beneath the scooter.

BMW says it will take about an hour to reach an 80-percent state of charge from a completely dead battery pack using 240-volt charging, and more like 3.5 hours for regular 120-volt household current. The bike’s charging display said that charging from 40 percent state of charge to 100 percent using my ChargePoint Level 2 charger took two hours. The SAE charging port is just below the handlebars, on the right side.

Normal riding range is 80 miles, but low-speed cruising around town will do better than that and of course, those 70 mph highway blasts will leave you looking for a charging station much sooner. This distance is not so different from that of an internal combustion engine Harley-Davidson Sportster motorcycle with the tiny “peanut” gas tank. Riders have tolerated that for many years, though a Sportster did leave me walking to a gas station one time.

[Related: At $1,807, the Honda Navi is the perfect starter motorcycle for a beginner]

Another difference between the CE 04 and typical scooters is the absence of the noisy, smoking, two-stroke motor providing the accompanying soundtrack of a leaf blower everywhere you ride. While those scooters deliver more sound than fury, the CE 04’s 42-horsepower permanent magnet EMP 156 electric motor blasts the BMW to 60 mph in 9 seconds.

Riding in ECO mode extends the riding range while making the CE 04 feel sluggish. It also increases the regenerative braking when the rider releases the twist throttle. Rain mode has the opposite effect, providing less braking so the bike coasts more freely to avoid inadvertently breaking traction. I rode mainly in Road mode on dry pavement.

It does not cruise as silently as expected—there’s a pretty constant electric whine at all speeds. More surprisingly, there’s a pretty loud gear whine during steady-state neighborhood-speed riding.

BMW’s motorcycles have historically employed a driveshaft rather than the usual chain, but the CE 04 follows Harley’s example with the kind of belt drive as seen on those American cruising machines. The belt’s benefit is that, unlike a chain, it never needs to be lubricated or adjusted.

That belt spins a rear wheel that, as a solid black-painted 15-inch disc, looks like nothing so much as a stamped steel temporary spare wheel for a car even though it is actually lightweight cast aluminum.

Starting the CE04—it’s wireless

Riders start the CE 04 with a press of a button thanks to the wireless key fob that can remain safely zipped inside the rider’s protective jacket. Twist the grip and the machine scoots effortlessly away, leading me to squirt up to speed and slow down a few times to get a feel for the electric power delivery. Pretty cool.

Regeneration slows the CE 04, making it easy to start and stop using the throttle, but there are regular brakes there too, in case a squirrel darts out directly ahead. BMW has developed a two-wheeled equivalent to its iDrive infotainment input device, with a scrolling wheel on the left handlebar that riders can also press inward to click a menu selection. BMW has named this the Multicontroller.

[Related: Behind the wheel of Volkswagen’s reinvented classic: the electric ID.BUZZ]

The Multicontroller for the CE 04’s 10.25-inch color display screen is a clever solution to the challenge of operating a computer with gloved hands while riding. However, it takes practice to master the menu system, and I didn’t have enough saddle time to get comfortable trying to use it while in motion.

The compact electric motor and underslung battery pack leave space beneath the seat to securely stow your helmet on arrival, relieving riders of the hassle of carrying their helmet with them or worrying it will get stolen while away from the bike.

For urban riders who are the CE 04’s target market, this setup seems ideal. They probably won’t even consider whether the CE 04 is technically a scooter or a motorcycle as long as it provides another piece to their urban mobility puzzle—along with ride-hailing services, taxis, and mass transit that all allow them to eschew car ownership.

The post BMW’s electric scooter will hit 75 mph and has motorcycle vibes appeared first on Popular Science.

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With its new DB12, Aston Martin is aiming for the mantle of “super tourer.” Think of it as an adult supercar—a vehicle that provides long-distance comfort to go with track-shredding performance.

The DB12 will reach US shores in October, and while pricing hasn’t been set yet, Aston says that those waiting with open wallets can expect that pricing will be similar to that of the outgoing DB11 and its competitors, which is around $250,000.

Consider the DB12’s sporting credentials: a 671-horsepower twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8, 202-mph top speed, and 3.5-second 0-60 mph time. On the touring side, an aluminum chassis that is stiffer than that of the outgoing DB11 lets the active damping system work more effectively as it adjusts on the fly to provide a smooth ride or taut handling, depending on the driver’s mode selection.

Aston Martin may be best known for the vehicles that have appeared in James Bond films, from the DB5 in Goldfinger to the more recent DBS in No Time to Die, which was Daniel Craig’s last turn at the role. Today, the company is reinforced with financial backing from recent purchaser Lawrence Stroll, as seen on the Netflix series Drive to Survive as the father of F1 driver Lance Stroll.

The DB12’s engine is in the front and it sends power to the rear wheels, and only the rear wheels, exactly as the gods of combustion decreed. My test drive on the Route Napoléon in the South of France provided ample opportunity to sample the various settings: Wet, GT, Sport, Sports Plus, and Individual.

Special accolades go to the calibration of the Wet setting, which reined in the DB12’s horses and softened its responses enough to make driving a rear-drive, 671-hp 2+2 (it has two regular seats in the front, and two tiny ones in the back) coupe through torrents of rain on twisting roads relaxing. Only the windshield wipers seemed to break a sweat in the conditions.

While I appreciated the DB12’s crisp turn-in response at corner entry (the “turn-in” refers to the point when the car approaches a curve and the driver begins turning) and quick responses while shredding switchbacks in Sports Plus mode, when jet lag overtook my copilot, I am sure she appreciated the cushier ride in the car’s GT mode that I selected in a bid to minimize disturbances to her sleep.

Adding Wet mode not only provided confidence while driving through the rain showers, but it also lets the other modes perform with less computer intervention, because those modes don’t have to account for wet road surfaces and can be tuned with the expectation of dry grip levels.

Director of vehicle performance Simon Newton explains in a chat with Popular Science that while the DB12 carries over about 20 percent of its parts from the DB11 and retains much of that car’s architecture, clever engineering has produced a livelier and more responsive machine for sportier driving. 

Turn-in and steering response benefit from the vehicle’s 4.0-liter V8, instead of the DB11’s heavier 5.2-liter V12, which produced 41 fewer horsepower than the DB12’s engine. 

Global chassis stiffness (more is better) is only increased by 7 percent compared to the DB11, but the local stiffness at the suspension attachment points is improved so that the car turns instead of twisting those parts of the frame. Making the chassis stiffer means that the suspension system responds to input rather than the frame being twisted.

“We have a 140 percent increase in the stiffness between the front damper attachment point and the opposite direction,” he says. Improvements are similar at the rear of the car, he added.

Foam in the tires  

The lateral loads going into the suspension and chassis are increased by the DB12’s use of a brand-new tire from Michelin, the Pilot Sport 5S. These tires will appear on other cars in the future, but Aston worked with Michelin to develop this specific version to suit the DB12. 

That means providing the expected stupendous grip, but doing so with grace. Aston went through five iterations of development with Michelin for the DB12’s tires, when three or four such loops of development, feedback, and adjustment are the norm, says Newton. 

Because the Aston is a super tourer, not a supercar, it needs to have a serene ride in addition to having a lot of grip for cornering, accelerating, and braking. The tire’s performance needed to be balanced, just as the suspension is able to slice up switchbacks or cruise without waking my passenger. “That means not only in terms of lateral capacity but also finesse,” Newton explains. “We needed it to steer well and to ride well.”

They also need to be quiet, so as with the tires that Rolls-Royce uses, the DB12’s tires include noise-canceling foam inserts that hush tire hum by 20 percent inside the car.

The tires work in coordination with rigorously tuned electric power steering to provide good on-center steering feel and appropriate response to corner turn-in. Here is an area where the engineering team focused on dynamics more than isolation, removing the rubber bushing that isolated the steering column to enhance steering feel. Calibration engineers took care to deliver “an intuitive, confidence-inspiring feel,” as said Aston Martin in the car’s press release, and a day behind the wheel on mountain roads confirms the claim.

Hitting the brakes

The brakes, which are supplied by Brembo, are another area where Aston engineers toiled to deliver a combination of performance and refinement. The company boasts that the DB12’s carbon ceramic brakes shave nearly 60 pounds of unsprung mass from the car. That’s weight not carried by the suspension that has to move with the surface of the road, so minimizing that mass is crucial.

However, carbon ceramic brakes often come with compromises. On Ferraris, the carbon ceramics are annoyingly grabby, providing huge brake force with the slightest pressure on the pedal. Porsche’s carbon ceramics often squeal embarrassingly, which isn’t ideal in a gracious “super tourer.” Lamborghini avoids these issues at the cost of brake feel that goes spongy at track speeds.

But Aston, like McLaren, has found a way to avoid these problems. Unlike McLaren, Aston was willing to share how they did it, working in partnership with Brembo, which is the brake supplier. 

“It was a lot of work and it still goes on,” says Newton. That’s because while the engineering team toiled to ensure that the brakes are as good as possible when they are new, there are opportunities remaining to learn about their performance as they wear and make additional improvements, he said. Toward that goal, the company put in 100,000 miles of testing in hot weather, at various elevations, and at different points in brake pads’ wear life. “This is a point of continuing improvement,” says Newton.

To achieve the ideal starting point, the Aston team sought to ensure that “everything about DB12 is linear and predictable,” he explains. The challenge with carbon ceramic brakes is that their friction increases as they heat up, so it is important to offset that to maintain consistent brake response, hot or cold.

The team compensated with additional response from the brake booster when the brakes are cold and less when they are hot, with the aim of balancing the response in various conditions.

“Then we start to work on the refinement,” Newton says. The company had a head start on this effort from its work on the DBS, which came out a few years ago. The DB12’s brakes are similar to those on the DBS, according to Newton. 

For all this work, the carbon ceramic brakes on my test car are optional, and customers can stick with the easier-to-design cast-iron brakes. Those brakes get their own attention, with specific booster profiles and brake pads too, so it isn’t just a matter of having a different set of rotors.

Electronic stability control 

All of these technical changes to the car are backed by electronics that augment the DB12’s ability to respond to driver input. The electronic stability control system boasts a six-axis inertial measurement unit that provides a detailed picture of what the car is doing to the algorithm that decides what to do next. 

It controls the DB12’s adaptive dampers and electronic differential to let the car carve its way through switchbacks like a lightweight sports car while delivering the comfort that drivers (and snoozing passengers) expect from a car of this caliber.

Adding to the DB12’s posh atmosphere is an upgraded interior, which is specifically designed to address the sometimes “cottage industry” grade of Aston Martin cockpits in the past. In addition to upgrading the interior materials, the company has also developed its own modern infotainment system in place of the archaic system employed in the DB11 that was a source of frustration for drivers. 

Aston promises a 30-millisecond response time through the 10.25-inch capacitive touch display and the system adds support for both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. The company eliminated its cool-looking but obtrusive-to-use push button shifter on the dashboard for a compact shift lever on the center console that is easier to use without forcing the driver’s eyes off the road.

A shift with the shifters 

Alas, they’ve also relocated the shift paddles from a fixed place on the steering column in the manner of Ferrari and Lamborghini to steering-wheel-mounted paddles. Nelson insists that this is better, though I strongly prefer having the paddles stay where I can find them while turning the steering wheel.

Nelson says that it is unusual to need to shift while making the large steering inputs that make the driver shuffle their hands on the wheel and away from the shift paddles. But the French switchbacks showed exactly how unwinding the steering wheel while accelerating out of a slow corner often demands an upshift before the driver’s hands have returned to their straight-ahead position where they can find the shift paddles again.

In the end, the programming of the eight-speed ZF planetary automatic is smart enough that after a few paddle shifts for novelty’s sake, most drivers will leave the shifting to the computer, which does a faultless job, making the issue of paddle location irrelevant.

As with Daniel Craig’s conclusion of his run as James Bond, it is similarly appropriate that the DB12 looks forward with its new technology rather than sticking to the familiar hardware of the past, whether that be the V12 engine or the shift mechanisms used previously.

The post Aston Martin’s new ‘super tourer’ has noise-canceling tire tech appeared first on Popular Science.

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For decades, Automobili Lamborghini has built its reputation on creating supercars with large-displacement engines. Mid-mounted naturally aspirated V12 combustion engines have been its signature since the debut of the classically stunning Miura in 1966.

But change is on the horizon, and Lamborghini’s rivals at Ferrari and McLaren have already begun the shift toward turbocharged smaller-displacement engines to maximize efficiency. Characteristically, Lamborghini is plotting a different course. Battery-electric Lamborghinis are on the CAD screens of the company’s engineers, but before they debut, Lamborghini aims to give its naturally aspirated V12 models a fitting send-off with a hybrid-electric assist.

The Revuelto is that V12 tribute model. As is customary, the car’s name comes from a traditional Spanish fighting bull. Revuelto was famous in 1880, so you’re forgiven if you haven’t heard of him. The word means “mixed up,” and it was chosen in reference to the Revuelto’s combination of combustion and electric power. The bull was said to be mixed up because eight different times he leapt out of the ring into the crowd in the stands.

The Revuelto is a plug-in hybrid-electric vehicle

In a step toward the electric future, Lamborghini has for the first time ever added a plug-in hybrid drivetrain that boosts efficiency and, crucially, lets the Revuelto drive into the fashionable city centers of Europe, where there are often prohibitions on combustion power. This is only the first from Lamborghini, which will electrify its entire portfolio in coming years, states chairman and CEO Stephan Winkelmann during my visit to Lamborghini’s Sant’Agata Bolognese, Italy headquarters to view the Revuelto.

“The Miura and Countach established the V12 engine as an icon of Lamborghini,” notes Winkelmann. 

“However, things change and we have new challenges in front of us right here and right now,” he continues. “Geopolitics are a constant companion to all of our planning.” 

The company will roll out a hybrid-electric Huracan by the end of 2024, with the first battery-electric cars arriving in 2028 or 2029. Considering the likely finite lifespan of the Revuelto, one might expect that Lamborghini would make the vehicle simply an evolutionary development, but instead they went the extra mile with a full redesign. 

The Revuelto features an all-new carbon fiber platform, an all-new combustion engine, an all-new transmission, and even a new drivetrain layout in the chassis. The chassis is 10 percent lighter and 25 percent stiffer than before, and employs a new carbon fiber front impact structure in place of the Aventador’s aluminum structure.

The Revuelto’s V12 engine, explained 

The new 814-horsepower, 6.5-liter, L545 V12 engine still rides behind the cockpit, nestled in an all-aluminum rear subframe that is where the rear suspension attaches. At a time when rivals’ engines are muted by turbochargers, you’ll hear the Revuelto’s song better than ever, because the L545 now spins to a 9,500-rpm rev limit and explodes each combustion stroke with the force of a 12.6:1 compression ratio rather than the Aventador’s 11.8:1 ratio.

This 12-cylinder beast is even 37 pounds lighter than the Aventador’s power plant. As the Revuelto contains the last Lamborghini V12, we can chart the progress from the original engine in the Miura, which displaced 3.5 liters, spun to 6,500 rpm and churned out 280 horsepower under the more optimistic rating system of that era.

The Miura’s V12 rode side saddle, bolted transversely across the back of the cockpit, with its transaxle behind it. Its replacement, the Countach, rotated the V12 90 degrees into a longitudinal position and routed power to a transmission installed ahead of the engine. This “Longitudinale Posteriore” location was the source of the Countach’s LP500 designation, and the layout has remained that way ever since.

Until now. The Revuelto’s 8-speed dual-clutch paddle-shifted transmission was designed by Lamborgini’s engineers and is built by Graziano, the same company that built the Aventador’s transmission and also supplies them to McLaren for that company’s sports cars like the Artura, which is also a plug-in hybrid. The Aventador’s single-clutch automated manual transmission was consistently criticized for clunky shifts, so the buttery smooth action of the new dual clutch should be a dramatic improvement, especially in urban driving.

The gearbox contains a 147.5-hp electric motor from Germany’s Mahle that boosts the power going to the road. The electric motor also serves as the V12’s starter, and provides the Revuelto’s reverse function, eliminating the need for a reverse gear in the transmission. This motor can also work as a generator, letting the combustion engine recharge the battery pack when driving in Recharge mode.

This gearbox is a transverse design, mounted behind the longitudinal engine, which provides abundant packaging benefits. But crucially for the hybrid-electric Revuelto, this location leaves the car’s center tunnel vacant, so there is space there now for the car’s 3.8-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack.

The Revuelto’s battery and electric motors 

Yes, 3.8 kWh is a tiny battery. Lamborghini engineers wanted to minimize the amount of mass the battery would add to the car, and the short six miles of electric-only driving range should be enough to get the Revuelto to the trendy urban club’s valet parking line on electric power. 

The Revuelto is all-wheel drive thanks to a pair of 147.5-hp electric motors under the front hood. These are Yasa axial flux motors from Britain, another similarity to the McLaren Artura, which also employs compact pancake-shaped axial-flux motors.

The V12 and trio of electric motors produce a combined 1,000 horsepower. Remember that combustion engines and electric motors produce their peak power at different speeds, so you can’t just add up the peak power of all the motors in a hybrid system to calculate the actual horsepower total. They combine to push the Revuelto to 60 mph in less than 2.5 seconds and to a top speed of more than 219 mph.

Revuelto’s performance also benefits from advanced aerodynamics in a body shell that incorporates extra space for improved comfort. There’s an extra inch of headroom to make it easier to operate while wearing a helmet for track driving and the added 3.3 inches of legroom is a blessing, as the front wheel wells intrude into the footwell of mid-engine cars like the Revuelto.

Despite the added size, the Revuelto optimizes the balance between drag and downforce using adaptive aerodynamics, such as a rear wing that can lie flat for less drag or stand up for traction-boosting downforce. The transverse transmission leaves more space under the car’s rear, so the diffuser ramps upward at a steeper angle, contributing to the 74 percent increase in rear downforce.

At the front, downforce is increased by 33 percent thanks to a complex front splitter. That’s the chin jutting out from beneath the front bumper, and on the Revuelto it has a radial leading edge in the center between the headlights and slanted outer edges that provide downforce and create vortices (like the ones you might see off airplane wing tips in humid air) to push airflow away from the drag-inducing front tires.

The engine is exposed (kind of) 

Revuelto’s coolest styling detail is its exposed engine. While typical cars have their engines covered with sheet metal hoods, and exhibitionist supercars have recently showcased their power plants beneath glass covers, the Revuelto’s combustion V12 is on proud display through an opening in the engine cover. At least, it appears to be. That’s because the engine wears a plastic cover that looks like a crinkle-finish intake plenum, so that is what is actually visible from outside the car. 

The engine’s exhaust note is authentic, even if the engine itself is wearing a mask. Since this is the final V12, and to draw a contrast with turbocharged rivals with fewer cylinders, Lamborghini engineers prioritized Revuelto’s sound, says chief technical officer Rouven Mohr. “It is not only about the numbers,” he says, referring to the car’s impressive performance. “It is also about the heart. The sound. And the Revuelto is the best-sounding Lamborghini ever.”

Engineers specifically targeted the sharp frequencies in the engine’s exhaust note to cultivate a mellower bellow, he explains. And in an unprecedented Lamborghini capability, the car’s six miles of pure electric driving range means that you can also drive completely silently when exiting your neighborhood in the morning. Your neighbors will surely think this combination of roar and snore is the best kind of “mixed up” at 6 am.

The post The new Lamborghini Revuelto is a powerful hybrid beast appeared first on Popular Science.

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A weird thing is happening in the dwindling market for sports cars: These low-slung, tarmac-shredding scalpels are getting jacked up and heading off the twisty paved roads and into the dirt for some bushwhacking fun.

It may seem like a contradiction to take a vehicle prized for its low center of gravity and grippy track-ready rubber, lift it up for some ground clearance, and then mount knobby balloon tires. But that’s exactly what Porsche has done with its new $220,000 911 Dakar model, and Lamborghini is rolling out the Huracan Sterrato with a similar intent. The Porsche charges into the dust with 473 horsepower, while the Lamborghini is packing 602 horsepower. This isn’t some loony mistake. These companies are responding to what enthusiasts have been doing for themselves in recent years, as custom “safari” 911 builds have become all the rage.

Think this is a bout of temporary insanity that will soon run its course? Then don’t look at the motorcycle market, where Ducati did exactly the same thing with its traditional sport bikes when it created the Scrambler in 2014. That bike’s debut set off a bomb in the then-stagnant motorcycle market, and now Benelli, BMW, Husqvarna, Indian, Royal Enfield, and Triumph all offer their versions of scramblers. These bikes all feature knobby off-road-capable tires, long-travel suspension that can soak up bumps, and a high-mounted exhaust raised up out of harm’s way when trail riding.

Ducati has turned that single model into an entire sub-brand, with a whole family of variations on the Scrambler, including the inevitable versions with street-oriented tires that turn the off-road sport bikes back into street bikes!

Scrambler motorcycles have become the motorized equivalent of classic rock, based on this description by J.D. Power. “Nowadays, the term scrambler motorcycle refers to a distinct look, with a vintage stripped-down style that combines the functionality of older models with the versatility of modern manufacturing.” They have even become the subject of academic scrutiny, as demonstrated by the publication of “Scrambler: A Type of Motorcycle” by the International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology.

No less an authority than Pirelli, the company tasked with providing the dual-purpose on-road/off-road tires for many scrambler motorcycles, says the name comes from the scrambling of parts from the two types of machines, evoking an image of a cook scrambling eggs together. 

Now Pirelli will find itself with the challenge of coming up with similarly scrambled tires for its four-wheeled customers, too. “I absolutely believe there’s that opportunity,” says Ducati of North America CEO Jason Chinnock.

“We saw this as an opportunity to grow the Ducati brand by bringing in a product that was unintimidating, was easily accessible, and evokes a smile,” he adds. That accessibility might be important. Today’s sports cars have become so incredibly capable that their owners may not feel they have the ability to maximize their performance. And outside of racetracks, they sure don’t have much opportunity to do so.

Scrambler-ized sports cars that have cushy, long-travel suspension and balloon tires are a lot more comfortable in daily use and when there’s a chance to hit a trail or a dune, they’re up to the task.

A lifted Miata for $250

Chinnock says he likes what he sees in the 911 Dakar, because “it is definitely a 911.” Adapting for the outback hasn’t changed the car’s character. Carmakers have known this, as Porsche famously won the 1986 Paris-Dakar Rally with a lifted version of its 959 sports car. A third Porsche, running the course as a support vehicle for the two prime cars, finished sixth!

In 1982, Ferrari entered a modified 308 in the Monte Carlo Rally, though that race runs entirely on asphalt, however poor the surface may be in places. And Nissan won the East-Africa Safari Rally with a 240Z sports car in 1971. Normally, the protagonists in such events have been fierce off-road machines built using the body shell of compact hatchbacks over a purpose-built off-road chassis.

In 2016, Mark Rivera got the notion to create a grassroots off-road sports car and lifted a Mazda MX-5 Miata to create a car that’s fun to drive in the dirt. His company, Paco Motorsports, started with a simple three-inch lift kit that added ground clearance and permitted installation of off-road tires. “We’re not off-road guys, we just wanted to play in the snow a little bit,” Rivera explains. But then he posted pictures on social media, and “the internet kind of went crazy.” 

A nice thing about the lift kit is that it doesn’t fundamentally modify the car, so owners can switch it back to a regular Miata if they decide to. But demand quickly grew from the simple lift kit to the Offroadster, a play on the convertible Miata’s roadster body style. “This was popular, so now we’ve got to go real big,” Rivera says, recalling what he was thinking at the time. “We did the suspension design in CAD to get all the wheel travel we can get and we softened the suspension so the wheels can move through the whole range of motion.”

Customers can choose between the $250 3-inch lift kit, a so-called “medium kit” for about $2,000, or a complete Offroadster conversion kit for about $8,500.

An off-roading Lamborghini for $270,000

At the other end of the spectrum, Lamborghini is offering the Sterrato version of its Huracan super sports car at a starting price of $270,000. “With the high-speed all-terrain concept of the Sterrato, we have uniquely combined the driving experience of a true super sports car and the fun of driving a rally car,” explains Lamborghini chief technical officer Rouven Mohr in the company’s press release for the Sterrato. “Lamborghini cars always deliver emotion: the Sterrato delivers a new degree of driving thrills,” he promises.

This proliferation points to the potential for these safari-style builds (Indian carmaker Tata owns the trademark to the Safari name, so unless they cut a deal, other manufacturers won’t be able to use that word in a car’s name) to become a full-fledged product segment. Porsche CEO Oliver Blume, told Britain’s Car magazine  that’s exactly what he’s thinking. “Why not a third pillar, besides sporty GT and heritage models? Why not off-road, too?” he asked. “Now we will see how the market success of the Dakar pans out,” Blume continued. “And then maybe there will be more to come. The door is now open…”

It remains to be seen what else Porsche will drive through that open door, but if the motorcycle market is any prediction, we can hope to see a golden age of dirt-flinging sports cars that, as a bonus, turn out to be more comfortable to drive than their street-centric progenitors. 

The post From Miatas to Lamborghinis, these sports cars are meant for dirt, not asphalt appeared first on Popular Science.

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Since the launch of its unfortunately named MP4-12C sports car in 2011, McLaren Automotive has built every vehicle using a version of the same carbon fiber chassis and V8 engine. A decade later, McLaren is launching version 2.0 of the company’s product line, with a new hybrid-electric V6 powertrain bolted into an all-new carbon fiber chassis tub structure. 

The vehicle embodying this change is called the Artura. It is McLaren’s first production hybrid and it signals the direction for the rest of the company’s products. Their very first hybrid was the limited-production P1 hypercar, and the Artura shows how this technology has trickled down to more mass-produced models.

Shredding the curves and catapulting down the straights of the infield road course at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the $289,000 (as tested; base price is $233,000) Artura convincingly upholds the legends of Mika Hakkinen, Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Emerson Fittipaldi, and other famous drivers who’ve piloted McLaren Formula 1 cars to world championships.

The howling turbocharged V6 engine would have been right at home in Prost and Senna’s ‘80s turbo-era McLarens, though at 3.0 liters, the Artura’s engine is double the size of the power plants in those old race cars. Senna would have envied the alacrity of the Artura’s shifts in comparison to the H-pattern transmission of his F1 car at that time.

Impressively, despite the wholesale change of hardware, McLaren has managed to preserve the feel that the Artura is still a McLaren. The bodywork is born of the same family as existing models like the 720S, the cockpit feels similar, and the driving dynamics put me right into a McLaren frame of mind.

Like legos 

This new carbon fiber platform is even stiffer and lighter than the one the company has used previously in vehicles like the 600LT or 720S, thanks to an additional decade of know-how. More importantly, it is made from 72 pre-formed sections of carbon fiber rather than the 500 separate pieces used by technicians previously. This reduces the variability and accelerates the manufacturing process. “We’ve had a big reduction in the hours needed to make it,” reports chief engineer Geoff Grose. “It is a more consistent process than with human intervention.”

The Artura’s new M360 engine is a V6 arranged with 120 degrees between the two banks of three cylinders. Sixty degrees is the norm for clean-sheet V6s. (V6s created by slicing two cylinders off a V8 are 90-degree engines, but those require balance shafts to offset their inherent imbalance.) For the next generation of its engines, McLaren has gone to a much flatter 120-degree V-shape that mounts the turbochargers inside that shallow valley atop the engine rather than on the outside as is normal practice. This contributes to a lower center of gravity for the Artura, which lets the car change direction more easily.

This engine is made as small as possible by the use of 3D printing to create the sand cores used to cast its block and heads. The features inside this engine are too small to create by conventional techniques, according to Grose. “It allows the shortest possible gaps between the cylinder bores, just 2mm,” he says. “That is a really tight, thin core. This 3D printing technology is really good for enabling that.”

It’s electric

Computer optimization modeling apparently points to this 120-degree turbo V6 engine layout, as it is the same arrangement Ferrari reached for the 296GTB, that company’s analog to the Artura. This combustion engine churns out 577 horsepower and 431-lb.ft. of torque. 

But wait, there’s more! The Artura also includes a compact, lightweight electric motor bolted between the M360 engine and the Artura’s new dual-clutch transmission.

[Related: Why plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles are worth a look right now]

This electric motor produces 94 horsepower and 166 lb.-ft. of torque, with the e-motor’s torque contribution coming at the lower end of the combustion’s torque curve. The result is a peak of 671 hp and 531 lb.-ft. in combined output. More importantly, the duo’s combined torque delivery is nearly constant from low rpm, so the Artura accelerates out of turns more like an electric car.

Together, the electric and gas motors push the Artura to 60 mph in 3.0 seconds and across the quarter mile in 10.7 seconds. The EPA Miles Per Gallon Equivalent rating is 39 MPGe, thanks to the plug-in hybrid’s battery. The big improvement over the Artura’s 18 mpg when running on gas only illustrates how the plug-in system not only fortifies low-speed power for acceleration, but also delivers fuel-sipping efficiency.

Getting in gear

The Artura clicks up through the gears seamlessly thanks to its eight-speed dual-clutch transmission. The computer can do these shifts for you, or you can click the steering wheel-mounted shift paddles. Ferrari and Lamborghini fix the paddles to the steering column so that they are always where the driver expects them. In McLarens they turn with the steering wheel, like they do in race cars. 

However, the steering wheels on race cars never turn so far that the driver has to reposition their hands, so they can always click up with the right paddle and down with the left.  Street car steering wheels, on the other hand, crank through a couple turns from one side to the other, leaving the driver with no idea where the shift paddles are when turning. However, it is unusual to do much shifting while turning so much, so maybe this quirk doesn’t really matter.

[Related: Anyone can drive a supercar, but truly tapping its potential is another matter]

The transmission is all-new, with eight speeds in place of the previous seven. Some of the extra space for the added gear came from the elimination of the reverse gear. Now, the Artura just spins its electric motor the other direction to move the car backwards. The car has an electric-only top speed of 81 mph, so in theory, the Artura would be able to go up through the gears to reach that same speed while going backwards, but I did not test this theory. The EPA says it will go 11 miles on electric power alone.

Overall top speed is 205 mph, which also went untested because there is no space for such velocity at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and no permission for such speed on the wide-open desert roads in Nevada where the car could actually achieve terminal velocity. Hunter S. Thompson would likely have pumped the Artura’s tires up to 80 psi and given it a go (as he claimed to have done with his Cadillac in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), but I have a stronger aversion to breaking the law than he apparently did.

Under pressure

You’ll know all about the Artura’s tire pressure because the car’s new Pirelli P-Zero Corsa tires have pressure sensors embedded into the tires themselves rather than mounted on the wheel at the fill valve. This allows a more accurate measurement, according to McLaren, letting the car understand when the driver has intentionally reduced tire pressure for more grip while driving at the racetrack. This prevents the computer from giving low-pressure warnings when the driver has intentionally lowered the pressure.

McLaren has preserved its hydraulic power steering system for the Artura, eschewing the electric power steering others use for the superior steering feel provided by a hydraulic system. Because the combustion engine switches off at times, the hydraulic pump is electric-powered so the steering doesn’t care what the engine is doing.

Speaking of turning, you’ll need to slow the Artura down from time to time, and McLaren continues to set the industry standard in brakes. While Lamborghini’s carbon ceramic brakes are comfortable to drive on the street, they get vague and imprecise on the track. Other brands like Ferrari and Porsche deliver on the track, but their carbon ceramics are grabby and squeak embarrassingly in street driving. 

In contrast, McLaren’s carbon ceramics are angelic on the streets and devilishly good in the brake zones where you hammer the brake pedal just for turns, exhibiting exemplary behavior in everyday driving and delivering the confidence-inspiring precision and consistency needed to light up the front rotors on my Flux Green track test car. Truly, the best performance in both situations.

McLarens are also known for their ability to deliver both an unexpectedly posh ride in street driving with crisp handling response in mountain switchbacks and the race track. That’s courtesy of the company’s Proactive Chassis Control system of cross-linked hydraulics that uses wheel motion on one side of the car to help manage what happens on the other side.

Instead of that Proactive Chassis Control system, the Artura features Tenneco’s Proactive Damping Control shock absorbers, which are like the computer-controlled active shock absorbers everyone else uses. The Artura is the starting point of McLaren 2.0, so look for Proactive Chassis Control to appear on other models built on the Artura’s new chassis and drivetrain in the future. The Artura’s more commonplace shocks don’t deliver the best-of-both-world’s experience of smooth ride and crisp handling that we’ve come to expect from other McLarens, but pricier future variants surely will.

While the exterior bears a family resemblance to other McLarens, the aluminum skin is “superformed” with a blast of hot air rather than stamped by conventional dies. This permits the car’s crisp character lines and the precise body gaps. My street test car was sprayed in a striking shade called Ember Orange, which was challenging to make practical for mass production, according to Head of Colour and Materials Design, Jo Lewis. It was worth the effort she put into getting Ember Orange from her computer screen to the production line.

Likewise, all of the McLaren 2.0 upgrades are clear successes. The Artura shows that it is possible to preserve continuity without being stuck in the past, as this car delivers the contemporary technology and performance supercar buyers demand.

The post Behind the wheel of McLaren’s hot new hybrid supercar, the Artura appeared first on Popular Science.

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Golems, leprechauns, and new-generation versions of the classic Volkswagen bus are all mythical creatures of fantastic legend, but unlike the others, at long last, the Volkswagen ID.BUZZ is a real, drivable machine, and Popular Science got a chance to take one for a spin.

Imagine getting to drive the automotive equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster—that’s the feeling of piloting a real-life all-electric 2023 VW ID.BUZZ down everyday streets, surrounded by mere mortal vehicles. The outrageous throwback styling puts smiles on the faces of passers-by, and it will probably be difficult to stop with one at a public charger without an impromptu Q&A session.

This ID.BUZZ is not a concept, not a pre-production prototype, or any other form of not-real vehicle like that crazy Ford Mustang Mach-E 1400 we track tested. VW has whetted fans’ appetites for a new version of the classic bus with three different concept vans between 2001 and 2016, before finally showing the concept version of the ID.BUZZ production model in 2017.

Our test vehicle, however, is a European-market configuration, so while this ID.BUZZ is not imaginary like a sasquatch, it is also not exactly the vehicle that Americans will be able to buy when they arrive in US dealers.

Instead, this example ($67,000 base price), is a short-wheelbase (118 inches), two-row, five-seat model that we will not get in America. We’ll get a longer model with three rows of seats to hold seven passengers. But otherwise, this test vehicle is an accurate representation of what we can expect to find in dealers. Unfortunately, we will have to wait until 2024 to take one home, as VW focuses on fulfilling orders in Europe, where the van is already on sale.

However, if you want the electric driving experience of the ID.BUZZ without the cool nostalgic styling, hefty price tag, or lengthy wait, the company’s ID.4 crossover SUV delivers much of the same experience today, as both vehicles share their Modular Electric Toolkit (MEB is the German acronym) platform and dashboard controls and displays. 

Volkswagen’s original bus was built on the platform of the Beetle compact car, producing a people hauler that, while much-loved by the Baby Boom generation as it took them to Woodstock, was comically underpowered. Westfalia camper versions sported a pop-up tent on the roof, and later iterations switched from air cooling for the engine to water cooling to help boost power. The VW EuroVan was the last version of the bus imported to the US, ending its run here in 2003. 

And now, finally, electric versions are here.

What it’s like to drive the ID.BUZZ

The shared platform between the ID.BUZZ and the ID.4 means that there is an 82-kilowatt-hour battery pack (which has a usable capacity of 77 kWh) powering a 201-horsepower electric motor that can accelerate the bus to 60 mph in 10 seconds. The driving experience is similar to that of the ID.4, with a twist shifter to select drive or reverse, numb electric power steering that gives little feeling for the road, and an impressively tight turning circle that makes it easy to pilot the vehicle into parking spaces.

Twist the shifter into Drive and then twist it a second time to set it to the high-regeneration mode that recharges the batteries when you lift off the accelerator pedal. However, while this vehicle delivers much of the one-pedal driving experience, the ID.BUZZ does not come to a complete stop when taking your foot off the accelerator, so in stop-and-go traffic you still have to dance between the accelerator and the brake.

The longer US model will need more space to turn around because of its stretched wheelbase, but the tight turning radius of the Euro-spec version suggests that even a longer model will still be easy to line up for a parking space.

For now, the ID.BUZZ is saddled with the same unfortunate ID.COCKPIT capacitive-touch controls for functions like door locks and volume control that infuriate many drivers in the ID.4. We can only hope that VW will swap those controls for the US model with some decent physical knobs and buttons.

The cabin in the ID.BUZZ is also reminiscent of the ID.4. While the styling is very different, the hard, unfriendly materials used on most of the interior surfaces are the same. The upholstery in our test vehicle’s seats was a nice combination of throwback plaid fabric on the contact surfaces of the seats that actually touch the occupants and easy-to-wipe-clean vinyl.

What they won’t be able to change is how VW’s engineers matched the MEB platform to the ID.BUZZ body. For one thing, the van is about six inches wider than the ID.4, but the seats seem to have stayed in the same location inside the vehicle. That pushes the doors further from the occupants, making the armrests on the door panels uselessly distant.

To address this, VW has put fold-down armrests on both sides of the van’s front bucket seats. Fold down the outer armrest and you have support right where you want it. Forget to fold it back up when you try to depart the vehicle and you’ll get an unpleasant reminder in the ribs that the armrest is down. Imagine dealing with this every day.

Having the doors far from the van’s occupants has the benefit of leaving plenty of space in the lower door panel for XXL-sized water bottle holders, so the popular Yeti-type giant water bottles will fit in the ID.BUZZ bottle holders.

Another aspect of the MEB platform is that, as an EV platform, it mounts the bus’s 12 battery modules into the floor. As a result, the floor is very high, making entry a challenge, especially for shorter people. The interior grab handles are located above the front door openings, which is normally the preferred location. But the ID.BUZZ has a very high roof in addition to its high floor, potentially putting those handles out of reach for the people who most need them.

The ID.BUZZ’s floor is 22 inches off the ground, but there are cutouts in the door openings that drop it down to 19.5 inches in a bid to provide occupants a toe hold for climbing aboard. In comparison, the Chrysler Town & Country-derived Volkswagen Routan minivan, which was the company’s most recent US market van, had a floor that was 17.5 inches off the ground.

People are used to SUVs being higher from the ground, but those often employ running boards to provide a step in, which the ID.BUZZ does not have. Another thing people are used to is having windows in the rear doors that actually open. This is the norm for SUVs’ hinged rear doors and family vans’ sliding rear doors, but the windows in the ID.BUZZ’s rear doors are fixed closed, which will make it tougher to route emergency fresh air to back-seaters who are feeling motion sickness coming on.

Anyone who is prone to motion sickness is going to especially suffer in the ID.BUZZ, as its very stiff suspension provides a ride that is surprisingly harsh for a vehicle that is carrying 1,000 lbs. of battery ballast in its floor.

The stiff springs cause the ID.BUZZ to crash over every bump and pavement imperfection, which is uncomfortable. But worse is its tendency to rock side-to-side sharply, without the suspension compliance to absorb irregularities that are especially common on the right edge of the pavement.

The test vehicle rolled on the optional 20-inch wheels, which are a feature that designers love. But their low-profile tires lack the sidewall height to provide the air cushion that smooths the ride. Equip an ID.BUZZ with 18-inch wheels and hope the engineers soften the springs for the US market, and this issue could be solved.

Range of the ID.BUZZ

The ID.BUZZ is electric, of course, so it’s fitting to discuss the electrified aspects of its operation. VW says it will go 263 miles on a full charge and that it will do DC fast charging at a maximum of 170 kilowatts, which is promised to boost the battery from 10 percent to 80 percent in 30 minutes.  

My time behind the wheel on mostly rural two-lane highways produced a driving range that extrapolated to 210 miles in very mild weather. At the same time, I averaged 3.2 miles per kW, according to the computer, which should yield 246 miles if it uses the full 77 kWh, so the van would probably have made it somewhere between 210 and 246 miles if I’d started with a 100 percent charge and ran it until it was dead.

The ID.BUZZ’s on-board charger supports 11 kW of Level 2 AC charging, which is good except that it is hard to find a Level 2 charging station that provides that much juice. Public Level 2 chargers seem to be 6.2 kW or 7.7 kW, but my Chargepoint Home Flex charging station at home promises to deliver up to 12 kW.

Some of the charging details could change before the ID.BUZZ comes to America, along with whatever other changes accompany the added length and extra row of seating. But what surely won’t change is the bus’s legendary status and appeal to drivers, even if it finally sheds the “mythical” appellation.

The post Behind the wheel of Volkswagen’s reinvented classic: the electric ID.BUZZ appeared first on Popular Science.

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Electric vehicle advocates have waited for decades for the technology to mature sufficiently such that the vehicle’s driving range, performance, and utility are sufficient to meet the needs of most drivers—and for EVs to sell at prices that are within reasonable reach for many buyers.

We’ve reached that point now, or we’re very close to it, but the rollout of EVs is obstructed by a shortage of the batteries these cars need. So what’s a potential interim solution that would deliver the maximum number of efficient new vehicles to the most customers possible? Making the most of the available battery cells by employing them in plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles (PHEVs) that have gas engines in addition to their battery-electric drive.

Plug-in hybrids were initially seen as a bridge technology to help provide consumers the driving range they demand, but today’s battery-electrics are largely accomplishing that without the need for the cost and weight of a combustion drivetrain.

However, PHEVs can still play an interim role, but for a different reason: They use fewer precious battery cells than battery-electric cars. Jeep’s parent company, Stellantis, says that the Wrangler 4xe is the best-selling PHEV in the country, though they decline to provide sales numbers to back that up. This success comes despite having an electric-only driving range of just 25 miles, according to the EPA, but that’s the same as the Toyota Prius Prime’s electric-only range. 

Consider the Range Rover

But the new Land Rover Range Rover Sport plug-in hybrid points the way for hybrids to optimize battery availability: It has a 38.2-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack of cylindrical cells that give the Range Rover Sport a range of 51 miles on electric power alone. That’s about one-third to one-half as many cells as a battery-electric commonly requires.

Meanwhile, EV battery packs are typically between 80 kWh and 100 kWh or more. For example, Rivian says its fully electric R1T pickup truck carries 7,777 individual cylindrical-style 2170 cells in its 135-kWh pack. 

Besides the Range Rover Sport, other leading PHEVs include the Polestar 1, which is also rated at 51 miles of EV range, and the Toyota RAV4 Prime, which goes an impressive 42 miles.

PHEVs are also perfect for soothing the nerves of drivers who want to drive on electric grid power, but worry about getting stranded, observes Philipp Kampshoff, senior partner, leader of future mobility sector at McKinsey. “When we interview consumers, the biggest concern is still range anxiety and charging infrastructure, which are two sides of the same coin,” he says.

Extended-range PHEVs like the Range Rover could be necessary to meet future regulations, he adds. “Governments might require a minimum of 50 miles. Not all of them are capable of doing that.”

A 141-horsepower (105-kilowatt) electric motor powers the Range Rover Sport through the same drivetrain as the Ingenium 3.0-liter inline 6-cylinder combustion engine. That means that it employs the same 8-speed ZF automatic transmission and Intelligent All-Wheel Drive system whether it is running on gas, electric, or both, so the driving experience and off-road capabilities are undiminished. Combined, the motors produce 434 hp, which launches the Range Rover Sport to 60 mph in 5.5 seconds. 

While the Range Rover Sport’s EPA rating in all-electric mode is for 51 miles, it can go further than that, boasts chief engineer Peter Bingham in an interview at the Range Rover Sport media launch in Madrid, Spain. “Guys in the UK have managed driving real-world to get to around 70 miles,” he tells Popular Science. “EPA takes into account extremes, temperature variations, etc, but yeah, we’ve got guys who are managing to exceed 50 miles. And we know from our customer journey data, that the vast majority of customers will be able to make most of their daily journeys simply on EV power.”

That, of course, is the goal here: To provide enough battery capacity to cover most daily drives—which were an average of 32.7 miles in 2021, according to AAA—without wasting any of this resource on excess range while battery supply is tight.

The cost of complexity

Of course, unlike battery EVs, plug-in hybrids do burn gas. However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says on its FuelEconomy.gov site that plug-in hybrids use roughly 30 to 60 percent less fuel than conventional vehicles. That means that by rationalizing battery cell use, automakers can put more efficient vehicles on the road in the near term, while the many battery plants that carmakers have announced are built.

Battery EVs cost an average of $66,000, according to Kelley Blue Book, versus an average of $45,000 for regular non-luxury vehicles. Compared to purely combustion-fueled models, plug-in hybrids cost between $4,000 and $8,000 more, according to the EPA, putting the sticker price on PHEVs somewhere between traditional vehicles and pure EVs.  Federal EV tax credits can often offset the difference in purchase price, and lower fuel costs will put PHEV drivers ahead.

That’s because while gasoline currently costs $3.65 per gallon on average, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, the same agency says that electricity costs 10.59 cents per kilowatt-hour. So a vehicle charged at home at the average national price enjoys the ability to drive for a cost of electricity that equals about $1 per gallon for gasoline, based on the distance the car can travel on $1 worth of electricity compared to a gallon of gas.

Fast-charging at public direct current chargers costs more, and can be on par with the price of gasoline, so while it makes sense for battery-electric drivers, it is better for plug-in hybrid drivers to stick to the 240-volt alternating current SAE Level 2 chargers at home or work, which can charge a PHEV’s battery in between one and four hours according to the EPA. Using a plain 120-volt wall outlet takes twice as long.

Another advantage of buying a car that shifts more of its driving time to electric power than conventional hybrids or short-range plug-ins is the fact that the US electric grid is continuously moving to greener fuel sources. So EVs, and cars that use power from the grid like PHEVs, can get increasingly green over their lifetimes thanks to cleaner electric power in the future. Gasoline vehicles, of course, will never run on anything else.

The University of California Davis Electric Vehicle Explorer site provides consumers detailed information on the costs of driving an EV or hybrid that are specific to their location and model. 

So why haven’t carmakers rushed to build more PHEVs? Well, because they aren’t simple to construct. “Plug-in hybrids are very interesting because you can run with electric in the city and on the motorway you can use the combustion engine,” notes former McLaren Automotive director of engineering Mario Carendente.

“The problem is around the cost,” he says. “You have to think about having a gas powertrain and an electric one and the complexity of the engineering.”

Indeed, Bingham, of Land Rover, concedes that was the challenge for the Range Rover Sport PHEV. “The hybrid is the most challenging thing,” he says. “You’ve got two powerpacks essentially right in a hybrid, so that you’re balancing fuel tank volume with battery capacity with exhaust routes. I would say it’s probably one of the more challenging aspects of the whole platform design.”

But there is a drivability benefit to plug-in hybrids that might make the complexity worthwhile to drivers. That is because the electric motor in a PHEV is much stronger than that in a conventional hybrid, and it makes a substantial difference in the car’s response to the accelerator pedal.

Sure, battery EVs can be electric rocket ships, but PHEVs deliver a stronger, smoother driving experience on the highway than combustion-only thanks to the electric motor working in concert with the combustion engine. That means more effortless acceleration and hill climbs, and as I experienced in the Range Rover Sport, more accurate cruise control because the electric motor can help hold the desired speed more precisely while climbing hills. Plus, its regeneration of electricity prevents the car from gaining speed on downhills.

We can’t all afford a $105,000 Range Rover Sport PHEV, but mainstream models like the Toyota RAV4 Prime and the Chrysler Pacifica PHEV provide electrified options that give more drivers the opportunity to do their daily driving on electric power rather than hoarding the limited supply of battery cells in EVs that don’t use all their capacity very often.

After that, it will be all pure EVs, says Kampsoff. “We would still say plug-in hybrid is a bridge technology. If you fast forward to 2030 and beyond, EV is a clear winner.”

The post Why plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles are worth a look right now appeared first on Popular Science.

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The Corvette has always been a vehicle whose character is defined by the exact specifications of the particular car in question. It has a long history of employing fire-breathing big block V8s or supercharged V8s with track-ready suspension—but some cars have relied on sluggish base engines and slushy automatic transmissions.

The Z06 performance version of the Corvette is the track-ready iteration of the car, but even within “Z06” there is that same spectrum of potential, a microcosm of the Corvette line itself.

So, even discussing the Z06 requires specificity: We track-tested the top-of-the-line 2023 Z06 that was equipped with all the additional optional go-fast (and stop-fast) equipment because it represents the pinnacle of Chevy’s know-how and the most technically advanced Corvette customers can buy.

Here’s what makes it go, and what it’s like to drive. 

The engine is the star of the show

The main ingredient that distinguishes a Z06 from the Stingray that came out in 2020 is the engine. For the uninitiated, Stingray is Chevy’s new name for the base Corvette. The term goes back to the company’s 1960s concept versions of the Corvettes then in development and some of the subsequent “C2” second-generation cars.

More recently, Chevrolet has formalized a hierarchy of other nomenclature dredged from Corvette’s illustrious history, starting with Z06, which was a high-performance option package in 1963, and topped by ZR1, which was a high-performance model that used an advanced Lotus-designed double-overhead cam V8 engine for the C4 fourth-generation model in the 1990s.

In recent years, Chevrolet has followed a cadence of introducing first the base car—in this case the Stingray—followed at some interval by the Z06 and then ZR1 to maintain interest in the vehicle over the model generation’s lifespan. The company is mum about the ZR1, but the rumor mill says it will use a turbocharged version of the Z06’s engine and an electric motor to drive the front axle. Time will tell.

The Stingray employs the latest 6.2-liter iteration of the famous small block Chevy V8 that debuted in the Corvette in 1955. That means that it has two pushrod-actuated valves per cylinder. This engine has been developed to an astonishing degree to produce 490 horsepower (495 hp with the optional high-performance exhaust).

Small block V8s are compact, efficient, have a low center of gravity, and are inexpensive to build compared to other comparably powerful engines. With this engine, the Stingray is thrilling to drive and is accompanied by the familiar American V8 rumble many drivers want from their Corvette.

Forget all of that for the Z06. It uses an advanced 5.5-liter double-overhead cam design (code named LT6) and employs a flat-plane crankshaft like a race car or a Ferrari. This is because the team wanted to top the previous-generation Corvette Z06’s 650-hp supercharged engine with a naturally aspirated powerplant, because of the more engaging driving experience delivered by engines without forced induction. 

Speaking of forced induction, supercharged engines use a belt-driven turbine to pack air into the engine’s intake tract to make more power. They produce a characteristic whine that builds with rpm as the turbines spin correspondingly faster. Meanwhile, turbocharged engines use compressors for the intake charge that are driven by turbines in the exhaust stream, which makes the boost they provide sensitive to engine speed. When there is a delay in delivering boost, this is known as “turbo lag,” making the power delivery potentially challenging for drivers to manage, as it is not linear. Those exhaust impellers impede the flow of sound from the engine, lending turbocharged engines a slightly muted exhaust note. 

In either case, supercharged or turbocharged, the often-overlook intake sound of a naturally aspirated engine is muffled by the forced induction system, which also dilutes some of the experience of operating a car with an exciting engine.

Internal combustion engines are an endangered species, and naturally aspirated internal combustion engines like this one in the Z06 are on the leading edge of that expected extinction, but Corvette executive chief engineer Tadge Juechter says he wanted America’s Sports Car to give combustion power a glorious send-off.

This engine uses a flat-plane crankshaft, which attaches the connecting rods 180 degrees apart in the engine’s rotation. This creates favorable sequencing of intake and exhaust pressure waves for high-rpm breathing, but it also creates significantly more vibration and a higher-pitched shriek than the familiar 90-degree crankshafts that produce the familiar mellow V8 rumble. 

“With natural aspiration, if you want to make power, you’ve got to spin it!” declares chief engineer Josh Holder. And the Z06 sure does spin, with an 8,600-rpm redline. Peak power of 670 hp occurs at 8,400 rpm.

The flat plane crank, which is 33 percent lighter than the small block’s cross-plane crankshaft, unlocks the ability for the engine to spin that fast, but doing some comes at the cost of vibration. “They’re paint shakers,” Holder says. “Anything that couldn’t withstand that vibration was isolated from the engine.”

The engineering team also minimized the vibration at its source, giving the engine a short-stroke design and short, lightweight titanium Pankl connecting rods to minimize the reciprocation. 

The cylinder heads get special treatment so they can whisk the air into the combustion chambers quickly and then expel it efficiently following combustion. Their combustion chambers are machined and then laser-scanned to confirm accuracy. The eight individual intake trumpets are uniquely designed for the specific cylinder they serve and are polished so their downdraft whooshes past the intake valves, directly into the combustion chamber.

That’s great for redline racetrack running, but some turbulence in the incoming air/fuel mixture encourages mixing to create a homogeneous charge in the combustion chamber. Rather than impeding the flow to induce swirl as the air comes in, Chevy engineers borrowed a trick from the company’s IndyCar program and relocated the direct fuel injectors to the edge of the combustion chamber beyond the exhaust valves so that they spray into the chamber from an angle to help stir things up.

Because the pressure waves in the intake and exhaust systems determine the effectiveness of the design, the Z06’s engine has three large butterfly valves in the bulkhead that divides the intake plenum chamber into left and right halves for each bank of the V8. Two of the butterflies are linked and move together, while the third one opens independently. These valves change positions five times during the engine’s pull to redline, ensuring that the torque curve stays steady, with none of the dips that would otherwise occur.

The exhaust system also contains valves that open to let the departing gasses bypass the mufflers for more power. Unlike the previous system, these are not digital, with just open and closed positions. Instead, they can move progressively, letting more or less air flow through as determined by the car’s drive mode and the throttle position.

Having all of this technology to give Z06 drivers the naturally aspirated driving expense serves little purpose if they can’t hear the difference between this engine and one of its turbocharged competitors, so the team designed the fit of the exhaust pipe tips in the bezels passing through the rear bumper fascia to maximum sound reflected back into the cabin in the frequencies that are pleasing to hear.

Despite the heap of new tech on the Z06’s all-new engine, this powerplant weighs only 2 pounds more than the engine in the Stingray (code-named LT2), while producing an additional 175 hp. Compared to the supercharged LT4 engine in the previous-generation Z06, the new engine weighs more than 30 pounds less and it produces 20 more horsepower.

The engine sends power through the same basic paddle-shifted dual-clutch transaxle as the Stingray, but the Z06’s enjoys a stronger 6-plate clutch, enlarged output shafts, reinforced case and bellhousing, and an additional 2 liters of gear oil inside.

Meet the supporting cast

This, however, is just the beginning, as now the Z06 buyer is faced with a menu of options that can unleash the full potential of the drivetrain. The confusingly named “Z07” option package brings larger Brembo carbon ceramic brake rotors and six-piston front/four-piston rear calipers for the ability to run through an entire tank of fuel on the race track without complaint from the brakes.

The Z07 suspension includes springs that are 10 percent stiffer than those on the base car and magnetorheological dampers that are tuned accordingly. This latest generation of those shocks features a greater range of adjustment authority and faster reaction times to make changes, Holder reports.

The base car rolls on Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires similar to those used on the Stingray. As on that version of the Corvette, these tires are excellent street sports car tires with admirable durability and the ability to adapt to a wide range of driving conditions. They are, however, not track tires. So the Z07 package comes instead with Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2R tires like the ones that have impressed previously on the Porsche 911 GT3 RS and the Ferrari Pista.

The optional upgrade with the most shocking contribution to the Z06’s track potential is the selection of the Carbon Revolution carbon fiber wheels. They cost either $10,000 for a black paint finish or $12,000 for a clear finish that highlights the wheels’ carbon weave. In either case, these wheels slash 41 pounds of weight compared to the standard aluminum wheels.

This mass comes out of the Z06’s unsprung weight, which means that there is less mass in the suspension for the springs and shocks to control as the car tracks over surface changes. And it comes from the rotational inertia of the driveline, helping the car accelerate more responsively because there’s less mass to spin.

The result is that these wheels alone, with all other factors remaining the same, contribute to 1.5-second faster lap times around a track that takes two minutes to lap. That 1.25 percent improvement probably sounds small to the lay person, but racers and track rats would probably trade nearly anything for that advantage in a race.

The Z07 package also brings aerodynamic upgrades. The base car is designed to produce 362 pounds of downforce at 300 kilometers per hour (186 mph) and the Z07 add-ons double that to 734 pounds. Downforce is critical to traction in high-speed turns and it is also important for stability on straights. So the 2023 C8 Z06’s massive downforce is a comforting feature.

And finally, the performance 

Blasting out the pit lane onto the track at Pittsburgh International Raceway, the Z06 surges forward on a wave of glorious sound from the unmuffled exhaust. No worries, the bad-weather driving mode gives you the ability to hush the LT6’s voice for those early-morning departures.

The steering wheel-mounted shift paddles provide the opportunity to select gears manually, but you will not be able to do a better job timing shifts than the car’s computer. It will even give the Z06’s flat-plane powerplant a stab of throttle on downshifts to let it announce that it is doing important work here, just as you’d do if you had a conventional shifter with a clutch pedal.

The difference is that the computer will grease the dual-clutch transaxle downshifts with smooth perfection every time, so you don’t upset the car’s balance entering a turn with a rough shift, or worse, over-rev the engine by engaging a low gear too soon.

Mid-corner throttle modulation is easily managed, as the Michelins claw for grip to turn the car and begin the acceleration toward corner exit. Previous experience with the Pilot Sport Cup 2Rs has come with ambient temperatures 25 or 30 degrees warmer than the 55 degrees of the Z06 test. 

Maybe this provided an even better chance to evaluate the ease with which the driver and/or the stability control and traction control systems (depending on the driving mode) can manage the Z06’s corner exit. The engine revs incredibly quickly and the lightweight carbon fiber wheels provide the least possible intrusion on that as the Z06 squirms toward the approaching straightaway, carving an arc to the track’s edge on the way out of the turn.

Down the straight, the Z06 is in its element because this is where the engine is able to pull to redline with wide-open throttle, providing the aural accompaniment that led Chevy to specify a naturally aspirated engine for the Z06 instead of one with forced induction.

And some very good news is that, upon reaching the end of the straight, with the ‘Vette carrying eye-opening speed, the impressive Brembo carbon ceramic brakes deliver flawless deceleration through the brake zone into the turn and they repeat that performance identically lap after lap, without degradation due to heat build up.

Lamborghinis tend to have spongy, confidence-sapping brake pedals in this situation. Ferrari’s brakes are usually better on the track, but are grabby in casual street driving. The Corvette’s provide massively powerful consistent stops on the track and draw no notice to themselves in everyday street driving.

On the topic of street driving, the Z06 is as docile and user-friendly as you could hope despite springs that are 35 percent stiffer than those in the Stingray. The difference is not obvious, probably because the magnetically adjustable shock absorbers can still soften as needed for street driving.

One frequent destination for driving the Z06 will be the gas station. The car carries a $3,000 gas guzzler tax for its thirst, which the EPA rates at 12 mpg in city driving and 19 mpg on the highway, with a predicted daily average of 14 mpg.

That $3,000 in tax is a rounding error for a car in this price range, however. The bottom line on our fully loaded test car is $167,205, which includes all the optional goodies. While this is a gigantic number, it is about half the price tag of various Italian exotics that it can beat on the track and match at the valet line. America’s sports car no longer needs an asterisk or apologies. This is as good as super sports cars get.

Take a look at what it’s like to drive it, below.

The post Behind the wheel of the most technically advanced Corvette on the market appeared first on Popular Science.

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“This thing has changed my life,” professional drift racer Vaughn Gittin Jr. exclaims. He’s referring to when he drove the Ford Mustang Mach-E 1400 race car built by his Ready to Rock racing crew and Ford Motor Co during a private media demo. “The first time I drove it, I had to stop,” he tells PopSci. “It can’t be like this,” Gittin remembers thinking. “And I drive a 1,200-horsepower Mustang.”

He is right. The thing is so astonishing it seems unreal, especially for those of us who don’t drive 1,200-hp drift Mustangs as our day job. But, just as unbelievably, Ford and Gittin let me experience the insanity for myself.

One by one, electric vehicles are smashing stereotypes about electric vehicles. The Ford Mustang Mach-E 1400 was expressly designed to demolish the notion that driving an EV is boring, thanks to its seven 200-horsepower electric motors driving their combined 1,400-hp through all four wheels.

The Tesla Model S had already demonstrated that EVs are fast, with its ludicrous quarter-mile runs that are silent compared to the roar of Detroit muscle. But roaring is exciting, and the catapult-launch Tesla acceleration runs are kind of bloodless, which underscores a concern from car nuts that our shared EV future will be dull. Friends, I’m here to tell you, after driving the Mach-E 1400, that it doesn’t have to be.

[Related: This 1400-horsepower Mustang Mach-E foreshadows Ford’s electric car future]

While it might seem obvious that a 1,400-horsepower vehicle can be a handful to drive on the racetrack, some very high-powered EVs are remarkably unremarkable. Consider the posh 1,111-hp Lucid Air luxury sedan, for example. That car is blazing fast, but not thrilling. The Mustang Mach-E 1400, however, was built with the intent of unleashing mayhem. They succeeded.

A close look at the Mach-E 1400

Here’s what you need to know about the car: It was built from an actual production Mustang Mach-E body shell (“body-in-white” is the industry term) with steel tube framework added for strength and crash protection. For practicality, the car employs wheel hubs from the supercharged Mustang GT500 and off-the-shelf racing parts like Brembo brakes used on the Mustang GT4 racing car. The hub carriers at each wheel are machined from solid blocks of aluminum for maximum strength.

The Mach-E 1400 has adjustable pushrod suspension using Ohlins adjustable shock absorbers wrapped in coil springs for all four wheels that can be adjusted to suit the conditions and expected use. The thick anti-roll bars are adjustable by changing their attachment position to vary their leverage, which changes how much they affect the car’s handling.

These familiar-looking chassis components appealed to Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3 crew member and social media racing tech commenter Bozi Tataravic, who accompanied me to the event for added technical insight. “The suspension design [is] very adaptable with a GT3/GT4-style suspension upright design that makes changes easy when making adjustments for road course use or to switch to drift configuration quickly,” he notes.

Additionally, Tataravic spots some clever details on the suspension upright hub carriers. “I like the fact that they machined multiple brake caliper mounting options onto the front upright to allow large swings in brake sizes for things like specialty drift configuration,” he observes.

The Mach-E 1400 packs a 56.8-kilowatt-hour 800-volt nickel-manganese-cobalt battery pack. The pack employs pouch-style cells from the Korean company, Kokam. Electrons from those batteries flow to seven YASA P400 R Series “pancake” style electric motors, which are designed with a through-shaft mounting system so that they can be stacked together in series to combine their power. The Mach-E uses three of the 3-inch thick motors to drive its front wheels and four more of them for the rear wheels. 

[Related: Ford’s electric Mustang Mach-E is an important leap into the future]

These front and rear drivetrains operate independently of one another, each driving the wheels through a differential that is the same as Gittin uses on his combustion-powered drift cars. As with most EVs, the Mach-E 1400 has just one gear, but the differential ratios can be changed so that the car’s acceleration and top speed can be adjusted according to the specific demonstration mission of the day. There is no transmission with regular gears.

How the car drives

For my turn in the car, it was set up with the rear differential geared to produce a top speed of 130 mph, while the front one was geared for 150 mph. The goal isn’t to achieve these speeds on the tight infield road course at Charlotte Motor Speedway, but to give the car the feel of a rear-drive bias.

When Gittin is doing drift demonstrations, the team outfits the car with 90-mph gears front and rear, making it easier for him to spin the car’s tires for lurid wheelspin. I’m not looking for wheelspin, just a modicum of speed and excitement.

Any machine creating 1,400 horsepower, no matter whether it is combustion-powered or electric, generates monumental amounts of heat that must be dissipated. The Mach-E 1400 has separate systems front and rear for cooling the car’s electric motors and inverters. In total, there are four distinct cooling systems using 16 different coolant pumps for all the components.

While my drive will require some amount of cooling, drift performances are a worst-case scenario in terms of heating up the system because the car is running at full power continuously rather than speeding up and slowing down as I’m doing. Drift cars don’t actually go very fast most of the time, so there isn’t much airflow to help with cooling. And even worse, the cars are sideways most of the time, so the airflow that exists is striking the side of the car instead of going through the radiators.

What is also tough for cooling is that this rapid discharge heats the battery cells, and then the team needs to quickly recharge it for additional runs, further heating the battery. Rather than install yet another cooling system for the battery, the RTR (Ready-to-Rock) team built a custom external battery cooler using an assemblage of industrial pumps, hoses, controllers, and heat exchangers to create a life-support cart that parks next to the car when it is in the garage. The cooling end of the system goes beneath the car, where it can draw heat out of the pack directly by circulating the coolant back from the heat exchanger to bring the battery heat out with it.

Technician Tim Browning points out the team’s sensible solution to monitoring the state of the cooling system. It is a Motec electronic dashboard display, exactly like the ones used in racecars.

My pre-drive briefing includes a request to please park the car if the dashboard shows the warning message “STOP NOW.” (This seemed kind of self-evident.) Gittin tells me that he’s seen this warning while developing the car, but as they’ve become more familiar with its workings, they’ve raised the thresholds for the warning so the alert hasn’t appeared in a while, and I’m unlikely to see it. (This is encouraging.)

The car has a light on the roof indicating the status of the high-voltage electrical system. If the light is green, all is good. If the light is red, do NOT touch the car. If you’re inside the car and the crew informs you over the radio that the light is red, you’re supposed to park and leap out of the car, making sure to never touch the car and the ground at the same time.

The car drives normally in most respects, Gittin tells me. Except, the steering gets heavy under braking, as the fat tires resist the driver’s efforts to turn the steering wheel. 

The crawl through the driver’s window opening to enter is the most challenging of any racecar I’ve driven. You have to sit your butt on the steel bar where the window sill is and then snake your legs into the opening. But once inside, you can easily slide down into the seat and attach the removable steering wheel.

Now, I’m sitting on top of most of the racing harness that I need to buckle into. With some squirming, I’m able to get most of that pulled clear and start snapping belts into the buckle. Browning leans through the window, making sure the shoulder straps seat properly on the HANS safety device connected to my helmet.

Gittin reaches over from the right-side passenger seat (the car also has a pair of back seats, so Gittin can give three guests demonstration rides at a time) and rotates the knob on the ceiling console to activate the high-voltage system. After a brief delay and a purposeful-sounding “kerchunk,” the system activates and the whirring of various electric devices commences.

Then it is just a matter of twisting another knob, the equivalent of the shifter, to the “forward” position, and the car is ready to move out. My first job is to bed in the car’s new brake rotors, where I do a lap of speeding up and slowing down to transfer some brake pad material to the fresh cast iron rotor surface. This will ensure the brakes will actually work when I need them to on subsequent laps.

It also gives me more time to learn the way around the track, which I’ve never driven before, following some familiarization laps I did in Gittin’s own Mach-E daily driver. Underway for real, the Mach-E lurches forward with a high-pitched whine from its differential gears. The power is excellent, but race tracks are horsepower black holes, absorbing anything you can throw at them without noticing. 

Through the first couple tentative corners, the car turns acceptably, but with some heft to the steering as promised. I gain speed through the lap and on the next lap start sliding the car. It corrects easily. So easily, that I mistakenly think maybe there is a stability control system helping, but Gittin tells me that the car has no stability control or traction control.

A bit of this builds my confidence in the car, amidst the shrieking gear noise and corrected slides. Driving this car is work, and the steering’s weight, which piles on the heaviest just at the point where I need to crank the wheel into the turn, is causing me to miss my spots. Late on turn-in equals a missed apex and less ability to flatten the accelerator pedal as early as possible on corner exit. 

Through this frustrating sloppiness, my speed builds further, so that by the third flying lap I’m hammering the brakes on the entrance to a slow corner as I reach the turn-in point. Now, the steering isn’t heavy, it feels locked.

It is like the car’s been struck by a Mario Kart lightning bolt just when I need to turn, but instead of spinning me off Rainbow Road, it locks the car onto a straight path leading off the track! I heave all my strength into the wheel and ease off the brake pedal, forcing the car to turn. The abrupt steering input triggers a slide, which I correct and continue on my way, nowhere near where I should be on the track. Maddening. This thing is hard to drive.

My problem, says Gittin, is that I’m driving it like a gas car. He’s mastered the necessary technique to make the Mach-E dance. I, clearly, have not. “You have to learn it,” he tells me, like Yoda counseling Luke that he must unlearn what he’s learned. “You can’t get in it and drive it like a gas car. You were still a little bit of brake-on when you were turning in, and that doesn’t work very well.” 

“You were very quickly at the limit, and those little things were starting to catch you, because it’s just not natural for you,” he continues. Following our post-drive debrief, I’m ready to go for another try, to perfect this new driving style. Alas, the RTR crew has already loaded the Mach-E 1400 onto the trailer.

So much for the idea that EVs are too soulless and smooth. They can be whatever they are built to be, including insane, hard-to-master drift cars. “It’s a wild animal, man,” says Gittin. Indeed. I’ve even heard it called “life-changing.”

The post The souped-up Ford Mustang Mach-E makes driving EVs a lot more fun appeared first on Popular Science.

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Honda has traditionally cultivated strong grassroots support for aspiring motorcyclists, with novice-friendly scooters and minibikes like the Cub and Trail 50. In recent years, the company, like the rest of the industry, has focused on pricey machines catering to veteran riders with disposable income. But the 2014 debut of the delightful Grom minibike demonstrated abundant demand for something smaller and friendlier, with global sales of more than 750,000 bikes.

Now Honda has topped itself with something friendlier still. In truth, the 236-pound Navi is a glorified Activa scooter, with the same 7-horsepower 109-cc single-cylinder engine and continuously variable transmission.

But it has motorcycle looks and a lockable plastic storage box where a motorcycle’s engine would usually be, lending the Navi the look of an electric motorcycle. And with a price tag of just $1,807, which is less than half the price of the 10-hp, manual-shift Grom, the Navi is easily accessible for many would-be beginners.

Let’s clarify what we’ve got here. The Navi wears a license plate, and it has a headlight with high and low beams, taillight, turn signals, horn, and electric starter. It is street legal as a real motorcycle. It features a regular motorcycle speedometer and handlebar-mounted controls. There’s also an old-school kick starter, if you want to channel your inner Hell’s Angel. 

Unlike dirtbikes that some riders use for learning to ride, the Navi is not well-suited to riding off-road. Even yard use feels like a bad idea, as the street tires have poor grip on grass, and the suspension has very little travel (3.9 inches in front, 2.8 inches at the rear), especially when compressed by the weight of a full-size adult onboard. It really needs to stay on smooth pavement or at least gravel. And speaking of grass, our model came in Grasshopper Green, while Red, Nut Brown, and Ranger Green are alternative colors.

[Related: I rode an electric motorcycle for the first time. Here’s what I learned.]

Despite all these “real” motorcycle attributes, the Navi doesn’t have a gear shifter or a clutch handle. Riding away from a stop is as simple as twisting the right handlebar grip, just like on a scooter. With an adult rider, you’re going to probably twist the throttle all the way open until the Navi reaches your target speed.

In my neighborhood, it is the perfect toy for cruising around at 25 mph; I’ve been able to connect surface streets between neighborhoods to cover a decent area around without getting onto any bigger roads. It is purely a coincidence that there’s a Baskin-Robbins in the next neighborhood’s shopping center to serve as a popular destination!

I ventured onto one bigger road briefly, to test the Navi’s top speed: it reaches 47 mph, but it isn’t happy doing it. The tiny 12-inch front and 10-inch rear wheels provide great maneuverability in the neighborhood, but the ride gets busy—a little hectic and unstable feeling—at near-highway speed.

Front and rear drum brakes are cable actuated, just like on classic motorcycles of the mid-20^th century. Unlike those antiques, however, the Navi’s brakes actually provide crisp response to a squeeze on the brake handle, and the bike’s low speed and light weight mean that the superior heat dissipation of disc brakes is not needed.

The brakes also provide a solution for the Navi’s CVT transmission. Riders park traditional, manual-shift motorcycles in gear to prevent them rolling off their kickstands when parked on a slope. The Navi’s CVT won’t hold the bike in place when it is shut off, so instead there’s a parking brake to hold it still. (A CVT is the kind of automatic transmission that is familiar to scooter riders. It varies the drive ratio on the fly, with no discrete gears, so the engine speed changes depending on how aggressively the rider is twisting the throttle grip while the Navi gathers its speed deliberately.)

The Navi rolls on cheap, car-like stamped steel wheels that bolt on with four lug nuts, just like a car. This is instead of the usual motorcycle spoked aluminum wheels, and for this bike, with its low power and speed, these wheels are absolutely fine. 

Something to keep in mind, in a country where some people resist simple measures such as helmets, is that while the Navi doesn’t go very fast, riders are still exposed to other, bigger and heavier vehicles, so proper safety gear for every ride is a must. While the Navi is so much fun that it is reflexive to think of it as a toy, it is important to use a helmet, shoes, and long sleeves and pants. Shorts and flip-flops are not riding attire, even for the Navi.

Also, you’ll need to get a motorcycle license to ride the Navi in most places. But look for motorcycle riding schools to embrace Navis as their training bikes, so you’ll be able to get a head start familiarizing yourself with the bike while earning your license.

Early returns are already in, as Navi sales have been red hot, and Honda says the bike is on track to be the top-selling street bike in the US. The reasons for its popularity are obvious— low price, ease of use, fuel efficiency, and more—so I wholeheartedly endorse the Navi as not only a great starter bike for novices, but a fun toy for experienced riders to putt around their neighborhoods.

If all goes well, the next thing they know, Navi riders will be back at the Honda dealer to swing a leg over something like the CB300R or CRF300L to try them on for size as fuel-efficient commuter bikes and weekend playthings. Just like how the old Trail 50 put riders on a path to the company’s CB350 back in the day.

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Setting improbably ambitious goals has a way of motivating people to achieve things that they might not have believed possible beforehand. Land on the moon and return safely to Earth by New Year’s Eve, 1969? Seemed impossible. But determined NASA employees and contractors made it happen. 

The term “moonshot” is hopelessly overused, but this kind of daring assignment is exactly what happened when Mercedes-Benz executives decided that the company would build an electric concept car that is capable of traveling 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) of driving on public roads without recharging. Oh, and they’d have to design the car from scratch, build it, and prove its capability in an actual 1,000 km road drive in just 18 months. Crazy!

The result is the low-slung Vision EQXX. It stands only 53 inches tall, and its slippery design yields a wind-cheating coefficient of drag (CoD) of just 0.17. In the car industry, anything less than 0.30 is considered excellent. A football’s score ranges between 0.18 and 0.20. Mercedes’ own superb EQS production model achieves a CoD of 0.20.

Mercedes’ current electric vehicle product line includes the EQS full-size luxury sedan as a production model today, and the company has a flurry of battery electric models hitting showrooms imminently or arriving in the not-too-distant future. These include the EQS full-size SUV, the mid-size EQE sport sedan, EQE mid-size SUV, and EQB compact SUV.

I had the opportunity to slide behind the wheel of the EQXX, a bullet-shaped technical marvel concept car at the Mercedes Immendingen proving ground in southern Germany, and to my surprise, what I found is a polished machine that is seemingly ready for showrooms rather than the one-off technical breakthrough that the EQXX really is.

To achieve this seemingly impossible goal, Mercedes attacked efficiency at every opportunity in pursuit of the “virtuous circle” of benefits that result from minimized weight and drag that reduces the demands for a bigger, heavier battery pack and motor. However—and this is part of why the car looks like something that could go on sale next year—they consciously chose to skip a couple highly visible design elements for drag reduction.

[Related: Opulence and displays galore: Meet the EQS 580 EV and its ‘Hyperscreen’]

The company wanted anyone seeing the Vision EQXX to consider it a real car and not an experiment. So the aerodynamic team limited the car’s drag-reducing rearward taper to an invisible two inches, they eschewed the rear fender skirts that reduce the aerodynamic drag that results from the rear wheels churning turbulently through the air, and they mounted plain, old-fashioned glass mirrors on the doors instead of using cameras for side-view mirrors. The homely original 1999 Honda Insight hybrid-electric is the appearance they sought to avoid.

Then, even with one hand proverbially tied behind their backs, the engineers, aerodynamicists, and stylists still produced that world-beating 0.17 CoD number. One way they accomplished this was by substituting an underside cooling plate for the usual radiator. Air flows along the bottom side of this plate rather than through a radiator’s cooling fins, dramatically reducing drag. On-demand cooling means that the EQXX has air exhausts in the hood that can draw air from under the car’s front when needed in hot weather. Doing that adds only 0.007 to the car’s coefficient of drag.

And the car rolls on Bridgestone’s narrow, low-rolling-resistance Turanza Eco tires that provide the dual benefit of reduced aero drag and reduced friction. During the test drive, I experienced the benefit of these tires first-hand while cruising on a very slight downhill straight, when the car coasted from 57 kilometers per hour to 60 kph where a regular car would probably soon come to a stop rather than gaining speed.

As with most EVs, the EQXX has multiple settings for energy recovery. Normally, I like to drive in a mode that provides high regeneration when the driver lifts a foot off the accelerator pedal, but Julien Pillas, an electric drive special projects engineer who babysits my time in the company’s very expensive project car, coaches me that I can improve the efficiency of my drive by selecting the “coast” mode at some points in the drive. 

This lets the car exploit its slipperiness, and takes advantage of the fact that there are no conversion losses by directly using gravity to power the car when going down hills, rather than turning that energy into electricity stored in the battery and then deploying that juice back to the electric motor later.

The EQXX is fully instrumented and Mercedes produces a data chart of my drive. They’re impressed that during my 20 minutes behind the wheel, the car consumed energy at a rate of 7.78 kilowatt-hours per 100 kilometers of driving, which bested the 7.9-kWh benchmark set by their driver on the same route. To be fair, I did average a slightly slower speed during my drive, but my trip also included a full-throttle 0-60 mph acceleration blast up a steep hill to gain a seat-of-the-pants impression of the EQXX’s entirely acceptable acceleration.

Unlike immensely powerful and quick vehicles like the 1,000-horsepower Hummer EV, the EQXX’s single electric motor powering its rear wheels is rated at a modest 241 horsepower. However, that motor is only tasked with moving a similarly modest (for an EV) curb weight of 3,858 lbs. The EQXX employs exotic carbon fiber construction and has so-called bionic castings whose optimized shape mimics biological structures, but a big source of the car’s weight control comes from its battery pack, which is a relatively lithe 1,091 lbs.

[Related: The new Hummer EV is an agile, 9,200-pound monster]

For a 100-kilowatt-hour pack, that’s an amazing accomplishment. Mercedes achieves this using a 920-volt battery pack with silicon carbide power electronics to produce a battery that is half the physical size of the battery in the Mercedes EQS production model, and that occupies 30 percent less space than its production counterpart.

The pack is the work of Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains (HPP) in Brixworth, England. These are the wizards who helped the Mercedes Formula 1 team win the last eight constructor’s championships with their hybrid-electric drivetrain mastery.

“One of the best ways to improve efficiency is to reduce losses,” explains Eva Greiner, chief engineer of the electric drive system at Mercedes-Benz, in the car’s press release. “We worked on every part of the system to reduce energy consumption and losses through system design, material selection, lubrication and heat management. And our fantastic simulation tools helped us find out quickly what works and what doesn’t.” 

The car’s light weight and its narrow tires contribute to light steering effort. Underway, the electric power steering assistance diminishes and the steering feel is communicative and responsive. At parking lot speeds, the assistance is overboosted, leaving the steering feeling disconnected. In a production car, I’d hope for an over-the-air update to improve this. In a groundbreaking prototype that rushed to meet a deadline, this is the closest thing I can find to a complaint. Astounding.

Power application through the accelerator pedal is smooth and linear, and the regeneration when I lift off the pedal is driver-selectable. In any regeneration mode, the car delivers no surprises, with the refinement you’d expect of a Mercedes production car.

The EQXX’s doors open and close with authority. The cabin is spacious and well-detailed (though the seats’ foam is curiously hard). My impression of reliability is born out by the fact that the EQXX never broke down and stranded its test drivers, says Pillas.

The team tested the car’s drivetrain components in an EQB SUV prototype fitted with the experimental parts. This car did suffer failures, and even when it was working, the drivers suffered from a lack of climate control during many chilly European winter tests, Pillas recalls.

After this preparation, the team successfully completed its mission of driving the EQXX for 1,008 km (630 miles) in a drive from Sindelfingen, Germany, over the Alps, to Cassis, France. But the team wasn’t done. Feeling their car had still more potential, Mercedes engineers executed a shocking 1,202-km (747-mile) drive on a single charge, piloting the EQXX from the company headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, to Silverstone, England. This trip benefited from more moderate temperatures and flatter terrain, averaging 52 mph and hitting a top speed of 87 mph on the autobahn.

Do you suppose that when the engineers set out to achieve the seemingly impossible goals set for their concept car, they imagined they’d produce a machine so road-ready that it could plausibly also be a preview for a showroom-ready version? My guess is that, as with the first record-setting drive of the EQXX, Mercedes is still not done with this car.

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The balance between form and function is always a delicate one when carmakers introduce new models, as the fantastic shapes conceived by creative designers meet the harsh realities of government regulations, manufacturing requirements, and everyday useability.

But the team behind Cadillac’s new Lyriq battery-electric crossover insists that this time, the good guys won. That means that the designers got to keep most of the flavor of the Lyriq concept car. Meanwhile, the engineering team got to flex its own creative muscles by noodling out ways to let the designers’ dreams live within the real-world constricts that usually cause production models to be disappointingly dull in comparison to the concept car.

Here’s how it all came together—and what it’s like to drive.

$200 million in computer time 

Computer-aided engineering (CAE) was a crucial tool in this achievement, reports Cadillac Lyriq executive chief engineer Jamie Brewer. The team burned through $200-million worth of cycle time on GM’s computers to model every aspect of the Lyriq, she says. “By the time we got our first prototype vehicle built, we were 80 percent of the way there and could go right into tuning,” Brewer explains.

This was important, because as the first in the line of Cadillac’s all-electric models (the company says it will only introduce battery-powered new models from now on), the Lyriq serves to illustrate everything Cadillac aims to be going forward. So that means challenges like working out noise management, now that the combustion engine is no longer there providing background white noise to drown out other, more unpleasant sounds.

“The engine is a significant masking factor for annoying high-pitched noises and pumping noises,” says Brewer. Cadillac’s solution, which was heavily reliant on that CAE modeling, is to eliminate as much noise as possible at its source. As an example, the Lyriq rolls on wheels that have been specifically designed for maximum rigidity to help quell road noise, and they are wrapped in tires that are filled with self-sealing goo that also quiets noise at the source.

[Related: Ford’s electric Lightning still drives like an F-150 truck, but better]

When that fails, the solution is to apply sound deadening to block the noise from getting to the driver. And the last line of defense is active noise cancellation through the car’s AKG stereo system, which directly attacks any remaining unwanted sound waves that enter the Lyriq’s cabin.

CAE also contributed to the Lyriq’s absence of a rear window wiper. The company modeled airflow to help keep the rear window clear as an alternative. Even the welds that hold the Lyriq’s sheet-metal chassis together were modeled on the computer. “We were able to use CAE to very quickly iterate different welding types and different materials to optimize the structure,” Brewer says.

Hop in the car, kids

These measures combine to provide the hushed, posh experience that Cadillac hopes will attract—finally—a new generation of customers. So far it is working. Seventy-eight percent of the people who’ve bought the 2023 model year of the Lyriq completely out are new to Cadillac. If you want a Lyriq now, it will be a 2024 model, delivered sometime next spring. Two-thirds of these customers are Generation X or Y rather than the geriatrics who’ve been Cadillac’s mainstay customers for decades.

To catch and keep more such buyers, the Lyriq needs to break Cadillac’s history of nearly-there efforts. These have been cars that Cadillac enthusiasts, if there were any, could accept as a reasonable facsimile of the BMW the cars were trying to be. But there were still shortcomings. Plastics that looked out of place. Wonky infotainment interfaces whose processors were inadequate for their task.

So, the stakes are high: As the bellwether for Cadillac’s new generation of electric models that will attract its new generations of customers, the Lyriq cannot afford to fumble these things. And mostly, it doesn’t.

The car is as placid to drive as you’d hope, sailing effortlessly down the road on the power of its 340-horsepower, 325-lb.-ft. rear drive motor. It is powered by a 102-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion Ultium battery pack that the EPA says will last 312 miles. This is the configuration for our $62,155 rear-drive test car. 

[Related: The new Hummer EV is an agile, 9,200-pound monster]

Starting at the end of the year, the company will also ship all-wheel-drive models that add a front motor for a total of 500 hp. Torque values haven’t been determined yet.

As is the norm for such vehicles, the Lyriq has fake engine noise in the cabin that provides aural cues to the car’s power state. It also has multiple drive modes, so drivers can choose from Touring, Sport, Snow/Ice, and a personalized “My” mode. These settings tweak the power delivery, brake response, and fake sound levels.

The suspension is unchanged, as the initial Lyriq models will not employ the magnetoresistive active shock absorbers that Cadillac pioneered in the ‘90s under the Magneride brand. (That system employs hydraulic fluid containing iron particles whose alignment is controlled by a magnetic field to change the fluid’s viscosity and therefore the stiffness of the shock absorbers.) The Lyriq’s steering is well-weighted and provides decent feedback for a luxury car, but it is slow, requiring many turns on the wheel to negotiate the switchbacks of the roads through the mountains outside Park City, Utah, where I tested the car.

Slow steering is no particular shortcoming in a luxury car with no racetrack pretensions, and the Lyriq’s handling easily surpasses the disappointing understeer of the BMW iX electric crossover. In this instance, Cadillac is showing BMW the way.

Hitting the brakes

The Lyriq has driver-selectable one-pedal drive. This is the feature in most EVs that causes the car to slow when the driver lifts off the accelerator pedal, the way a golf cart does. Most companies choose a corporate philosophy on how much or how little their EVs will slow when the driver lifts off the pedal. Cadillac wisely exploits the fact that this is a matter of software, and as such, should be driver-selectable.

So in the Lyriq, drivers can switch the function off, or they can choose low or high levels of deceleration. This means that just by lifting off the accelerator pedal, the Lyriq will slow at 0.23 g of force in the low setting or 0.30 g in the high setting. Additionally, the driver can squeeze a paddle on the back of the steering wheel that provides proportional braking that varies by how much they squeeze the paddle to produce 0.35 g of deceleration—all without ever touching the Lyriq’s brake pedal.

The brake force when the brake pedal is used is something that was developed entirely in-house by GM. Previously brake response was the province of the brake system supplier. But now that braking must be metered between regenerative braking from the car’s electric drivetrain and friction braking using the conventional brakes, GM has taken the responsibility of integrating these systems itself.

Those devilish details

The car is spacious and comfortable inside, with a light, airy cabin that is illuminated through the standard panoramic skylight. The rear seat feels roomy, with abundant leg and headroom. But some of this is a trick, bought by using a too-low rear seat cushion that would leave adult passengers squirming uncomfortably before long.

As pleasant and capable as the Lyriq is, the car is undermined by some head-scratching decisions. The navigation system does not display the speed limit, which is valuable information in a tourist area with surprisingly low speed limits like Park City. 

Those cool driver-selectable drive modes and one-pedal drive modes? Don’t look for a button to conveniently set these. Instead, you’ll navigate through a couple menu layers on the Lyriq’s infotainment display. 

A Cadillac engineer acknowledged these oversights, and indicated that the one-pedal drive setting could get a dedicated virtual button at the bottom of the display screen soon. Speaking of the touch screen, steadying your hand by grasping the top as you press on-screen buttons reveals that the top of the display gets hot in the sun. Really hot.

So there are details that leave us puzzled and disappointed. They aren’t deal breakers, and many of them could be addressed with updates in the future. But when new customers are being introduced to the brand for the first time, they may not be in a mood to forgive such quirks. Cadillac just needs to unleash a tiny bit more of its engineers’ capabilities to iron out these fixable details, because they’ve done exemplary work on the Lyriq’s fundamentals.

The post How computer-aided engineering shaped Cadillac’s first EV to a tee appeared first on Popular Science.

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“Driving on the moon is like driving on ice,” warns Jeff Vogt, the advanced program lead for vehicle dynamics at General Motors. “If you can imagine the worst ice storm ever, that is what it is like.”

I was interrogating Vogt in preparation for my turn at the wheel of GM’s lunar rover simulator, an experience that promised to virtually fulfill a dream of mine since I watched the Apollo astronauts as a kid.

The Apollo 17 crew of astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt roved the surface in search of geologically significant rocks, a mission made more productive by their trusty 4×4. But the notion of wheeling an off-roader across the pockmarked surface of the moon has been dormant since Cernan and Schmitt blasted off from the moon in the ascent stage of their lunar lander in December, 1972.

Now, General Motors, the company that built the original Lunar Roving Vehicles, aims to return with a new Lunar Mobility Vehicle (LMV) in partnership with Lockheed Martin.

A critical development tool in this program is GM’s simulator, which helps engineers test designs for a vehicle that cannot realistically be physically tested on Earth. That’s because of the moon’s weaker gravity, which is one-sixth that of Earth’s. The LMV has all of the 1,500 kilograms of mass it has on Earth, but only one-sixth the weight, which is why traction is so poor on the dusty surface.

I slide behind the simulator’s wheel. The aim is to avoid abrupt moves. No hard starts, stops, or turns. And most especially, take it easy driving out of craters, says Vogt. “We learned pretty quickly that if you accelerate too hard to climb an incline, with lower gravity, you launch into space.”

Noted.

It turns out that when driven gently, like you would on ice, the LMV is perfectly docile and responsive. The main challenge is an artifact of driving in a simulator with a 2D-screen standing in for reality. Despite its 270-degree wrap-around display of the one square kilometer of the lunar south pole that is loaded into GM’s computer, there is very little sensation of inclination, like you would feel in reality if you were going up or down a crater. 

Operating the sim, you are wrapped within a 26-foot-diameter high-definition display situated in a darkened room. You drive from a car’s cockpit section that is mounted atop a pedestal that tilts side to side and pitches fore and aft, but most of that motion is imperceptible while driving the moon program because of the gentle driving motions. Presumably the ride gets a bit rougher when it is simulating the latest Corvette tearing around a track!

When the LMV seems oddly sluggish in response to the accelerator pedal, that’s the clue that you’re climbing. When it doesn’t seem to slow down when you lift off the accelerator, that’s because you’re going downhill.

The available photography of the Moon’s south pole is low-resolution, so large features are accurately represented. Smaller craters and rocks were generated statistically, based on an understanding of their prevalence on the moon. The LMV proves to have enough ground clearance that it easily straddles the small-looking rocks. Without a frame of reference, I have no idea how big they really are, but I now know that the rover will be able to drive right over most of the rocks it encounters.

The LMV’s top speed is 25 kph, but I never venture above 12 kph. A crash would be harmlessly virtual, but the time needed to reset the simulator would mean an instant end to my moon-driving fantasy. The Apollo LRV topped out at 13 kph, but astronauts tended to drive at about 5 kph to avoid breaking the rover and to minimize the dust kicked up by its wheels.

It is important to model the LMV’s capabilities because, unlike the Apollo LRV, the LMV is expected to spend most of its time driving autonomously between jobs carrying live crews. The 3-second round-trip time of radio signals from Earth makes remote piloting impractical, especially at the speeds the LMV can achieve. 

GM is applying the know-how from its Cruise autonomous vehicle division to the LMV so that it can work when the astronauts aren’t there. Lockheed Martin’s design is for a dedicated lander to deliver the LMV to the Moon’s surface, rather than having it stow away with the astronauts on their flight, as the LRV did.

Autonomy means that the LMV can begin working as soon as it lands, exploring the terrain and conducting experiments without waiting for the Artemis lunar mission astronauts to arrive. The LMV will employ Ultium electric drivetrain components that are the same ones that are going into GM’s terrestrial EVs. It will have the same electric motors, and although the Ultium battery cells used so far in the GMC Hummer EV we tested previously and the new Cadillac Lyriq are the pouch-style prismatic cells, GM’s Ultium road map also includes the cylindrical cells the LMV will use. These AA-like cylindrical cells are better suited to the extreme 500-degree temperature swings between the Moon’s two weeks of daylight and two weeks of nighttime, according to the company.

GM’s know-how from the Hummer EV’s control programs for its three electric motors have informed the programming for the LMV’s four motors. This means that the motors will be able to maximize the paltry available traction, and they will also let the rover do nifty tricks like the super-tight turns the Hummer can execute by routing power to the outside wheels.

Design details to notice about the LMV include the seating position, which puts the two astronauts ahead of the front wheels rather than plopping them into the middle of the vehicle as they were in the LRV. This reduces their exposure to the abrasive dust kicked up by the front wheels, which sticks to everything because of its electrostatic charge.

Models that GM designers show me have the astronauts sitting in the open, but they explain that the latest versions feature body panels that enclose the seats and the LMV’s cargo bed to help further block the dust.

Knowing that GM has gone to such measures to help keep my future spacesuit pristine makes it all the easier to volunteer for the mission to drive the LMV on the moon. Who else has already practiced?

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A Ford F-150 pickup truck must be an F-150. Ford’s F-Series pickups have been the best-selling vehicle in America annually for decades, with sales of 726,000 trucks in 2021. It is a crucially important vehicle for Ford Motor Co. and for the US economy. 

As such, Ford isn’t taking any risks in the transition to electric power for its most important model. “This one’s the real deal,” pledges Ford vice president of electric vehicle programs Darren Palmer, while addressing media at the F-150 Lightning’s press drive program in San Antonio. 

Indeed, Ford’s new electric pickup casts a shadow over the entire industry as skeptical consumers worry whether EVs will deliver the functionality they need. Ford aims to calm those concerns by showing that battery-electric power is even capable of replacing combustion power in its “Built Ford Tough” F-Series trucks. Seeing this toughness and capability will cause buyers of other models greater confidence that their needs will also be met by electric power, the company says.

“It is a unique opportunity to get people’s attention for what an EV can do,” explains Palmer. “You can’t ignore [an electric F-150]. “We feel it is going to pull a lot of people into EVs who wouldn’t have considered one before.”

He’s right. Two days behind the wheel of the 2022 F-150 Lightning in Texas hill country proved the point that the truck more than delivers on the promise of truck capability and EV efficiency. I had the chance to drive the Lightning on city streets, rural two-lanes, Interstate highways, and off-road. I tested it unladen, carrying a payload, and towing a 5,000-lb. Airstream camper.

Through all of those conditions, the Lightning delivered, and then some. Consider the fact that Ford is launching the Lightning as an all-wheel-drive-only machine, and realize that even the less-expensive configurations deliver incredible capability. It was the unique ability of an EV to outperform the familiar combustion model that sold skeptical truck owners Ford surveyed three years ago as part of its Project Edison EV study in 2017, Palmer says.

When told about the potential capabilities of an EV truck, with its massive power and torque, tremendous towing ability, and the ability to create a secure front trunk (“frunk”) in the underhood space vacated by the gas engine, these truck owners quickly stopped caring about the Lightning’s source of power.

While repurposing that space into the lockable trunk space that trucks normally lack seems obvious, it was not easy, remarks Palmer. “If you think that is easy, think again,” he says. “Everything you need is in there: brakes, air conditioner, things like that.”

When truck owners learned of additional benefits, such as the ability for the Lightning to power electric tools on job sites, appliances at camp sites, or even entire homes at disaster sites, these dedicated truck owners were sold, reports Palmer.

Here are the numbers that have proved to be catnip for the 200,000 people who’ve placed orders for the Lightning: The dual motors deliver a stunning 775 lb.-ft. of torque through all four wheels. The truck’s standard battery packs 98 kilowatt-hours of juice, which is similar to the capacity of a Tesla Model S. The optional extended-range battery carries 131 kWh of energy. The dual front/rear electric motors combine to produce 452 horsepower in trucks using the standard battery, and the same motors put out 580 horsepower with the extended range battery, because the bigger battery pack can provide more power to the motors.

The EPA says the standard pack is good for 230 miles of driving, while the extended range pack will go 320 miles. For customers who expect to haul loads, an available Onboard Scales system can gauge the weight loaded in the bed, letting the trip computer calculate expected driving range correspondingly.

Trucks with the extended range battery and the optional Max Trailer Tow package can tow trailers as heavy as 10,000 pounds, and again, the truck recalculates the anticipated range with the trailer. The standard-range battery has a maximum towing capacity of 7,700 lbs. My test truck predicted that it would be able to drag the Airstream camper 238 miles on a charge, but looking at the actual consumption I experienced in the truck, it looks like it would actually have run out of power after 150 miles. 

This number also corresponds to the truck’s 1.3 miles per kilowatt-hour, as reported by the computer while I was towing. With a 131-kWh extended-range battery, this efficiency projects to 170 miles. These are credible distances for casual towing, while the serious heavy-duty long-distance trailer-towing drivers will likely stick with their diesel heavy-duty machines.

Pulling the Airstream camper behind the Lightning is easy and stress-free. The massive torque churning through all four wheels lets the truck pull away from a stop effortlessly. One of the tougher aspects of towing a large trailer is merging into traffic on a highway. The combined length of the truck and trailer requires a large opening in traffic to merge onto the road, and their combined mass can make it challenging to get up to speed to match that of the cars on the road.

The Lightning makes merging into traffic easier because it can accelerate hard enough while pulling a trailer that it arrives at the merge point going just as fast as the other traffic. Rolling on the on-ramp at about 20 mph, I floor the Lightning’s accelerator to test the truck’s acceleration. The Lightning surges forward, with the front tires squealing, and within seconds the rig is merging effortlessly into the 70 mph Interstate traffic flow.

Without a trailer, the Lightning can shoot to 60 mph in about 4.5 seconds with the extended-range battery. Standard-range battery drivers will see five whole ticks of the stopwatch on the same run.

Freed of the trailer, the unhitched Lightning delivers an everyday driving experience better than the familiar gas-fueled F-150s. The truck’s independent rear suspension system provides a cushier ride than we’re accustomed to from the traditional solid-axle truck, particularly those with the old-style leaf springs.

Two other electric pickups we’ve already tested, the Rivian R1T and the GMC Hummer EV, also have independent rear suspension, but these vehicles don’t line up as direct competitors for the F-150. Neither has as large a bed as the F-150. The Hummer is optimized for off-roading, while the Rivian’s exotic linked hydraulic damper system (the same as employed by McLaren sports cars) endows the R1T with a miraculous combination of on-road handling and off-road prowess.

The F-150 has a smooth, comfortable ride, but it still drives like a truck. Especially because of the low-rolling-resistance tires the Lightning uses to maximize electric driving range have less grip than normal tires would, it suffers abundant understeer, sliding the front tires when I pitch it into curves in the rolling Texas hill-country back roads. Which is pretty typical full-size pickup truck behavior, confirming the Lightning as an authentic F-150!

Less traditional is the Lightning’s enormous center display screen, which at 15.5 inches is large enough to elicit remarks from passers-by while the truck is parked. It is like the one from the Mustang Mach-E with its innovative stick-on physical volume knob for the entertainment system. In addition to its navigational and entertainment features, the center screen provides access to the Lightning’s EV settings, its drive modes for Normal, Sport, Tow/Haul, and Off-Road.

The Off-Road mode lends the Lightning solid mobility in dirt and mud, despite the very unsuitable efficiency-oriented tires. It is one of the benefits of electric drive that the truck can apply the power to each wheel for most possible traction. A driver-selectable electrically locking rear differential helps minimize slippage to let the truck crawl through slippery conditions and up rock scrambles.

This doesn’t mean it has serious capability off-road in the manner of Ford’s Bronco or like the Hummer EV, but it demonstrates the ability to go through some pretty tough conditions. While the Lightning has one-pedal EV driving in other modes, Off-Road mode disables the ability to start and stop using just the accelerator pedal, as I found to be so impressive in the Bronco.

However, Ford engineers point out that the gas F-150 has off-road-oriented models, like the FX4 and the Raptor, and that the Lightning is not an off-road-oriented model. This also explains why it lacks a Hill Descent Control feature, which automatically limits the vehicle speed crawling down steep descents. So perhaps we’ll see these kinds of features in a future electric off-road-focused F-150 model.

Our truck certainly wasn’t lacking for other amenities. The tested Lariat has a base price of $67,474, and the as-tested configuration costs $81,099. I drove extended-range Lariat models on the highway and for the trailer-towing test. For the off-road drive, I was in an XLT with the standard battery, so its base price is $52,974 and the as-tested price is $54,669.

These prices seem steep, but they are solidly in line with typical pickup truck purchase prices, and for a while longer customers will still be eligible for a $7,500 federal tax rebate for purchasing one. 

The company’s challenge is not finding willing buyers but to deliver the trucks to customers desperate to get them. Ford holds orders for 200,000 trucks but has the ability to build only 150,000 trucks in 2023 because that’s how many batteries they expect to be able to get for them.

Now maybe Ford is a little sorry they did such a good job convincing gas truck traditionalists that the F-150 Lightning is their best next purchase. But they’d surely have started to figure that out by now, anyway.

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We’ve entered the twilight of combustion-engine vehicles, but Lamborghini is going all in on the gas-burning tech in the form of its Aventador supercar, the LP 780-4 Ultimae, with its naturally aspirated, non-electric-assisted V12 engine. 

Decoded, the name “LP 780-4 Ultimae” means “Longitudinale Posteriore,” which indicates that the engine is situated longways and mounted behind the driver. The “780” is the car’s metric horsepower rating, and the “-4” represents its all-wheel drive. “Ultimae” is self-evident as “final,” even to those of us who didn’t spend much time in Latin class, indicating that this Aventador is the last in the line.

The Aventador is the flagship Lamborghini V12 mid-engine missile, descended from the sultry 1966 Miura, through the menacing 1974 Countach, the oft-overlooked 1990 Diablo, and the stupendous 2001 Murcielago. The template for this model gained flip-up scissor doors with the Countach, and the engine has gotten progressively larger over the decades, nearly doubling in size from the Miura’s 3.9 liters and 430 horsepower to 6.5 liters and 770 hp.

Lamborghini’s V12 model gained all-wheel drive with the Diablo VT in 1993 to help put the V12’s power to the road. The 2017 Aventador S debuted four-wheel steering to aid the agility of the car, which has gotten bigger and heavier over the years.

For the Ultimae edition, the Aventador’s 6.5-liter V12 gains 10 horsepower, bringing the car’s final peak output to 770 naturally aspirated, non-electrically assisted horsepower. At full throttle, the engine’s song is nothing less than appropriately thunderous. This is the theater that buyers are paying for when they purchase such an overt machine, and the Aventador delivers.

However, when driven gently, the engine can relax and step into the background a bit, letting the driver burble around town on its 531 lb.-ft. of torque. In combination with the power steering and four-wheel steering (which aids the ability to maneuver through traffic) the Aventador Ultimae is surprisingly docile when driven like an ordinary car.

Shifting gears

This vehicle features a traditional single-clutch Graziano 7-speed transmission that the car shifts automatically. It also operates the clutch, so the Aventador has no clutch pedal. However, single-clutch transmissions require the engine’s power to be interrupted for gear changes. With a traditional manual transmission, drivers become proficient at easing off the accelerator before a shift and easing back into it, to smooth the shift process rather than lurching the vehicle’s occupants.

Driving the Aventador like a regular automatic transmission car, holding the accelerator pedal steady during acceleration as you’d normally do, produces noticeable driver’s-ed lurches as the computer disengages the clutch, changes gears, and re-engages it. 

This seems to be most pronounced in casual driving using the car’s Strada (Street) mode, until the driver masters the art of participating in gear changes as they would while driving a manual transmission car (because this actually is one) and eases off the gas before the automatic shift and eases back into it after. Sport mode driving is similar.

I’ve noticed when driving Aventadors on the track in Corsa (“Race”) mode that the problem mostly disappears because the shifts happen mostly at full throttle and are blazing fast at 50 millisecond. For street driving, the Aventador requests some involvement for best results.

A tug on the right-side steering column-mounted shift paddle engages first gear. A touch of throttle application and I’m underway on V12 power, with the Avendator’s wonderous exhaust note emanating from the anachronistic engine behind my right shoulder. Half an hour later, the Ultimae is slicing its way through the mountain roads outside Bologna, the engine’s power seeming to flatten the steepness of the mountain and the four-wheel steering is straightening switchbacks that look too tight for the Aventador to carve in one try.

On a racetrack, the Ultimae rips to 60 mph in 2.8 seconds and then keeps on going all the way to a top speed of 220 mph. At elevated speeds, the rear-wheel steering system provides enhanced stability rather than agility by reversing its function and steering the rear wheels in parallel with the fronts. 

Working with carbon fiber

The Aventador’s lightweight carbon fiber chassis helps the vehicle achieve its maximum performance, and its strength should help keep occupants safe at the car’s terminal velocity. 

Lamborghini let me participate in a hands-on carbon fiber workshop so I can appreciate just how difficult the labor-intensive process of creating carbon fiber parts really is. Verdict: very!

The first step is to don protective equipment. That means cut-resistant Kevlar gloves and a Kevlar sleeve on your non-dominant arm (because the knife will be in your other hand), and some rubber gloves topping the Kevlar gloves for protection from the resin in the carbon fiber.

Lamborghini technicians lay out molds on a table for us to make various parts. I work on a simple tray and a more complex vent. Each part is made of pre-cut sections of carbon fiber fabric that is pre-impregnated with resin and kept refrigerated. These sections are cut to the right shape by a computer-controlled fabric cutter that works sort of like a plotter, but rather than drawing a defined pattern on the material, it cuts the material into that shape.

After peeling the backing paper off, I press the carbon fiber pattern pieces one at a time into their correct positions in the mold using a white plastic tool. Their resin adheres them in place, and I trim away any excess with a razor knife. After I think I’m finished, a technician attempts to correct my most egregious mistakes to get the fabric into the best possible position.

Then, I wrap the whole project in blue release plastic that serves as a layer between the carbon fiber and the white batting fabric that goes on top next. This is called “breather” because it facilitates the removal of air around the carbon fiber.

I slide this entire assembly into a vacuum bag, bleeding trapped air out through the vent valve. When I’m done, I connect a vacuum pump to the valve, and after about 20 minutes the sloppy mess has contracted down to a smart-looking object about the shape of the intended final product. This is what will go into the autoclave for curing at high temperature and pressure to produce the final part.

The Aventador’s chassis tub is made this way, along with nearly all of the parts bolted onto it. Metallic parts are pretty much limited to powertrain, suspension, brakes, and a few impact structures. The rest of the car’s parts are made using this laborious process, leaving me to marvel not at how expensive the Ultimae is (at $498,258 for the tested coupe), but at the fact that it doesn’t cost more. Lamborghini is building 350 Aventador Ultimae coupes and 250 of the $546,847 roadster convertibles.

The light weight of the carbon fiber parts contributes to the Aventador’s shocking speed. The rest comes from the ability of the V12 to extract power from exploded gasoline without the aid of turbocharging or electric motors.

Hybrids are the next step for hypercars, as Lamborghini seeks to preserve the traditional character of its cars until we finally convert entirely to power by electrons rather than hydrocarbons. It may be a necessary change, but we’ll have the Ultimae to remind us of the combustion-engine theatrics that came before. 

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Hummer is back with a truck that is even bigger and badder than the old gas-fuel iteration, the uber off-roader inspired by the original Army Humvee.

But this time around the Hummer EV Pickup is a 1,000-horsepower, 9,200-lb. monster that packs a double-stacked 205-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack. The incredible power of the Hummer’s triple Ultium electric motors provide a 3.0-second 0-60 mph time, while the computer-controlled air suspension and active shock absorbers lend the Hummer EV an unexpected combination of agility and plush comfort on the road.

It achieves this incredible performance while delivering an EPA miles-per-gallon equivalent (MPGe) of 47, which is approximately equal to the 49 mpg EPA rating for the all-wheel-drive version of the hybrid-electric Toyota Prius. 

Of course, the point of the shift to electric drive is to exceed the efficiency of hybrids like the Prius. And GM will do that with its new Ultium battery and drivetrain strategy—just not with the Hummer EV Pickup. The company is launching its onslaught of 30 new EVs by 2025 worldwide, all of which will employ portions of the modular Ultium building blocks that are used in their maximum configuration in the Hummer.

That’s the purpose of the massive truck: To demonstrate the ultimate capability of the technology in a halo vehicle that it can build at a measured pace and sell for a high price, while the company’s EV production matures toward the high volume and affordable price of future models that use smaller batteries and fewer electric motors. 

“[Ultium] is the platform that allows us to accommodate the future technology development, reduce costs, and speed up the technology development process,” explained Mei Cai, GM’s director of battery cell systems research in the Hummer EV documentary, Revolution. 

“It will be the driver for us to expand the EV platform,” she said. “Ultium is the key for our all-electric future.”

It’s a beast 

The 24 battery modules of the Hummer EV Pickup’s Edition 1 configuration ($112,595 as tested, with lesser versions available in 2024 with a starting price of $82,000) weigh more than 2,900 pounds and contribute to a 9,063-lb. curb weight (according to GM’s EPA filing) for a 329-mile driving range. But other GM vehicles will use fewer modules for lower weight and cost.

A key advantage of EVs, even ones like the Hummer EV whose efficiency is no better than that of existing gas-fueled hybrids, is that the source of their electricity is the ever-greening power grid. That means that in some places they can already be charged by renewable sources, and such sources will become increasingly available throughout the vehicle’s life, while the Prius will burn gas until the day it goes to the big junkyard in the sky.

GM underscored this point by charging all of the Hummer EVs at the media drive event from its Hydrotec mobile fuel cells using renewably produced hydrogen.

You’d never know the Hummer weighs so much, thanks to its agility and the smooth ride afforded by the truck’s air suspension and off-road balloon tires. With GM’s Super Cruise driver assistance taking over on the highway, the Hummer is even more relaxing to drive. As for parking, well, it is still more than 18 feet long and fills a space from the right-side line to the left one.

Rear-wheel steering

Lining the Hummer up to make sure it is straight enough to squeeze into the spot is eased by the rear-wheel steering system, which was developed primarily to aid the truck’s off-road maneuverability. With a four-door cab and a bed, the Hummer would be challenging to snake around trees and other typical off-road obstacles, but the rear steering lends it the feel of a two-door SUV.

The rear-steer system also communicates with the truck’s stability control system to provide advanced trailer sway control. The rear steering is handy, too, for ease of parking, but the technology’s party trick is the Hummer’s CrabWalk: It can slide sideways with all four wheels pointed at the same angle. This could potentially be used for parallel parking. Or for easing past obstacles in the outback. But it will probably be used mostly to show off the gimmick to friends.

Off-roading

In addition to having rear steering to help swerve around trail obstacles, the Hummer EV also has precise control of its electric power delivery, electric regenerative braking, and friction braking to help the truck climb over obstacles. Careful application of power to the wheels with available traction is vital, but controlling wheel speed while rolling down the back side of obstacles also required significant engineering effort.

“We had to balance torque placement and slip control, which allows you to confidently climb up a rock or ledges,” says vehicle dynamics engineer Drew Mitchell. “We also use the brake controller to apply mechanical brakes to give you that left-foot braking sensation without actually using the brake. It is all one-pedal control.”

Experienced off-roaders know to gently apply the brake with their left foot to control speed so the truck does not come crashing down off the downslope of hills or the back side of rocks and logs. Hummer engineers aimed to provide that for inexperienced drivers too.

Meanwhile, one-pedal driving is a typical EV driving option, and the Hummer EV can drive in that mode. That’s when the vehicle operates like a golf cart, where stepping on the gas pedal makes it go and lifting off makes it stop, thanks to regenerative braking. But for off-roading, the Hummer’s version goes beyond that, letting drivers control the vehicle’s progress to the inch using only the accelerator pedal, just as the gas-powered Ford Bronco’s similar system does. “It is not [typical] EV one-pedal drive, which we have in all the other modes, the traditional EV solution,” says Mitchell. “This is a one-pedal drive where you are coming off the accelerator, the brakes grab and it gives you that immediate deceleration.”

“We tried to make it as approachable for novices as possible,” says Mitchell. “A lot of people, the first time they go off road, left-foot braking can be a very jerky affair. You can still left-foot brake the truck if you want. It is a slow, gradual stop. We also have a more aggressive one if you put it in Low range.”

The result is as good as promised, with the Hummer easily oozing down obstacles with just the right foot on the accelerator.

The drivetrain 

The Hummer’s electric drivetrain is laid out with a single front electric motor that sends power through a lockable differential to the front wheels. There are also dual rear electric motors, each driving one wheel. These motors can be synchronized to simulate a locked differential, so that both wheels turn at exactly the same rate.

During the trail drive, after seeing the Hummer ahead of me work a little bit to climb a rock scramble, I preemptively locked the rear differential (virtually), and my truck crawled up the same section with zero drama.

And that’s really the Hummer EV’s bottom line: no drama (other than when demonstrating CrabWalk mode to onlookers). There’s no drama while driving it on the highway because it is as comfortable and smooth as on-road-oriented vehicles. There’s no drama off-road because the Hummer EV is stupendously capable. And there’s no drama at the gas pump, or at the charging station, because the Hummer EV has a prolonged 329-mile driving range, fast 800-volt DC charging, and sufficient electric efficiency to put this bruiser on par with Prius for Earth-friendliness—at least when comparing the new Hummer’s MPGe with the Prius’s fuel efficiency.

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Driver assistance features on the market today will steer the car for you and can adjust its speed with the accelerator and brake, but there’s an important catch: You have to always supervise it, even for capable hands-off-the-wheel systems such as General Motors’ Super Cruise and Ford’s BlueCruise. But that’s changing, thanks to an impressive new offering from Mercedes-Benz, which can finally take over complete responsibility for operating the car under very specific circumstances, freeing the driver to stare at their phone to their heart’s content.

Mercedes-Benz has developed the world’s first production car with what’s called SAE Level 3 driver assistance, and will deliver these vehicles to US customers later this year. Popular Science had the chance to ride along in a Mercedes EQS EV equipped with what the company calls Drive Pilot as it slogged through Los Angeles freeway traffic. The car’s ability to negotiate its way between trucks, give space to merging traffic ahead, and tolerate lane-splitting motorcycles that zoomed past was a marvel. 

A few years ago, optimists were predicting that by now we would all be getting chauffeured to our destinations by truly self-driving cars that appear when summoned and then drive off, either to park themselves, or, in the case of ride-sharing services, glide away to carry other customers.

Reality has a way of intruding on such fantasies, as no less a fantasist than Elon Musk acknowledged in his tweet explaining Tesla’s failure to release the official version of that company’s Full Self Driving system. He said: “Generalized self-driving is a hard problem, as it requires solving a large part of real-world AI. Didn’t expect it to be so hard, but the difficulty is obvious in retrospect. Nothing has more degrees of freedom than reality.”

One of the reasons for Tesla’s struggles is Musk’s decision to handicap his cars by expecting them to drive themselves using only cameras. Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz’s philosophy is “The Best or Nothing,” and the difference in these approaches is illustrated by looking at the difference in the sensors used by the cars to drive themselves. Tesla uses cameras. Mercedes uses cameras, radar, lidar, GPS, ultrasonic, and a microphone. And autonomous vehicles from other companies typically use a combination of cameras, lidar, and radar. 

To understand why achieving Level 3 is significant, consider the Society of Automotive Engineers J3016 definition of the levels of driving automation. For Levels 0 – 2, the driver “must constantly supervise,” even if automated features are operating the car. Importantly, for Levels 3 – 5, it says that the driver is not driving if the features are engaged. Mercedes underscores this point by explaining that when Drive Pilot is engaged, the company has accepted legal liability for its actions.

“[Level 3] is really a breakthrough leading into the space of Level 4,” Markus Schäfer, the chief technology officer responsible for development and purchasing at Mercedes-Benz AG, tells Popular Science immediately before the ride-along in the car. “[Level 3] is the main wall you’re hitting first. You have to break through in order to just advance to Level 4.”

“You can do all kinds of things in level two,” he adds. “But the real interesting game starts when it comes to level three and four.”

So how does the Mercedes system compare to other, similar options on the market? Its Drive Pilot’s Level 3 looks a lot like the Level 2 demonstrated by General Motors Super Cruise and Ford’s BlueCruise, with the difference being the change in responsibility from the driver in Level 2 to the machine in Level 3. So while the Level 2 systems enable hands-free driving only when the driver is watching the road ahead, Level 3 Drive Pilot frees the driver to respond to messages, play games, or watch videos. 

As with the Ford and GM systems, Drive Pilot operation is restricted to limited-access divided highways that have been meticulously mapped, and Mercedes says that its dual-receiver rooftop GPS can locate the car in its lane with a centimeter’s accuracy.

The maps tell the car when, for example, there is an on-ramp ending in an adjacent lane, so that Drive Pilot will give cars that need to merge the space to do so. Ordinary traffic jam adaptive cruise control is rude by comparison, keeping a steady distance from the car ahead and leaving no space for cars to merge, so this is a welcome improvement.

However, initially, Drive Pilot will be limited to speeds of 40 mph or below, making it only useful in heavy traffic situations and not for open-road cruising. That feature is expected to come with time, as safety regulators, Mercedes, and customers all become familiar with the technology.

“We’re the first ones who want to just observe what’s going on and how the system performs,” says Schäfer. “Of course, very clear, our goal is to take it above [40 mph]. But once you have it to 40, it’s pure mathematics and technology sensor technology [to] increase speed.”

The car cannot operate in Level 3 mode in fog or very wet conditions either, and Mercedes has installed a piezoelectric sensor in the front wheel wells that detects the splash of water from the front tires against a membrane to signal when the road is too wet for Drive Pilot.

The cameras and microphone are trained to be on the lookout for emergency vehicles so that the EQS can pull aside to make room for them to pass. Training the algorithm to accurately discern the flash of emergency strobes and to ignore false positives was a substantial challenge according to a Mercedes engineer.

This is why, unfortunately, Drive Pilot and other such systems are unlikely in the near future to do things that human drivers can do without thought: react to other cars’ brake lights and turn signals, he tells me.

We can tell that Drive Pilot has taken over when the turquoise light atop the steering column and the two lights at the driver’s 10-and-2 positions on the steering wheel illuminate. The instrument panel provides a virtual view of the surrounding traffic, letting the driver know what the car sees. The day will likely come when we easily accept that the car sees everything it should, but for now this is important for instilling trust in the system by giving the driver the comfort of knowing that the car sees things that might be of concern.

Drive Pilot puts on a credible impersonation of a human driver, albeit an infinitely patient one, when navigating L.A. traffic. It maintains a safe gap behind the car ahead and responds smoothly to the stop-and-go. When cars merge into the lane ahead, it doesn’t get panicky and slam on the brakes because its preferred following distance has been violated. Instead, it slows gradually to re-open a gap to the new car ahead.

And check this out: you know that situation when the person in the left lane decides he needs to exit at the last minute and the car swoops from the lane to your left across three lanes to the exit, cutting you off in the process? As a human who can see the developing situation, you’ll normally just maintain speed or lift of the accelerator slightly to add some buffer space as the dive-bomber passes quickly through the lane.

Computer drivers have historically lost their digital minds when this happens because suddenly there’s another car suddenly in the lane ahead. They can’t tell that the car will be gone from the lane as quickly as it appeared, so they think you are suddenly tailgating irresponsibly and they slow abruptly.

But not Drive Pilot. The system’s radar can see the lateral velocity of the car passing through the lane so it knows that this is not an emergency, but is just a transient situation that will be over soon. So the EQS slows only slightly in response to this situation.

And when traffic lightens and speeds exceed 40 mph or the car otherwise leaves Drive Pilot’s Operational Design Domain (that’s engineer-speed for the restrictions on the system), the car switches to Level 2 automation, which provides a similar driving experience but demands the driver’s attention and hands on the wheel.

Over time, the Drive Pilot ODD will expand to include more roads, higher speeds, and worse weather. But that will take experience. “You have to be convinced about the safety and the degree of safety of your vehicle and that’s a result of a couple of million miles of testing,” Schäfer explains. “And of course, endless [computer] simulation.”

Next stop: Level 4. Cars in this category will not need to hand over control back to the driver during the course of the drive and they may not need to even have a steering wheel or pedals. That will indeed require substantial customer confidence in the systems.

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When large automobile companies need to build a physical example of their designers’ latest flights of computer-rendered fancy, they call British fabrication specialist shop Vital Auto. Vital creates concept cars for a roster of clients that includes Rolls-Royce, McLaren, Jaguar, Lotus, Volvo, Nissan, Tata, and Geely. 

The outfit uses two different methods to render these concepts into the physical world. The first is what is known as subtractive manufacturing. This is when a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine does the carving, following a software model of the part to know what to carve away. Commonly the process starts with a solid block of aluminum and the machine whittles a massive block of metal down to a finished component.

The second is 3D printing, which, in contrast, is additive manufacturing. This is when parts are made by gradually adding layers of material until enough have accumulated that there is a finished object. Additive manufacturing can be more efficient than subtractive manufacturing because it doesn’t produce a pile of aluminum shavings to be recycled, and it has the added benefit of being able to create shapes that are impossible to form using traditional subtractive methods.

“Clients typically come to us to try and push the boundaries of what’s possible with the technology available,” said Shay Moradi, Vital’s VP of innovation and experiential technology, in a video describing the company’s operations. “They don’t have time for experimentation themselves, but they can rely on us to bring about all the different elements that go into creating the exact tool that they require to do the job.” 

[Related: Ford added more power to its electric Mustang Mach-E. Here’s how it drives.]

Because it sounds like it comes from the realm of science fiction and the replicators of Star Trek lore, 3D printing is what we might expect that an outfit like Vital would prefer for its modern creations. In fact, the company says that it has found both 3D printing and the subtractive technique to be technologies that are complementary, not competitive, so it uses them both to create concept cars.

“A lot of people think additive manufacturing is here to replace subtractive manufacturing,” observed Vital design engineer Anthony Barnicott in the same video. “We don’t think that. We use the two together to support each other. We have many parts where we would use subtractive manufacturing and then have additive manufacturing produce all of the finer details. This allows us to have a more cost-effective way of producing our concept models.” 

Vital got its start with a project to build the EP9 concept car for Chinese electric car maker NIO in 2015, and that low-slung supercar remains the company’s signature creation. The company employs an array of 3D printers, including 14 large-format FDM printers, three Formlabs 3L large-format stereolithography (SLA) printers, and five Formlabs Fuse 1 selective laser sintering (SLS) printers.

Each of these devices provides a unique capability as complements to subtractive manufacturing techniques. This has let Vital work more quickly while evaluating more alternatives than would otherwise be possible.

“Formlabs materials give us a nice, smooth finish for our painters to work with, we can use these parts straight out the printer, straight onto a vehicle,” said Barnicott.

“What interests me most about the Form 3L machines is their versatility, the ability to do a material change in less than five minutes and the variability of those materials going from a soft, flexible material to a hard and rigid material for us is priceless,” he added.

While highly visible parts like door handles and brake calipers might seem like the glamor components on projects like these, it is the new ability to 3D-print soft rubber door seals rather than having to tool up the extrusion process to make those parts, that the company points to as a highlight.

These tools have also had an impact on the process of creating concept cars because the shorter timeline for making parts permits rapid iteration of changes. “Typically when we would CNC machine parts, we would have to wait two, three, four days to get the parts in our hands,” recalled Barnicott. “The Fuse 1 has allowed us to have hands-on parts, in most instances, less than 24 hours.”

A typical show car—which generally will provide the appearance of the eventual product, but probably won’t include a drivetrain—can go through many design iterations, so speed is essential. “Sometimes we will have one or two iterations, sometimes we will have ten or twelve iterations,” he said. “Within those iterations can be further iterations of smaller components.”

With computer images of designs, we might wonder why these iterations are all done virtually. But that just isn’t a good enough representation of the parts, according to Moradi. 

“I think there’s always going to be a place for physical manufactured objects as well,” he said. “There’s nothing that beats the sensation and feeling of holding an object in your hands with the correct weight, with the correct proportions, and the dynamics of how the physical environment changes your perception of that physical object.”

“There are certain things that you can’t qualify as emerging technology anymore,” Moradi noted. “3D printing is one of those things. 3D printing has gone from being a novelty to being an absolutely inseparable part of what we do.”

The post Inside the lab that’s 3D-printing sleek car concepts for McLaren, Rolls-Royce, and more appeared first on Popular Science.

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Mustangs are sporty cars, and while most of them have zoomy styling that writes checks the engine can’t cash, Ford has always underpinned Mustang’s reputation for speed with performance models.

For the electric Mustang Mach-E, this is the GT. The GT is a legendary Mustang name, one that predates Shelbys, Mach 1, Boss 302, Bullitt, SVO, SVT, and various other hot-rod models, so it seems appropriate that Ford’s EV crossover SUV with the Mustang badge would return to these roots for its first performance variant.

Like most EVs, the regular Mach-E is pretty quick. But the GT adds power to deliver the kind of electric speed that has been the source of so many YouTube videos depicting Teslas roasting exotic Italian supercars in drag races.

Ford underscored the seriousness of its EV efforts by announcing recently that it is splitting the company into two divisions. Ford’s new Model E division will focus exclusively on developing electric vehicles and connected vehicle technology for the future, while the Ford Blue division concentrates on continuing to bring in cash to fund this effort by selling the company’s popular combustion models like the F-150, Mustang, and Bronco.

My $64,800 as-tested Mach-E GT evaluation car was equipped with the 20-inch aluminum wheels, fixed panoramic glass roof ($1,300), and the Ford BlueCruise driver-assistance extension ($1,900) to Ford’s Co-Pilot360. You can identify a Mach-E GT by its illuminated Mustang badge on the front.

The GT features a 91-kilowatt-hour battery pack that provides an estimated driving range of 270 miles on a charge. This estimate held up well, as I saw a range of 260 miles while driving at brisk highway speed with a chilly ambient temperature that led the car’s computer to forecast a range of only 200 miles.

[Related: Ford’s electric Mustang Mach-E is an important leap into the future]

The basic high-performance Mach-E GT zips to 60 mph in just 3.8 seconds, while the even-faster GT Performance Edition whittles that time down to just 3.5. 

The GT’s electric motors create 480 horsepower in either version, and the regular GT I test is rated at 600 lb.-ft. of torque while the Performance Edition produces 634 lb.-ft. Good luck discerning that difference in the seat of your pants, because the regular GT can easily perform eye-opening launches.

The GT is faster than lesser Mach-Es, whose 60 mph acceleration time ranges from 6.1 seconds to as little as 4.8 seconds. Standards are changing, but I think anything quicker than 8.0 seconds still qualifies as acceptably brisk.

Non-GT Mach-Es may be equipped with the same 376-cell extended range battery as this test car, or they can have the less-expensive 70 kWh 288-cell battery pack. In all-wheel-drive configuration, this can produce an estimated driving range of only 224 miles, while the GT’s larger pack can cruise for 314 miles, according to the EPA.

Drivers who choose performance models like the GT normally value crisp, responsive handling, and the GT delivers. They are also normally willing to endure the harsher ride that is caused by driving with stiffer springs, dampers, and anti-sway bars.

Those sacrifices are normally made by people who are driving low-slung coupes and roadsters, not family-friendly five-seat crossover SUVs. In the case of the Mach-E GT, I found the stiff ride to be off-putting and out of place for this kind of vehicle. Naturally, this problem can be solved through the application of money, as the Performance Edition rides on Magneride electromagnetically adjustable shock absorbers that help provide the elusive combination of sharp handling and cushy ride.

This stiffness issue is magnified by the GT’s fashionable 20-inch wheels, whose weight also contributes to a shorter driving range. The 18-inch wheels on the California Route 1 model are one of the reasons for that version’s longer driving range, and the smoother ride will make those extra miles more comfortable.

It is no surprise that the Mach-E, as an EV, has a flimsy-feeling rotary dial as its “shifter” for selecting the driving mode. It rotates through the positions, left to right, Park, Reverse, Neutral, and Drive. However, does it need to feel so flimsy? The issue is underscored by the fact that it spins freely, with no solid stop at the Park and Drive ends of the range. By comparison, the similar rotary shifter in the Jeep Grand Cherokee manages to feel heftier in the hand; it is decorated with chrome trim to add visual mass, and it positively stops when it reaches Park and Drive. That seems like a better execution of this solution.

Ford isn’t much interested in revisiting its solution to the shifter on the Mach-E, according to chief engineer Donna Dickson. However, as customer expectations of EVs evolve over time, the device will probably be rethought, she says. “Do we even need one?” Dickson wonders.

Since Popular Science last drove a Mach-E a year ago, Ford has launched its BlueCruise Level 2 driver assistance system. This lets the driver operate the car with their hands off the steering wheel, but eyes on the road. Unlike Tesla cars, the source of YouTube videos depicting “drivers” riding the back seat while leaving the car’s controls unattended, the Mach-E’s BlueCruise system will disengage if the driver isn’t looking ahead.

BlueCruise operates the Mach-E’s accelerator, brake, and steering when the car is on a limited-access highway that has been mapped and approved by Ford. This means pretty much all interstate highways, plus many other divided highways that have limited access. My test car carried the first iteration of this software. Newer cars have an updated version and cars like the test vehicle will get over-the-air updates soon.

In a conversation with Dickson, I mention that during highway driving, I experienced the Mach-E sometimes bouncing from one edge of the lane to the other, at times to the extent that the system disengaged. Dickson nodded with recognition of the issue. “We call that hunting,” she said. “We have it [solved]. That is one we have tuned.” Mach-E vehicles going to customers now should not exhibit this behavior and when the test car gets its update, it should perform better too.

While in heavy, stop-and-go highway traffic, the system performs well, taking some of the burden of such driving off the driver. Ford also plans to expand the 130,000 miles of roads where BlueCruise can operate (they call these Blue Zones) with updates over time. “We have a year-over-year plan for how to improve BlueCruise,” said Dickson. “It is [coming] soon. We have some changes projected for later this year.”

Like all Mach-Es, the GT features a large central display screen for infotainment purposes. Ford’s innovative glue-on physical volume knob provides a great solution for volume control on a touch-screen system. But I’m not the only one who loves this device, and Dickson says we can look for the knob’s capabilities to expand in the future.

“There is more to come,” she says. “We’re really trying to leverage it.” And these expanded capabilities, as with so many other features on such digital cars, will be available retroactively to cars bought before the feature is introduced, thanks to over-the-air software updates.

So look for the Mach-E GT, along with other Mach-Es and other future Ford EVs, to get better over time.

The post Ford added more power to its electric Mustang Mach-E. Here’s how it drives. appeared first on Popular Science.

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Tuning in to watch Nascar races this season will reveal surprising changes to the iconic stock car racers.

The most visible shift is the movement of the cars’ numbers from their traditional spot on the doors toward the fenders, clearing space on the doors for the all-important sponsor logos. But look closer and you’ll notice that these cars are now more readily identifiable as the Mustang, Camaro, and Camry street cars they impersonate. No more amorphous teardrop-shaped vehicles that bear little resemblance to the street cars they purport to represent.

Those cars were shaped the way they were for good reason: Aerodynamics dictate success in high-speed racing like Nascar. And the only way to give all brands a fair chance to win was to make the cars look essentially indistinguishable from one another.

But for this season’s debut of the so-called “Next Gen” race car, Nascar is making wholesale changes, not only to the cars, but to the very philosophy underpinning the Nascar Cup series. Until now, the thinking was that if you could design and build a car within the existing rules that was better than other teams’ cars, then you’d reap the benefits of your creation and win races.

But the arrival of smart engineers and computer-aided design tools has led to a costly race for infinitesimal gains, and Nascar decided that that approach was not financially viable for the long-term success of the series.

Starting this season, the Next Gen car is instead an assemblage of purchased off-the-shelf parts. These parts cost the same for everyone, and expensive development of them isn’t allowed—so these kit cars should deliver nearly identical performance. This should, in theory, help lower-budget teams be more competitive for wins.

It starts with a car’s chassis. Until this year, teams built their own chassis (the frame and suspension), or low-budget teams might have bought a used chassis from bigger-budget teams. Now, everyone gets theirs from Michigan’s Technique Chassis, LLC. 

The frames were welded together with continuous steel tubes that ran from the front to the back. Repairing one of these after a crash meant cutting the bent tubes out and welding in new ones. The new chassis is modular, with a center section housing the driver that has bolt-on mounts for front and rear sub-sections that contain the suspension and brakes. Crash one of these cars, and the repair could be as simple as unbolting the bent sub-section and bolting on a new one.

[Related: A big change is coming to F1 cars—and their tires]

Knowing that crashes are inevitable, teams will be able to have pre-assembled front and rear clips, with all the parts already mounted. This will make repairs at the track quicker and easier and shift some of the workload to civilized weekday hours back at the team’s headquarters. What’s more, cars damaged in practice and qualifying now have a better chance of being repaired in time for the race.

Another factor that is important to the car makers that support Nascar is the need for these “stock” cars to more closely resemble actual production models. So the series is applying sophisticated aerodynamics that use airflow under the car to control downforce more than the air flowing over the car’s body. This lets manufacturers shape the racers’ sheet metal to more closely represent the cars that race fans can buy when they get home. New this year is a carbon fiber undertray that runs the full length of the Next Gen car’s underside. Air feeds into it from a stepped splitter under the front bumper and it exits from a diffuser out the rear.

Also, you’ll probably notice the subtle difference in each car’s stance, which has resulted from the retirement of the ancient 15-inch steel wheels that Nascar has used for decades. Instead, the Next Gen car rolls on aluminum 18-inch BBS wheels wrapped in lower-profile Goodyear racing slicks. The impression is a more contemporary looking ride rather than the decidedly retro style of the old small-wheel configuration.

The advantage to sole tire supplier Goodyear is that the construction of these 18-inch tires is closer to that of the company’s high-performance street tires, making technology transfer between the two a more realistic possibility again. Also, it won’t hurt Goodyear’s sales of those tires if they look passably like the race tires, which wasn’t possible with the 15-inch tires.

The switch to bigger wheels would mean heavier wheels, but by changing from steel to aluminum, Nascar has been able to offset the weight of the larger size with lighter material. The larger wheels also provide space for larger brakes, which are a necessity for regular road racing. Now the cars wear AP Lockheed six-piston front calipers squeezing 15-inch rotors and four-piston rear calipers acting on 14-inch rotors.

“The brakes are terrific and I know this isn’t even a short-track set-up, but they stop extremely well,” remarked Roush-Fenway Racing driver Chris Buescher in a press statement after testing a prototype Next Gen car. “There’s not going to be any issues getting to pit road and not having the stopping power, just going to be a matter of not spinning out.”

At the center of those wheels is a contensious hot spot for hardcore stock car fans. Where the old steel wheels were fixed with five lug nuts, just like the wheels on your family car, the Next Gen car employs a single central nut on the wheel hub. This will make pit stops faster and less conducive to human error, as the single wheel nuts will go on and off much faster.

Of course, the Nascar crews aren’t yet used to these new systems, so early in the season we can expect to see some hiccups when crew members cross-thread the nut or suffer other problems as they familiarize themselves with center-lock wheels. 

But there is no question that it is a better system, as has been proven in nearly every other professional racing series in the world over several decades. Nascar’s just catching up in this case.

[Related: What’s the difference between a sports car, a supercar, and a hypercar?]

Similarly, Nascar is moving to modern rack-and-pinion steering in place of the old recirculating ball design employed since the series was founded 75 years ago. While this rack-and-pinion design is valued for its accuracy and steering feel in road racing situations, Nascar’s test drivers have struggled during the Next Gen car’s development to get the steering to work as well as the old kind when roaring around the oval tracks.

The Next Gen car features an Xtrac Inc.-supplied five-speed sequential transmission, with a shifter that only rachets forward for downshifts and rearward for upshifts. If you’ve ridden a motorcycle then you’ve used a sequential gearbox. (It is “sequential” because you shift through the gears one at a time, sequentially.)

The old four-speed transmissions had traditional H-pattern shifters that positioned Neutral in the center of the pattern and made any gear accessible from any other gear, at any time. Sequential transmission shifts are faster because the shifter slides a very short distance. The big ol’ H-pattern shifter required time to move from one gear to the next. For Nascar, this didn’t really matter when cars were droning around in endless circles for every race.

Forget the nonsense you’ve seen in Days of Thunder or the “Slingshot engage!” of Talladega Nights; downshift while drafting on a superspeedway during a race and the only outcome will be a big wreck and a blown engine. Nascar drivers don’t do it.

But now Nascar wants to do more races at road racing tracks such as Watkins Glen in New York, and to more hybrid races held at traditional oval venues. These are referred to as “rovals,” a portmanteau of “road” and “oval.” These are tracks like the one used for the 24 Hours of Daytona sports car race, where the cars dive down from the banked oval and tear around a serpentine course through the oval’s infield before returning to charge down the back straight.

In these kinds of races, with their variable speeds and tight corners, drivers shift gears many times each lap. Making those shifts with the clunky old H-pattern shifters was a source of problems, as the linkage could break or the drivers could shift to the wrong gear by accident.

The new sequential shifters, therefore, will make the cars less likely to break during road races and will help prevent the drivers from making mistakes that could cause a spin. “It’s a little bit of just mind over matter as far as shifting, trying to make sure you keep pulling backward [on the shifter] for the sequential stuff, which was really neat,” Buescher said. “I really enjoyed using it and got better as it went, learning what it can and can’t do there by the end.”

Learning about the new cars is why Nascar has done many tests with them before the season started, and then got a preview with a non-championship race held on a makeshift track at the Los Angeles Colosseum in January.

Nascar’s goal has been to finalize specifications that will make the cars predictable and reliable, with the flexibility for teams to adjust them to suit conditions and their drivers’ preferences. “It is a driver preference and we need to get that big box [of adjustment options] opened up for everybody to choose what they want,” explained driver Kurt Busch after a test day in a Next Gen prototype. “Some of it is troubleshooting. Some of it is just getting a feel and some of it is just creating a box where everybody will be able to find what they need within the system.”

Inevitably, there will be some teething pains this year, as drivers and teams encounter issues that didn’t arise during development or they make mistakes because of unfamiliarity with how the Next Gen car works. But Nascar looks to be solidly on course to achieve its goals of using cars that cost less to race and provide opportunities for smaller teams to succeed, while also better representing the production cars they look like—all while delivering better road racing capability so Nascar can use a wider variety of tracks.

It is a tall order, but it looks like there’s a good chance Nascar has accomplished it. Now we’ll just have to tune in to see how it works out. These cars made their competition debut in the tight confines of an improved track inside the LA Coliseum on Feb. 6 in the non-championship Nascar Clash all-star race. They make their regular season superspeedway debut in the Daytona 500 on Feb. 20.

The post Everything new on Nascar’s ‘Next Gen’ vehicles appeared first on Popular Science.

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Camping trailers are all the rage as more people have sought an outdoor retreat during the pandemic. But while many might love the idea of towing a camper to the boondocks, in reality, some speed bumps can present themselves along the way.

Art-deco icon Airstream has a new concept camper, one that’s designed to head off multiple problems. The 22-foot eStream camper concept features a built-in 80-kilowatt-hour battery pack and dual 40-horsepower (30 kW) electric motors that let the trailer pull its own weight en route to the great outdoors.

The thinking is that electric pickup trucks like the Rivian R1T and Ford F-150 Lightning will need trailers that power themselves, because otherwise the trucks’ driving range would be decimated while towing trailers. It is hard to make it to the outback if your EV battery is dead only halfway there.

But along the way to solving that EV tow vehicle problem, Airstream has bulldozed obstacles that can intimidate newcomers. When the trailer gained the ability to move under its own power, it also gained the ability for customers to drive it right up to the tow vehicle’s hitch using an app on a tablet.

Fear backing a trailer? No worries, the eStream can back itself into its spot, also using the tablet app. Worried about loading the trailer for correct balance and stability? “Backing a trailer is one of the most intimidating things for new customers,” observed Airstream vice president of product development and engineering McKay Featherstone during a media roundtable via Zoom. “With one finger you can drive the trailer into a spot.”

Scratching your head at the prospect of setting up a weight-distributing hitch to keep the trailer nice and stable on the highway? (That’s a hitch with torsion bars that link to the A-frame at the front of the trailer leading to the hitch. Those torsion bars have to be set to the correct height and tension to work properly.) Don’t want to learn how to do this? No problem. The eStream uses its drive system to apply its own electronic stability control, so nasty gusts of cross winds can’t destabilize the camper. The weight-distributing hitch isn’t necessary.

That giant battery pack has other benefits. If you really want to take the road less traveled, that means avoiding the campground with the power outlets that provide all the comforts of home while living in the trailer. 

[Related: The Rivian R1T breaks the electric-pickup game wide open]

With its 80 kWh of juice on board, the eStream can run its climate control system for the whole week. Switch the air conditioning off and the eStream can power its other systems practically indefinitely, thanks to a 0.9-kilowatt rooftop solar cell array that can replenish the battery when it is running lesser loads.

“We know people will travel farther and stay longer if they have all the comforts of home,” Featherstone remarked. “Running air condition, heating, routers; to power all those devices, it is well over a week [of capacity].”

Adventurers who want to stay in the wilderness longer can do so if they can live without climate control. “If you want to stay off grid, it is almost limitless,” he said. “You can stay off grid for weeks.”

Airstream was inspired to create a self-propelled camper by the emergence of electric tow vehicles. “It goes back to the launch of the Tesla Model X,” he explained. “From that moment until today, we’ve been talking to customers that are towing today so we understand the pain points.”

To minimize the trailer’s need for power, Airstream narrowed the eStream by 8 inches compared to its production campers. They also cleared the roof of its air conditioner unit and other aerodynamic clutter to reduce drag by 20 percent. The A/C now lives under the floor with the battery pack and electric drive system.

How does the trailer know how fast to go? “We had to rethink everything from the ball backward,” said Featherstone. “It is a very sophisticated sensor measuring the forces between the tow vehicle and the trailer.”

Airstream got a boost in its effort thanks to Germany’s ZF, a company long known for supplying automatic transmissions and steering racks for that country’s renowned luxury cars. ZF developed the electric drive system that’s in the eStream with a modular design that can be configured with battery packs of between 20 and 80 kWh. 

Like EVs, the eStream can be charged with 240-volt Level 2 AC power through an SAE J1772 plug or through high-voltage DC fast chargers through its Combined Charge System connector. A L2 charger will top off the battery overnight, while a DC fast charger can do the job in 30-45 minutes. Importantly, it also has a power outlet, which means customers can plug in appliances or charge e-bikes from the trailer. Even more importantly, the trailer can be used to power a home in case of an outage. 

If all of this sounds irresistible, unfortunately the eStream is only a concept, and not a production prototype. The company says that a product exactly like this is not headed to showrooms, but that they will have models incorporating the features highlighted in the eStream. 

It will be up to customers to specify, and pay for, the features that matter most to them on an a la carte basis. So a less-expensive 20 kWh camper will have reduced capabilities, but will be available at a more accessible price. Until those models arrive, we have the eStream concept for inspiration that there will soon be trailers that make life easy for newbies.

Watch an overview of the concept, below:

The post Airstream’s camper concept is a sophisticated electric machine appeared first on Popular Science.

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The Sapphire vehicle dynamics simulator at a BMW facility in Munich consists of a huge white bubble that evokes the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man lurching around New York City in Ghostbusters. It’s just one of 14 different simulators in the company’s new Driving Simulation Centre, a $105-million, 123,000-square-foot space that is the world’s most advanced simulation facility, BMW says.

Sapphire is the flagship simulator, and the most impressive with its huge white bubble atop six moving hydraulic supports, which themselves mount to longitudinal and lateral slides that travel over an area of 4,300 square feet. The bubble contains an actual car, in which a driver applies steering, throttle, and brake inputs just as if they were driving. A virtual world is projected onto the inside of the white dome covering the car, and the hexapod support system and slides fling the apparatus around its field of travel. 

Driving the car inside the simulator not only looks real, as the driver is inside a real car doing realistic driving and seeing high-fidelity imagery of the real world outside, but it also feels real, as the Sapphire’s systems can produce 0.65 G of acceleration. That creates the feeling of accelerating, braking, and turning at believably high levels. The 183,000-lb. apparatus consumes 6.5 megawatts of power as it runs.

Engineers oversee testing and operate Sapphire from an adjacent control room. They cannot only see the simulator in action through the window, but they have monitors showing the view from inside the car that is in the bubble. They also have computer displays providing data on the test as it is happening. From here, operators can change variables such as the weather, the road surface, the tires, the season, and the time of day.

A second simulator system is the Diamond high-dynamic simulator. It looks similar to Sapphire, and also has a white dome containing a car atop a hexapod, but it is mounted on a single slide that moves fore-and-aft. This one has a mass of only 50,000 lbs. and consumes 3 MW in operation, while generating a full 1.0 G of acceleration force. (How “sapphire” ended up ahead of “diamond” in this hierarchy is a Bavarian mystery.)

[Related: The new electric BMW i4 is a nimble driving machine—with a cinematic soundtrack]

The sims’ slides are powered by linear electric motors that create alternating magnetic fields to move them. Power comes from supercapacitors that can quickly dump the huge amount of electricity needed to move the hexapod platform and car rapidly.

While simulators might look like excellent toys to the rest of us, they are critical tools for carmakers like BMW. “We see the driving simulator as a time machine because it lets us drive the car of the future,” explains Martin Wahle, head of Virtualization and Driving Simulator.

“The simulator provides a controlled environment where the tests are repeatable and safe,” he continues. “We can do things we wouldn’t dare do in the real world, testing risky scenarios.” The simulators can run 16 hours a day, in two eight-hour shifts during which test drivers go for an hour at a time so that they stay fresh. During that time, the drivers are monitored using cameras for eye tracking, and with heart rate sensors.

“We use this especially in the early stages of [vehicle] development,” before physical prototypes are available, he said. “This gives us a lot more input than traditional simulation models.”

BMW plans to add later parts of the vehicle development process to the simulation center’s work too. “We want to expand into implementation and verification modes,” Wahle says. This would include doing tuning work such as testing different tires and components like the anti-roll bars that limit cars’ body lean in turns. “We can change things almost instantly,” he says.

The simulators also let BMW evaluate the likely reception to new technologies by having a variety of drivers try the virtual version before they go into production. “We no longer have to guess how people will like a feature,” says Wahle. “We can present the feature to them and measure their response.”

That’s why, in addition to these slider-mounted sims, the Driving Simulation Centre also has a dozen lesser simulators. “Not every question requires a motion system,” Wahle notes. 

[Related: Forget miles per gallon—here’s the best metric for measuring a car’s efficiency]

Consider the dazzling Vega Vector dynamic simulator. This one mounts a car on a stationary hexapod, so it moves up and down and tilts forward, backward, left, and right. The car sits in front of an incredible 25 x 13-foot, 270-degree, 8K-resolution wall containing 13 million LEDs. This displays images with its own light. like a TV, rather than reflecting light from a projector like the other sims do, so lights in the room need not be dimmed for this sim.

This is one of five LED wall sims in the center. These are very bright and rich in color, so they are used for testing visibility issues and to study night driving and light dazzle scenarios. Two of the smaller Vega Vector walls are 360 degrees. “We believe this is the next big thing in driving sims,” says Wahle. Its low latency is especially valuable for some tests and the images are sharp and clear for easy sign reading.

One less-than-realistic detail currently is the behavior of the simulated other drivers. These are the non-player characters of the driving sim world, and Wahle calls them “agents.” Unfortunately, BMW’s agents do not yet drive as rudely, er, as realistically as actual people. “Right now our agents are not particularly smart,” he concedes. “We are working on making these agents smarter through artificial intelligence.”

Making the virtual drivers in the sim brainier sounds reasonable. Just don’t give any artificial intelligence to the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. That could get ugly.

Watch a video (in German) about the facility, below:

The post A look inside BMW’s futuristic simulation center in Germany appeared first on Popular Science.

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Terrified by videos of Tesla owners doing irresponsible things with their Autopilot systems, or others overriding potentially catastrophic decisions by their vehicle’s beta-level Full Self Driving software?

These systems, and their limitations, contribute to confusion over the terminology employed to describe driver-assistance systems and the functions they perform. Fortunately, the Society of Automotive Engineers (the same SAE that also defines the weight of motor oil used in cars) has created specific definitions describing advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) functions by naming them Level 0 through Level 5 (under its J3016 standard).

Understanding these different levels is clouded by driver expectations of this scale, and drivers might wonder if there are increments along the way. After all, some carmakers describe Level x.5 or Level x-plus functions—but the SAE J3016 specifications do not provide for these incremental increases. A vehicle’s ADAS system provides a defined level of assistance, or it does not. SAE has trademarked its levels, which might help rein in abuse of the terms.

But even if so, consumers could still misunderstand the assistance provided by the various levels just because the numerical system is inherently hierarchical even though the levels themselves might not be, depending on the execution. For example, a local taxi that features Level 4 automation is not lower in capability than some eventual Level 5 fully autonomous car. The taxi might be a top-notch execution of Level 4 capabilities. Is a self-driving car with Level 5 technology that is poorly executed and prone to mistakes better?

“This has the implication that the higher the level, then the better, or more advanced the automated system is,” said Mahmood Hikmet, PhD, head of research and development at New Zealand automated shuttle company Ohmio in a YouTube video series on autonomous technology.

“But that’s not true. The only thing SAE J3016 levels tell you about a system is about the responsibilities of the human or the automated system while executing the driving task,” he continued. “That’s it. Nothing about the operational design domain, capabilities of the system, or how advanced the systems are. Just what the human and the automated system are respectively responsible for doing during operation.”

How the list breaks down on a high level

SAE categorizes Levels 0-2 as driver-support features. Levels 3-5 are automated driving features.

As driver-support features, Levels 0-2 mean that the driver is always responsible for piloting the car, even in those circumstances when the system might operate the steering, brakes, and accelerator. The driver must constantly monitor these features and steer, brake, and accelerate as needed for safe operation of the vehicle. 

For Levels 3-5, the person sitting in the driver’s seat is not driving the car—the automated system is, if it is engaged. But this can be tricky. Phillip Koopman, an electrical engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, points out on his autonomous vehicle blog that a vehicle’s Level 3 system may not notify the driver when human intervention is needed, as we’ve already seen from videos of people wrenching steering control from Tesla’s ostensibly Level-2 Full Self Driving beta system when it attempts to steer the car into danger.

This is why, Koopman adds, that the driver in vehicles with Level 3 systems activated cannot perform non-driving activities, such as napping or watching a video. “J3016 does not say that Level 3 means ‘eyes off road’ anywhere,” he emphasizes.

A closer look at what the features do at each of the SAE Levels

Level 0 features provide warning and momentary assistance. They include automatic emergency braking, blind spot warning, and lane departure warning. Virtually every car in showrooms today offers these features, at least as options. Even the affordable Nissan Sentra compact car has Level 0 technology as standard equipment, so it doesn’t cost a lot to get advanced driver assistance.

Level 1 features can provide either steering support or accelerator support for the driver, but not both. They include lane centering assistance or adaptive cruise control. This is a rare beast in current models, because cars that have adaptive cruise control tend to also have lane-keeping assistance too.

Level 2 features provide both steering and accelerator support. This is when both lane centering and adaptive cruise control are activated at the same time. Consider the Honda Civic as an accessible vehicle that has Level 2 features thanks to its standard adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assistance. Even more capable systems like General Motors’ Super Cruise and Ford’s BlueCruise are technically Level 2 because the companies limit their availability only to roads that they have mapped and are confident the systems can use safely.

Level 3 features can drive the vehicle under limited circumstances and will not do so unless all required conditions are met. When a Level 3 system abdicates control, the driver must take back over operation of the car (meaning that they can’t do something like space out and watch a movie). Traffic jam chauffeur systems, like the upcoming Drive Pilot system in the 2022 Mercedes-Benz EQS EV, are examples of this.

[Related: Why this Amazon-owned company is bringing its autonomous vehicles to Seattle]

Level 4 features let the car drive itself, and the vehicle occupant is not required to take over in any circumstances. Such systems would be installed in local driverless taxis and these vehicles may not even have pedals or steering wheels installed. 

Level 5 features can drive everywhere in all conditions without human involvement. Knight Rider’s KITT represented a vehicle with Level 5 autonomous driving features.

As Tesla progresses from its current beta release of Full Self Driving to full operation of this feature on its cars, look for important discussions of exactly what is appropriate or legal for drivers to do when the system is engaged. Tesla brands both Autopilot and Full Self Driving as SAE Level 2 systems, but those names do not tell drivers that the systems are limited to only Level 2 operation; they imply that the vehicle is fully self-driving. In other words, a person operating a Tesla with those features engaged should still have their eyes on the road all the time.

And remember, even Level 3 systems can still abdicate control to drivers. Look at what the SAE J3016 definition is for Level 3 driver assistance systems and think about whether you want to share the streets with people who are not supervising their cars while such systems are driving.

The post The 6 terms you need to know to understand self-driving cars appeared first on Popular Science.

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Just as a flood of new fans has discovered interest in Formula 1 as a result of lockdown binges of Netflix’s Drive to Survive series, the sport is shuffling the deck for 2022. Changes in the rules for the winged wonder cars include plans for teams to share some common components to save money and revised aerodynamics that should foster closer racing.

Another of the changes is the tires. After a half-century of using 13-inch wheels with balloon tires, F1 is going to 18-inch wheels with low-profile tires. These large wheels and slender-sidewall tires look and work more like the tires that Pirelli makes for high-performance sports cars.

As the contracted sole supplier of tires to Formula 1 through 2024, Pirelli wants to be able to transfer know-how between its racing and production tires, and it wouldn’t mind if customers could look at the racing tires and see in them a glimpse of the rubber they could buy for their own cars.

That’s different from the outgoing tires, whose roots stretch to the 1960s, when Goodyear, Firestone, and Dunlop were the tire suppliers. For 2022, Pirelli’s F1 tires will be more contemporary and relevant.

Getting a grip 

Today’s 13-inch tires are plenty fast, as their tall sidewalls let them squish and morph over the track surface for excellent grip. But all that motion takes its toll as the rubber heats and wears, producing the dreaded “degradation.” That the word F1 teams use to describe the loss of grip as tires wear. Watch a race, and you’ll hear it used frequently in the radio communications between drivers and crew.

To avoid losing too much traction—and suffering excessive degradation—drivers pilot their cars cautiously, seeking to manage the tire wear so that each set will last long enough until the planned pit stop for replacement. Failure to do this means losing time to rivals through slower lap times or time lost in an additional stop for another set of tires.

A key aim for the larger 2022 18-inch tires is for the tires to maintain their grip for longer, so drivers can race hard (“push,” in racing jargon) rather than managing their tire wear, says Mario Isola, head of Pirelli’s Formula 1 racing program. Creating these new tires is much more complicated than simply enlarging the tire’s inner diameter to fit on a 5-inch-larger wheel.

“We had to design a tire completely from scratch,” he says. “It is not just designing a different size. It is a different construction. Together with the new size, the request was to design a tire with different characteristics, so [there’s] no overheating because drivers want to push for the whole race, much reduced degradation, a wider working range, so it was not just a matter of designing a new size.”

[Related: The Rivian R1T breaks the electric-pickup game wide open] 

The company could have taken the approach to adapt the old tires to a different size, but that would have been a poor solution, Isola says. “At the beginning we had two choices,” he notes. “One was to take the current compounds and try to upgrade them with the characteristics required for an 18-inch tire. The second one was to start a completely new development, different ingredients and new technology and try to make a real big step compared to this year.”

“We decided for this second direction,” he explains. “It is more risky but at the end it is a better decision because [the] result of the test is positive and the feedback coming from the drivers is very positive.”

Taking this approach means every part of the tire is designed to suit the new rubber compounds. “We had to optimize the profile, to optimize the construction in order to have the footprint that is working properly, distributing pressure and temperature as we want. That was the technical challenge.”

The question, then, was how to verify results. In the old days, tire makers would follow an iterative process of creating a tire, putting a set on a car, sending a driver out on track to try it, and then debriefing the driver on the tire’s performance. Then engineers would head back to the lab to make changes and repeat the testing process.

That is a slow and expensive way to develop tires. Worse, because these tires will run on the new-spec 2022 cars, which do not yet exist, there is literally no way to physically test them on the cars that will run them next year.

Turning to virtual vehicles 

Instead, Pirelli and the racing teams rely on models of virtual cars wearing virtual tires and driving on virtual tracks. “This is something similar to what we did in 2016 when Formula 1 decided to change the width of the tire,” Isola notes. “We work in parallel with the teams with the simulation and the tire models. Thanks to simulation, we had an idea what to expect the following year.” 

The modeling software Pirelli uses is its own custom development, though the company’s original starting point was off-the-shelf commercial software, according to Isola. This is how it created that model for the 2016 tires and the engineers followed that same approach for the 2022 tires. 

“The same process was quite useful for us to predict the performance for the following year and it is exactly the same that we did this year, together with the teams,” Isola explains. “The teams have a 2022 car model. We have a ‘black box’ with a virtual tire model that we supply to the teams.”

This is where the familiar iterative process of engineering comes into play, but because the tests are virtual, it is done more quickly and less expensively than real-life physical testing. “They can fit the virtual tires on the virtual car and they can use it in their simulator and come back to us with proper feedback,” he says. “Doing this loop for two or three times, we converge to a better idea of what to expect from next year.”

In the end, Pirelli conducted 5,000 hours of computer simulation testing more than 70 different virtual tire prototypes. This is how Pirelli created the first tires for physical testing that included 10,000 hours of indoor testing on tire dynamometers in addition to the eventual 36 days of track testing of 30 different versions of the tires over 12,000 miles and using 392 sets of prototype tires.

There are still no 2022-spec cars available for testing, so the teams modified current cars to simulate the likely characteristics of those cars as closely as possible. The verdict? It looks as though the effort to make the tires more durable has worked. “The target is exactly this: to give the drivers the possibility to push for all of the run,” says Isola. “We asked them to push for all the laps and that was very useful to understand if they were happy with the new approach. We want to see action on the track and close racing by cars that are following each other, and drivers trying to overtake, but not to make it too easy because otherwise it is not what spectators want.”

[Related: What’s the difference between a sports car, a supercar, and a hypercar?]

Another aspect of having larger-diameter wheels is that the distance between the brake rotors and the inner wheel hub is increased. At the same time, the new rules control brake cooling system design, and the wheels wear covers to control cooling airflow.

This is because with the 13-inch wheels, teams are using heat from the brakes to warm the tires and raise their internal air pressure. With the new larger wheels and tires, brakes will no longer be a tool for tuning tire performance in 2022. “It is designed to flow the hot air, so basically, they cannot use the brakes to define the pressure in the tire,” Isola points out.

This subtle aspect of Formula 1 performance tuning came to fans’ attention this season when reigning champion Lewis Hamilton crashed during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after accidentally pressing the steering wheel-mounted button activating his car’s “Brake Magic” system. This is a device that shifts most of the car’s braking to the rear brakes, creating heat that warms the rear tires and increases their pressure. The problem for Hamilton was that its accidental activation caused him to lock his car’s rear brakes and miss a turn in what initially looked like an uncharacteristic mistake for the veteran racer.

Now we know that it was just a misfire of the team’s system for controlling the performance of the current generation of 13-inch tires. The sun is setting on that generation, and with that, the possibility of such mistakes next season. Perhaps that only leaves teams the opportunity to make different mistakes managing the new 18-inch tires, but as ever, it will be fascinating to see how engineers and racers adapt to the new rubber and what techniques they will employ to maximize its performance. That should be perfect fodder for future seasons of Drive to Survive.

The post A big change is coming to F1 cars—and their tires appeared first on Popular Science.

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BMW has two new all-electric models that share most of the same underlying hardware, despite being very different products. The i4 is the new electric version of the compact or mid-size sport sedans that made BMW famous. Then there is the iX, which is BMW’s answer for the current sweet spot of the passenger car market—an all-electric mid-size crossover SUV. 

The two models feature the same impressive new EV technology. But first, let’s talk about how they sound. To replace the familiar roar of Bavarian pistons, the company turned to a different flavor of Teutonic music in the form of sounds created by famed film soundtrack composer, Hans Zimmer.

BMW calls Zimmer’s creations “IconicSounds Electric.” Creating fake sound for drivers who are used to hearing something when they step on the “gas” sounds contrived, because it is. The i4 will include IconicSounds when it arrives at US dealers in the first quarter of 2022. The iX will not gain IconicSounds until after it arrives, also in early 2022.

But when you turn to a pro like Zimmer, whose mission in life has been to contrive sounds, the results are impressive. We shouldn’t have been surprised. His IconicSounds Electric will sooth the subliminal expectations of today’s drivers.

BMW drivers have the option of switching off the sound entirely. And thanks to over-the-air-software updates, Zimmer could easily provide additional sounds in the future for still more variety if customers want.

Besides the new soundtrack, here’s what else to know about these new electric vehicles. 

Magnetic personalities 

While the world struggles with supply-chain challenges and China threatens to withhold the rare-earth metals that are used for the magnets in EV motors, some point out the human rights situation surrounding the mining of metals like neodymium. 

For these new models and all EVs henceforth, BMW is steering clear of permanent magnets and the rare-earth metals contained therein. The i4 and iX employ induction in their motors to create electromagnets. Other carmakers say that induction motors don’t make enough torque. They say that the induced magnetic field is too hard to control efficiently. 

With the i4 and the iX, BMW says “nonsense.” The company reports that the electric motors have an efficiency of 93 percent, and the i4 M50 we tested rockets to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds.

Batteries are always a key concern with EVs, and BMW is acknowledging a reality that leads to variations in automakers’ stated capacity for their batteries: Not all of a battery’s theoretical capacity is actually usable, because completely charging or depleting batteries shortens their life.

How much capacity is used depends on the manufacturer’s determination of the maximum available while preserving, in BMW’s case, the ability for the battery to retain 80 percent of its capacity after eight years of use. So, BMW provides two numbers to describe its cars’ battery capacity: the gross maximum amount and the net usable amount.

[Related: EVs are silent and soulless, so BMW tapped Hans Zimmer to give them a voice]

In the case of the iX, the battery is rated at 76.6 kilowatt-hours gross and 71 kWh net. The i4’s pack holds 83.9 kWh gross and 80.7 kWh net. BMW says the $84,195 (including destination charges) all-wheel-drive 516-horsepower iX xDrive50 can drive 300 miles on a charge and it can charge on at 150 kW on a public DC fast-charging station from a 20 percent state of charge to 80 percent in half an hour.

The i4 will arrive in both rear-drive 335-hp xDrive40 and 536-hp all-wheel-drive M50 versions, which will start at $56,395 and $66,895, respectively. They will be able to do 300 miles on a charge for the xDrive40 and 250 miles for the M50, which was the version we tested. They can also recharge from 20 percent to 80 percent in 30 minutes.

A bee in our bonnet

Both cars employ BMW’s new integrated braking system, which is similar in function to the one in the Acura NSX sports car. While most EVs and hybrids have to figure out how to blend braking from electrical regeneration with hydraulic brake pressure applied by the driver’s foot on the brake pedal, BMW’s integrated system forgoes the typical hydraulic cylinder connected to the brake pedal.

Instead, the brake pedal is spring-loaded, with sensors measuring travel and pressure. This information goes to the brake computer, and it doles out the right amount of braking using regeneration, friction brakes, or some combination of the two. With control of all these functions directly under control by the computer, the result is smoother and less noticeable than with most EVs. 

This may not sound difficult, but the problem is that the amount of regenerative braking force available varies continuously, depending on the battery’s state of charge. A car with a fully charged battery cannot do regenerative braking because there is nowhere for those electrons to go. BMW’s integrated brake system takes the multiple variables into account and achieves that most elusive, and desirable, automotive trait: the ability to deliver the response that the driver intended.

The i4’s center of gravity is more than two inches lower than that of the 3-Series sedan, so even though it is heavier than its gas-fueled counterpart, the electric sedan feels just as nimble. The steering is accurate, which is reassuring after some BMW adventures with variable steering rates that could surprise the driver with its non-linear response.

And having huge amounts of electric torque powering all four wheels rockets the i4 out of turns like a plastic-swaddled sport bike. Everything about the i4 demonstrates completely that it is the all-electric Ultimate Driving Machine, exactly as BMW traditionalists demand.

On the other hand, there is the iX, a battery-electric crossover SUV with, ahem, daring styling and a stripped-down cabin that captures the Tesla design aesthetic that many EV buyers appreciate. Although the iX shares much of its underpinnings with the i4, and is only available in the all-wheel-drive version in the US, dynamically it is a relative from another planet.

The iX has the comfortable upright “command” driving position today’s crossover buyers seek and a cushy ride to complement the opulent silence of the drivetrain. The iX doesn’t have the Hans Zimmer IconicSounds Electric at launch, but that soundtrack will debut with a future sporty M model and will be available for regular iXs via an over-the-air software update.

We set the cruise control on 110 mph to devour kilometers on the German autobahn and the iX tracked straight and true as any German vehicle would be expected to, with no fuss.

The fuss arose when we stopped for a photograph on a narrow country lane. An approaching car prompted us to jump in quickly to zip out of the way. That was when we discovered 1) that a bee had gotten into the car and that 2) the iX’s power windows are insanely slow to open. BMW engineers insist that these windows are no slower than those of its other cars, but that because they are taller, they take longer to open. Still: absurdly slow. 

[Related: The Rivian R1T breaks the electric-pickup game wide open]

The big difference between the i4 and the iX appeared on the curvy Bavarian mountain roads. Where the i4 is sporty and precise and responsive, the iX understeers miserably. It doesn’t like to change direction, and the front tires provide only minimal cooperation with any such requests. 

Mountain switchbacks or flat land roundabouts—it doesn’t matter, turning the steering wheel is an exercise in frustration and disappointment as the iX plows ahead, its course little changed.

Mid-size crossover SUV buyers driving carpool will never notice this. They will notice the utter serenity of the iX’s cabin. All will be well with the intended drivers.

Meanwhile, BMW’s Ultimate Driving Machine traditionalists will gravitate toward the i4. Not just for its familiar three-box sport sedan profile (surprise: it is actually a hatchback, with plenty of practical space in the back!), but also for its more familiar driver interface, with a shifter that is similar to the one in a 3-Series.

And when the road turns twisty, as it did for us in the Alps outside Salzburg, the i4 is superlative. The car’s extra mass due to its battery pack is unnoticeable, while the resulting lower center of gravity contributes to the i4’s ability to slash through switchbacks like a dedicated sports car. 

Meanwhile, the powerful electric drive puts the power to the road through all four wheels, launching the i4 out of corners as only electric drive can. With the ability to tune the car’s regenerative braking level to the driver’s liking, powering out of corners and then slowing for approaching hairpins is a one-pedal operation, letting the i4 dance effortlessly through the Bavarian switchbacks.

The only thing that could make the experience more perfect would be suitably Teutonic musical accompaniment. Oh, right, turn up the Hans Zimmer!

The post The new electric BMW i4 is a nimble driving machine—with a cinematic soundtrack appeared first on Popular Science.

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The all-electric, all-wheel-drive Rivian R1T pickup truck is what you get when an EV startup is run by sports car fanatics who can also read a financial ledger. Rivian started life in 2008 with the aim of building a sport coupe because that’s the kind of car that CEO RJ Scaringe and director of vehicle dynamics Max Koff wanted.

But consumers like pickup trucks. The Ford F-Series, Chevrolet Silverado, and Ram pickup were the number one, two, and three-selling vehicles in the US last year. The GMC Sierra and Toyota Tacoma were numbers nine and 10.

Meanwhile, electric vehicles accounted for just 1.8 percent of US vehicle sales last year, according to IHS Markit. So rather than handicapping itself by targeting a niche vehicle segment with EV technology, Rivian pivoted to the idea of building an electric pickup. 

But the car nuts in charge didn’t want to give up on the idea of having a fun-to-drive vehicle, so they recruited chief engineer Charles Sanderson from supercar manufacturer McLaren Automotive. He brought with him familiarity with McLaren’s Tenneco-supplied linked hydraulic damper system, a technology that is as transformative for the R1T’s capabilities as its electric all-wheel-drive system is.

The company began doing its background work for this project years ago, quietly toiling in the shadows while another EV company’s CEO made brash claims on social media and revealed an outlandish-looking pickup prototype while making equally outlandish claims about that vehicle’s capabilities and delivery date. (Yes, we’re alluding to Elon Musk and his Cybertruck.) 

Now, Rivian is ready for its big public debut, with the start of production of the R1T electric pickup truck on Sept. 13. Deliveries have begun already. The company introduced the truck to the press with a drive in Breckenridge, Colorado, at an altitude (12,600 feet maximum!) that would leave a combustion-powered vehicle gasping for breath. The thin air at that height would cost a naturally-aspirated combustion engine 37.5 percent of its rated power.

Electric vehicles, on the other hand, don’t need air to breath, so they aren’t affected by altitude. However, the R1T could actually probably afford this handicap because its four electric motors combine for a total peak output of more than 800 horsepower. That’s right, the R1T not only has the suspension technology of a supercar, but it also has the power output of a supercar. It delivers on the promise of these specifications, with a 0-60 mph acceleration time of 3.0 seconds.

[Related: What’s the difference between a sports car, a supercar, and a hypercar?]

A peek through the spokes of the truck’s ginormous wheels (20-inch standard, 21-inch and 22-inch optional) reveals supercar-grade Bosch brake hardware, with huge rotors and calipers that are fully capable of stopping the truck even without the aid of electric regenerative braking. Rivian’s calibration engineers have done a stunning job of blending these two functions seamlessly, without the unpredictability of some such combined brake systems.

The tires are specifically developed for the R1T by Pirelli, and they are impressive. A hard day of off-roading proved their mettle scrambling over rocks and through mud, which is a fine accomplishment. But they also showed surprising on-road competence on pavement. More on this later.

The R1T’s smooth, grille-free front styling recalls Jay Leno’s antique Stanley Steamer steam cars, which also do not need airflow to a radiator. To build the trucks, Rivian took over the plant in Normal, Illinois that used to build the beloved ‘90s-era Mitsubishi Eclipse, Eagle Talon, and Plymouth Laser. Heartbreakingly, these flinty Rivian ledger-readers, upon discovering the tooling for those cars still in place, promptly scrapped it, leaving anyone fantasizing about a brand-new turbocharged, all-wheel-drive Eclipse in tears.

Like most EVs, the R1T has a front truck “frunk” for storage (it measures 11-cubic-feet) where a combustion truck’s engine would lie. Its lid is power-operated by remote key fob or by pressing a button at the front of the truck. But to open or close it from the driver’s seat currently requires a dive through layers of on-screen menus on the R1T’s lovely 16-inch center video display. 

The company says it will consider simplifying this through a future over-the-air update that provides more direct access to a “frunk open/close” function for drivers. We’d really like to see an actual physical button of the sort most cars have for their trunk or hatch. It is no surprise that the display’s video imagery is impressive, because Rivian renders the display’s pretty pictures using the Unreal engine from Epic, the video game maker.

If the frunk doesn’t provide enough lockable storage, the R1T has what Rivian calls the Gear Tunnel behind the cab. It is an 11.6-cubic-foot storage passage between openings on both sides of the truck that would be great for long objects like golf bags.

And, obviously, the R1T has a 4.5-foot cargo bed in the back. It holds 29.2 cubic feet of gear beneath its power-operated tonneau cover (that’s a rigid cover) that retracts like the roof of a sports stadium into a roll that packages above the Gear Tunnel at the front of the bed. The truck’s full-size spare tire stows in a bin beneath the bed. This is more convenient for retrieval than a tire that hangs underneath the truck as long as the bed is empty. Its retrieval gets more complicated with each item that is in the bed at the time it is needed, since you would have to move anything piled on top of the access door to the spot where the spare is housed.

The infotainment display is predictably glitzy, with impressive animations and the ability to control a multitude of functions. It is, however, overwhelming for someone with only a day or two behind the wheel, so buyers can expect to spend some time learning their way around its menus.

But we’re here for the electric drive, not the display screen. The R1T has four electric motors, with one dedicated to each wheel. This lets the truck’s various control systems provide much more precise control of the speed and traction of each wheel than is possible when employing locking differentials for a combustion drivetrain.

Between the truck’s frame rails lies the 135-kilowatt-hour long-range battery pack that provides the EPA-rated range of 314 miles on a charge. An available Max Pack will provide more than 400 miles of driving range, but no details are available yet on that one.

During a day of clambering up mountains on rock-strewn trails, followed by numerous passes through the switchbacks of Colorado’s famed 11,900-foot Loveland Pass, we burned energy at a prodigious rate that in no way represents normal use. While doing so, we saw our truck decline from a 74 percent battery charge to a 26 percent state of charge while traveling a total of 87 miles. At the end of the day, the computer estimated that we had 49 miles of range remaining, but of course if we had put the truck on Interstate 70 with the adaptive cruise control set at the speed limit, we’d have gone much farther than that.

What is more impressive is how the R1T deploys its electrical power. On the off-road trail, the truck slithered through and over situations that are within the capability of properly outfitted Jeep Wranglers and Ford Broncos. However, the Rivian passed through these challenges with much less drama than those combustion vehicles would have generated in the process.

[Related: Driving the Jeep Wrangler 4xe makes for a quiet and electric off-road adventure]

It is also rated to wade through three feet of water, which is deeper than either the Wrangler or the Bronco. One thing that requires a mental adjustment is the absence of vulnerable differentials beneath the truck that make straddling rocks or other obstacles a no-worry action.

As we have experienced with the Jeep Wrangler 4xe while off-roading in electric-only mode, off-road EVing is also a more relaxing experience than when an engine is making noise and its waste heat is welling up from beneath the truck. While the Rivian R1T does not have removable doors and roof like the Jeep and the Ford have, the company says that it is working on a removable version of the large glass skylight in the cab, so that drivers will be able to enjoy a more open-air experience on future versions of the truck.

The drivetrain and suspension’s tuning is selected by choosing a drive mode, and within the Off-Road selection there are Auto, Rock Crawl, and Rally settings that further zero in on exactly what kind of response is best for the situation. This raises the air suspension for more ground clearance, optimizes traction control for slippery surfaces, and adjusts throttle response and power steering assist. 

The All-Purpose setting is meant as the set-and-forget setting for comfortable on-road driving with some off-road capability. Sport mode optimizes the suspension, steering, and drivetrain for sports car-like on-road dynamics, with a lowered ride height, stiffer spring rate, and less steering assist. To our surprise, the All-Purpose setting is so capable even in aggressively sporting driving on sinuous mountain highways, that the harsher ride of the Sport mode seems like an unnecessary trade-off.

Shredding the switchbacks of Loveland Pass reveals perfect control of body roll and pitch while turning, accelerating, and braking, and the drivetrain emphasizes the aircraft-carrier catapult launch-like ability of EVs to shorten the straight sections between curves.

The stability control systems permit the driver to toss the R1T into curves as if it were a sports car, and the all-wheel-drive meters out power with its torque vectoring capability to help the truck get around the turn even as it accelerates toward the exit. Steering is accurate and well-weighted, making it easy to point the truck at the exit of turns.

[Related: The Ford F-150 Lightning is an electric vehicle for truck lovers]

Still more improbably, it does all of this while rolling on the same Pirelli Scorpion All-Terrain Plus tires as we used off road, with only an air pressure change from 28 psi in the dirt to 45 psi on the pavement. The tires provide unexpected grip, with predictable traction limits and surprisingly little tire squeal. Astounding. They accomplish this while also having the strong construction needed to withstand the abundant weight of a battery-powered full-size pickup truck.

A Conserve mode dials back the power to help the R1T tiptoe its way to the nearest charger when the battery pack is running low, and Tow mode sets the truck’s stability and control settings to be ready to handle a trailer as heavy as 11,000 lbs. An electric truck can generate impressive trailer-towing power, but using that power will quickly sap the batteries, so the R1T would not be ideal for long-distance camper-towing trips.

So, the cost: The R1T’s price starts at $67,500 and our test truck was a $73,000 model. This may seem like a lot of money, but according to Kelley Blue Book, the average transaction price of a full-size pickup truck has topped $55,600, and there are tax incentives to reduce the cost of the Rivian purchase.

There’s a cool optional three-person tent available for another $2,650. You may have seen those on other off-roaders. What you haven’t seen on any other vehicle is the R1T’s optional $5,000 camp kitchen. This is an inductive electric cooktop that stows in the Gear Tunnel and then pops out onto the side of the truck for cooking meals using the R1T’s battery for power.

The purchase price is especially reasonable when compared to the cost of a high-performance sports car, so the R1T has that in its favor too. There’s no word on whether Rivian might eventually get around to building a low-slung two-seat sports car, but there is an SUV version of the R1T, called the R1S, headed our way soon. Judging from the R1T, expect it to arrive in a hurry!

The post The Rivian R1T breaks the electric-pickup game wide open appeared first on Popular Science.

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“Your mileage may vary.” That’s the disclaimer carmakers apply to the Environmental Protection Agency fuel economy ratings that are listed for their cars.

But what seems even more variable is the value of the miles-per-gallon rating itself, which is why in 2012 the EPA started providing fuel economy ratings in another measurement too. Missed that? So did everyone else!

This is the gallons-per-100-miles rating. Although it is in smaller type than the miles-per-gallon number, it should figure larger in your calculations when comparing cars. That’s because the gallons/100 miles rating makes it easier to compare the efficiency of different cars and estimate their likely annual fuel cost.

European countries measure fuel economy by the benchmark of “liters per 100 kilometers.” A lower number is better, and the moon-shot goal there is the “three-liter” car that scores 3.0 liters/100 km. That’s one that burns no more than 3 liters (about 3 quarts) of fuel to drive 100 km (62 miles). 

The advantage of measuring fuel consumption this way is that it makes comparisons easier as fuel efficiency improves for a specific vehicle. That’s because the differences are linear. With miles per gallon, efficiency is graded on a curve. For example, for a 15-mpg car, a 5-mpg improvement is a 33-percent gain. But that same 5-mpg upgrade for a 30-mpg car is only a 17.5-percent improvement to a vehicle that is already using half as much gas.

Measuring the number of gallons per 100 miles is the EPA’s solution to this problem. “In some ways it is easier to look at direct costs and emissions in a more linear fashion when you use that metric,” explains an EPA fuel economy expert. 

[Related: What’s the difference between a sports car, a supercar, and a hypercar?]

In a bid for clarity, starting in model year 2012, the EPA added the gallons/100 miles rating to the Monroney new car window sticker, right below the familiar combined mpg rating that balances the city and highway scores. This supports another number on that label, the projected fuel cost to drive the car for a year, which is linear, like gallons/100 miles.

“When you look at that label, we have metrics on there like how much you will save,” the EPA official explains. “That is more tied to that gallons-per-hundred-miles rating.”

The alternative rating is easier to understand and has been on the window label of new cars for ten years, but it nevertheless remains almost entirely unknown to American drivers. “It is not the most obvious number on there,” the official concedes. 

[Related: Ford’s 2022 Maverick pickup will rival the fuel efficiency of a Honda Civic]

That popular European “3.0 liter” target equates to 1.27 gallons per 100 miles in the US, which isn’t a very memorable number. A good goal may then be 1 gallon per 100 miles—the ultimate accomplishment for combustion vehicles before they drive into the sunset as EVs gain popularity. That score also works out to 100 mpg, which might make it easier for people to understand this more useful benchmark.

And just as we’ve started learning about a better way to measure gas-guzzling vehicles, we will inevitably have to learn more about batteries as we start buying EVs. The EPA rates them in kilowatt-hours per 100 miles, in the same general way that the new gallons-per-100-miles metric works for vehicles with combustion engine work.

The post Forget miles per gallon—here’s the best metric for measuring a car’s efficiency appeared first on Popular Science.

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It’s rare to be able to go off-roading completely quietly, but the 2021 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sahara 4xe offers just that: the opportunity to take an unexpectedly meditative ride through the woods.

That’s because the Wrangler 4xe (pronounced ‘four by e’) carries a 400-volt, 17-kilowatt-hour, 96-cell battery pack amidships, which packs enough juice for about 22 miles of silent running on electric power. As a plug-in hybrid-electric vehicle, the Wrangler 4xe also has a turbocharged, direct-injected 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine that provides 370 miles of total driving range, so there’s no electric range anxiety here.

They don’t say exactly how many 4xe Wranglers they are selling, but Jeep executives do claim that this plug-in off-roader is actually the best-selling plug-in hybrid electric in the country, so it has obviously found an audience.

The hybrid’s gas motor is backed by a ZF 8-speed automatic transmission, and in place of the usual hydraulic torque converter there is an electric motor/generator that provides the Wrangler’s electric drive. Additionally, an LG Electronics 48-volt belt alternator-starter is mounted to the front of the engine; it provides the instantaneous engine stop/start function as the hybrid switches between gas and electric power.

When both the gas and electric motors are working together, they produce 375 horsepower and 470 lb.-ft. of torque. That’s 100 more horsepower than the regular four-cylinder-powered Wrangler and 85 more horsepower than the 3.6-liter V6, with torque that matches the mighty 6.4-liter Hemi V8 that is exclusively available in the Rubicon. Acceleration using the combined hybrid power is a brisk 6.0 seconds for 0-60 mph.

Off-roading in the Wrangler 4xe

With the Wrangler stripped of its roof and doors, creeping along the Tasker’s Gap off-highway vehicle trail in Virginia, the only sound was downed branches snapping under the Jeep’s Bridgestone tires. Our test vehicle was a Wrangler Sahara, which is the high-end ($47,995 base price, $56,380 as tested) model meant for suburbanites who seek some light trail-going capability for camping or hiking. The 4xe is also available in the urban-oriented High Altitude or the Rubicon maximum off-road trim levels.

Our Sahara carries Jeep’s “Trail Rated” designation, and it has some off-road goodies in support of that. Those goodies include skid plates to shield the Wrangler’s underbelly, a two-speed transfer case providing a 2.72:1 low range ratio, and legendarily tough Dana 44 front and rear differentials. 

It also has off-road gadgets such as Selec-Speed Control with Hill Ascent, which is effectively trail cruise control that lets the driver focus on steering around obstacles, and Hill Descent Control, which automatically employs the drivetrain and brakes to control the vehicle’s speed descending steep and slippery inclines; the computer can brake each wheel individually.

The tires, doors, and more

The fact that it rolls on fashionable gloss black 20-inch aluminum wheels that are wrapped in low-profile Bridgestone Dueler H/L Alenza tires, which are designed for smooth and quiet highway driving and not for off-roading, had us worried about the possibility of puncturing a tire on a sharp rock. That fact made us even more cautious on the trail than usual. It worked out fine, with the Wrangler confidently scrambling up steep rocks, threading through trees, and splashing through mud.

A shorter two-door Wrangler would be easier to maneuver in the woods, though we only made a three-point turn once due to the Unlimited’s extra length. It would also be easier to wrestle the removable fiberglass hard top roof off the two-door. Our test Unlimited also had the optional $525 sound deadening, which made it even heavier and more challenging for two adults to lift off and carry.

The main section of the hardtop is secured by eight Torx head bolts, and the Wrangler comes with a compact ratchet and the correct bits for doing the work. The two panels above the front seat require no tools for removal and they are light enough that it is no problem to take them off and put them on quickly.

[Related: The 2021 Ford Bronco lives up to its massive hype]

The doors are also removable and doing so not only provides an immersive open-air experience when driving around town, but it also produces a huge improvement in visibility in tight quarters on the trail. Additionally, it is much easier for your spotter to jump out to provide direction over tricky spots and around rocks that menace the Wrangler’s vital organs.

It is important to note that Jeep has armored and sealed all of the 4xe system’s electrical bits as comprehensively as its mechanical parts, so the hybrid-electric version retains the same 30-inch water fording rating as the combustion-only model. We didn’t find 30 inches of water to test that rating, but we were able to splash through some large mud holes.

The process of stripping off everything that is removable requires about half an hour, a decent bit of energy, and a lot of space to store all of the removed parts.

However, while the Sahara was more comfortable on the highway drive to the trail, a Rubicon, with its 4:1 low range, locking axles, disconnectable sway bar, and off-road spec 33-inch balloon tires would have been still more capable.

What it’s like back on the asphalt 

Regardless, Wrangler drivers will find that they are much more relaxed on two-lane country highways at 55-ish mph than on the Interstate at 70-ish mph. There is only so much that can be done by putting car tires on a solid front axle truck, and at 70 mph, the driver is reminded of this fact by the need for corrections and by the head shake through the steering wheel in response to bumps and potholes. On-road refinement is an area of substantial advantage for Ford’s new Bronco, which has independent front suspension rather than the Wrangler’s solid axle.

Our test Wrangler was equipped with Jeep’s Advanced Safety Group option package, which includes adaptive cruise control. This works especially well with the 4xe hybrid drivetrain, because the system can precisely apply the electric motor’s torque to maintain the set speed climbing hills and employ its regenerative braking to hold the right speed on downhills.

For the highway portion, we pressed the 4xe’s ‘eSave’ button, which prioritizes the Wrangler’s gas engine, saving the battery for later use. We saved the battery pack for our two hours of off-road driving at Tasker’s Gap, where we pressed the ‘Electric’ button to keep the combustion engine dormant.

[Related: Ford’s electric Mustang Mach-E is an important leap into the future]

At all times, we also keep the ‘Max Regen’ button selected. This means that the Wrangler’s electric motor acts as a generator as soon as the driver lifts off the throttle pedal, providing up to 0.25 g deceleration without touching the brake pedal. 

Unfortunately, this function resets to “off” every time the Wrangler’s turned off, so it is frustrating for drivers who prefer this mode to have to push the button every single time they drive it. Perhaps Jeep can revisit this in a future software update that lets the driver choose to make this selection persistent.

The 4xe drivetrain option boosts the Wrangler Sahara’s price by $8,500 over a conventionally powered model, but the federal government’s $7,500 tax rebate takes most of the sting out of that charge. Of course, if your budget is only enough for one of the lower trim levels, then stretching for the Sahara also adds to the cost.

[Related: Anyone can drive a supercar, but truly tapping its potential is another matter]

The idea is to make up the cost difference in fuel savings. But the regular Sahara is EPA rated at 21 mpg in combined city/highway driving. We averaged 25 mpg in mixed driving with the 4xe, using electric power exclusively around town and on the trail, and gas power for the trip out to the off-road park. During that drive the trip computer reported the Wrangler was getting 18 mpg on the highway.

On electric-only power, we consistently drove a few more miles than the EPA’s racing of 22 miles of EV driving range while driving around town. On the highway, the blunt-nosed Wrangler would presumably come up a few miles short of that rating due to the increased effect of aerodynamic drag.

But the highway isn’t a Wrangler’s natural environment, even with boring street-oriented tires installed. It longs for the off-road trail. Remove all the bodywork and switch to silent electric drive and you can hear it asking to go for a quiet wander through the woods.

The post Driving the Jeep Wrangler 4xe makes for a quiet and electric off-road adventure appeared first on Popular Science.

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Car body styles evolve, and so too do their names. 

Coupe

This is a term that has become the subject of hot debate in car circles lately. The word is French, derived from “cut,” referring to a glass panel that cut the front seat from the rear. In common usage, it has generally referred to a sporty two-door car, especially in hardtop coupe form, with no fixed center pillar supporting the roof between the front and rear seats.

In the U.S. the word rhymes with “troop,” but in the rest of the world there is an accent on the “e,” so it rhymes with a fake hairpiece.

[Related: What’s the difference between a sports car, a supercar, and a hypercar?]

Coupes traditionally had two doors. Today, the slope of the rear roofline also plays a role in distinguishing them, but that wasn’t always the case. There were coupes such as the Cadillac Deville (originally called Coupe De Ville) and Ford Thunderbird with what was called a “formal” roof that had a nearly vertical rear window. The Oldsmobile Cutlass became America’s best-selling car from 1977 to 1981 and then again in 1983 by providing two-door “personal luxury” to customers at a mainstream price.

In automotive design, panels that slope toward horizontal are called “fast,” so a zoomy Lamborghini’s lie-back windshield is considered fast. When the rear window slopes that way, the car was called a fastback. The popular first-generation 1967-’73 Ford Mustang was touted in advertisements for being available in three distinct roof options: a hardtop coupe, a fastback, and a convertible.

As the formal roof, with a rear window near the vertical, fell out of favor in the 1990s, the remaining coupes tended to have fast rooflines. Today, cars that once might have been called two-door sedans are now called coupes just because they have two doors and a rear window that leans kind of flat. The Mercedes S-Class Coupe and BMW 8-Series coupe maintain the hardtop tradition, while coupes like the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro have thick “B” pillars supporting the roof between the front and rear seats.

With the evolving meaning of “coupe,” carmakers have evidently felt emboldened to claim new meanings for the world. So “four-door coupes” like the Volkswagen CC emerged. They were followed by four-door crossover SUV “coupes” like the BMW X4.

Traditionalists squeal at this sacrilege, while consumers shrug and buy the cars they like. Sometimes these are four-door crossover SUVs whose sloping rooflines earn them a “coupe” label. Time moves on, so maybe these four-door fastbacks are the coupes of the future, no matter what traditionalists may think. For now, we still like sporty two-doors as coupes.

Sedan

A sedan was originally a chair carried by servants. In automotive usage it has meant an upright, less-sporty model. The modern Mercedes-Benz S-Class is a current example. Sedans did not necessarily have four doors, as two-door sedans were available for people too sedate for a rakish coupe but no need for an extra pair of doors.

[Related: Ford’s electric Mustang Mach-E is an important leap into the future]

The sedan is a dying breed, but the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord soldier on. Did you know that the Honda Accord was originally offered as a two-door hatchback? The arrival of the Accord Four-Door model in 1978 was a harbinger of the end of the hatchback and the age of the sedan, which continued until SUVs took over.

Hardtop

Some cars, as mentioned above, were basically convertibles with a fixed metal roof stretching from the windshield over the passenger cabin, without support pillars cluttering the cars’ flowing lines. Most of these cars were two-door models, like the ‘60s Chevy Malibu. But there were cars like the Lincoln Continental that were available as four-door hardtops.

Convertible

A convertible is so named because the car “converts” from a closed-roof car similar to a hardtop to an open-roof car that lets in all the sunshine and fresh air. We’re all pretty familiar with models like the Mazda Miata and the ubiquitous sunny destination Ford Mustang convertible rental cars.

Convertibles mostly employ fabric stretched over a hinged metal framework to provide tent-like weather protection. But there are also folding hardtop convertibles with stowable rigid panels to enclose the cabin.

These cars provide the security and quiet of regular closed cars with the ability to enjoy open-air driving. However, the need to stow large panels can lead to some clunky, stuff-in-the-trunk styling for hardtop convertibles. Some models, like the Corvette Stingray, split the difference, with removable panels over the occupants.

Hatchback

Hatchback cars have a flip-up rear hatch for convenient access to the cargo compartment. Such cars typically have folding rear seats, lending them the practicality of a wagon or SUV. Some hatchbacks have upright rear glass, like the Volkswagen Golf, so they look like truncated wagons. Others have sleek fastback lines that provide sporty coupe styling combined with a dose of flexible practicality. The Audi A7 is a current example.

Station Wagon

Station wagons were originally intended to provide conveyance for people to and from the train station, so they had cavernous rear cargo bays for transporting luggage. The archetypical wagon is possibly the 1960s-‘70s Ford Country Squire.

Station wagons have effectively been four-door sedans with a glassed-in cargo area where the trunk would have been. In many ways, today’s crossover SUVs are just station wagons that sit a little higher off the ground. So, while station wagons, like hatchbacks, might be considered nearly dead market segments, in truth the SUVs that dominate today’s car market are just an evolution of the old hatchback and station wagon body styles.

SUVs and crossovers

The term “Sport Utility Vehicle” was coined by Ford PR when the company introduced the original Bronco in 1965. That’s because off-roaders like the Bronco were generically called “jeeps” at that time, and Ford obviously didn’t want people calling the Bronco a “jeep.”

The Jeep people strenuously defend their brand from such generic use, which is why you see the ® mark after the Jeep name, but not other car brands.

So SUVs were easy to identify. Tall. Boxy. Four-wheel drive. Unrefined. Simple, isn’t it?

[Related: The 2021 Ford Bronco lives up to its massive hype]

But during the 1980s, some families started using Jeep Grand Wagoneers and Chevrolet Suburbans as family haulers in place of traditional station wagons. The Department of Motor Vehicles often even titled these vehicles as “station wagons,” because no one was sure what to make of them.

Jeep launched the compact 1984 Cherokee in both two-door and four-door form, and was amazed to find the four-doors were much more popular. The conventional thinking at the time was that sport utility vehicles emphasized “sport,” and that the two-door models would appeal to young buyers as alternatives to the sporty coupes they tended to buy at that time.

Instead, buyers liked the “utility” half of the description and the market for four-door SUVs ignited. Ford took direct aim at these buyers with the Explorer and Jeep responded with the Grand Cherokee.

But off-roaders aren’t ideal station wagon replacements for families. So in 2004, Chrysler launched the Pacifica, a roomy wagon for families with no off-roading pretensions. Neither Chrysler nor the public knew how to pigeonhole the Pacifica, so this category was saddled with the confusing “crossover” moniker in reference to the fact that it is a cross between an SUV and a car.

Today “crossovers” are the most popular passenger vehicles and it looks like these tall station wagons will soon make most traditional cars go extinct. As dinosaurs appeared to die out when they actually evolved into birds, so it will be with cars as they turn into crossovers. 

That’s why the Mustang Mach-E electric car exists. The day will likely come when there is no Mustang coupe, and Ford doesn’t want its most powerful model brand to go the way of the brontosaurus. 

The post Coupes, crossovers, and other car body styles, explained appeared first on Popular Science.

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“How’d you get that?”

So why the apparent mania for all things Bronco? Ford has 125,000 orders for this new rock crawler, and if you order one now in the most easily fulfilled configuration, the wait will be at least five months. If you fancy something fancy, it will be much longer.

Ford’s timing could not have been better for the Bronco’s release. Nostalgia for the original model has recently caused it to follow in the increasingly costly tracks of other gotta-have classics like the Acura Integra Type R and the ’69 Chevrolet Camaro. A shop called Velocity Restorations will sell you a better-than-new vintage Bronco for $225,000.

Meanwhile, pandemic-fueled cabin fever has driven Jeep Wrangler sales to record levels, demonstrating the current demand for rugged 4x4s that can take owners far afield.

The 2021 Ford Bronco vs the Jeep Wrangler 

Surely, challenging Jeep for its off-road crown is a fool’s errand, right? Jeep has been in the game since WWII, after all. The International Scout and Ford Bronco were legitimate challengers in the 1970s, but Jeep has been the uncontested 4×4 champion for decades.

Ford knows that Jeep has a huge lead. They just refuse to concede that it is an insurmountable one. So the engineers have worked overtime to build in the kind of features that will win both newcomers and Jeep die-hards.

[Related: The Ford F-150 Lightning is an electric vehicle for truck lovers]

Like the Wrangler, the Bronco has removable doors. Yay! Unlike the Wrangler, the Bronco’s rearview mirrors aren’t mounted to the doors, so when they’re dismounted, the Bronco driver can still see behind. Wrangler drivers must buy aftermarket mirrors to replace the door-mounted factory mirrors and a disappointing number of them simply choose to drive mirrorless.

Putting the mirrors on the fenders is no matter of just bolting them on somewhere else, according to chief designer Paul Wraith. It requires sorting out the sightlines from the driver’s seat and avoiding blockage by the windshield pillars, while ensuring that the housing and mirror glass have proper fit and that their mount is secure enough to prevent vibration. The Bronco’s mirrors are solidly mounted with reinforcing brackets beneath the fenders that make them strong enough to support attaching accessories like lights and cameras, Wraith explains. “Mirrors are freaking hard!” he says.

Once the doors are off, now what? Wrangler owners who have a garage can store them there. But young apartment dwellers are out of luck. Ford designed its doors so they can be stowed in the back of the Bronco, so any Bronco owner can enjoy the freedom of open-air doorless driving. The available protective nylon bags for those removed doors have a QR code that steers the Bronco driver to a video showing the procedure for packing them into the back of the vehicle.

During our off-road driving at Ford’s media introduction for the Bronco, we were reminded of just how much better the visibility out of the vehicle is with the doors off, and how much easier it is to climb in and out to check the terrain, shoot a photo, or spot for a buddy steering over an obstacle.

[Related: Ford’s 2022 Maverick pickup will rival the fuel efficiency of a Honda Civic]

Vehicles that have removable doors aren’t required by the government to pass side-impact crash tests. But they are required to by Ford, so the Bronco has extra airbags to provide an acceptable level of side-impact crash protection.

The Bronco’s front winch, tie-down attachments, and more

Another airbag-related example of attention to detail: 4×4 owners like to dress their machines with a winch on the front that they can use to extract themselves from messy situations. But bolting a hefty electric motor to the front bumper changes the vehicle’s front impact characteristics. Buy the Warn winch offered for the Bronco and the dealer flashes in new software for the airbag system so that it responds correctly to the changed crash impulse profile.

SUV owners like to put things on the roof of their vehicles too. Throw a canoe or a kayak up there and you’ll want to secure the front. Normally that means running a tie-down to the front tow hooks and watching the nylon webbing saw away at the front edge of the hood while you drive. The Bronco has tie-down attachments atop each front fender, and they serve as corner-spotters for shorter drivers so they can better see where the Bronco ends and the tree begins when navigating trails.

Starting to notice how Ford is building Bronco’s case, piece by piece? They just keep piling on with the details. Do you like the Strava cycling app that lets you locate cool rides and compare your results? Bronco’s FordPass Performance App will point drivers to 1,000 curated trails where they can go four-wheeling. There are an additional quarter-million miles of uncurated trails too. With all of its cameras and sensors, the Bronco lets drivers post videos and telemetry from their drives online.

Ford’s free off-roading classes for Bronco owners

But what if you’ve always loved off-roading in concept, but don’t know the first thing about how to actually do it? Ford is opening a quartet of Bronco Off-Roadeo camps around the country and admission is free for every Bronco buyer. They can even attend before taking delivery of the Bronco. The Ford media drive was at the location outside Austin, Texas, but there will be others on the coasts too.

How about the actual off-roading? Yeah, Bronco’s strong there too. It has available industry-benchmark Dana front and rear differentials, and they lock. Significantly, the front can be locked whether or not the rear is locked, providing some added flexibility in situations where that’s the best approach. The Wrangler can’t do that.

[Related: What’s the difference between a sports car, a supercar, and a hypercar?]

Trail Turn Assist is a technology that lets the Bronco automatically lock the inside rear wheel’s brake when making tight turns on the trails. This pivots the vehicle in a 40-percent smaller turning radius, saving the driver from backing up to make a three-point turn when the trail is potentially scattered with obstacles to doing that.

The Bronco has an independent front suspension system so the left and right sides can operate separately from each other, as in cars and most SUVs. But off-road traditionalists are stuck on solid front axles like the Wrangler’s.

Ford says the independent setup is better and has numbers to prove its point. The Bronco has 10 inches of articulation between the two sides of the front suspension, which is more than Wrangler. It also has 12.6 inches of ground clearance, because the differential can be mounted higher when it isn’t part of a solid axle assembly. “We believe independent front suspension is better than a solid front axle,” declares chief engineer Eric Loeffler.

What’s the new Bronco like to drive?

There’s no argument on the road, where the independent setup provides superior ride and handling. On some of the strenuous, rain-slicked trails where we tested the Bronco, we found Ford’s claims to be true, as the Bronco easily clambered over large rocks and reliably put the power to the ground.

Ford’s software wizards contribute their part too, ensuring the hardware is optimized for the conditions with seven different settings for the Terrain Management System that include Normal, Eco, Sport, Slippery and Sand,  Baja, Mud/Ruts, and Rock Crawl. These settings tailor the four-wheel drive, differential locks, traction control, and stability control systems to meet the conditions.

All of these amazing features and our incredible experience navigating the trails of the Texas Off-Roadeo put the Bronco solidly into sliced-bread territory. So here comes the “but.”

The 2021 Ford Bronco’s gas mileage 

Our fairly basic 2-door, 275-horsepower, 2.3-liter four-cylinder Black Diamond edition Bronco costs $42,025. The fully equipped 4-door, 315-horsepower 2.7-liter V6 First Edition stickers for $63,210.

Both vehicles are powered, like most Fords, by versions of the brand’s signature turbocharged, direct-injected EcoBoost technology. Trouble is, it is heavy on “boost” and light on “eco,” and the Bronco has poor fuel efficiency for a mid-size, five-seat vehicle. The four-cylinder we drove has an EPA rating of 18 mpg in both city and highway driving. 

[Related: Ford’s electric Mustang Mach-E is an important leap into the future]

Our 75 miles of mostly suburban and rural highway drive saw the Bronco get 16.7 mpg. The smoother, more powerful V6 has an EPA rating of 17 mpg, also both for city and highway. The numbers for comparable, but slightly less powerful, Wrangler models are 22/24 for a 2-door four-cylinder and 19/24 for a 4-door V6.

Ford has done so much so well that the 125,000 people who already have firm orders for a new Bronco will surely be thrilled as they enjoy its incredible capabilities and appreciate its thoughtful details. And the Bronco is designed to be modular, so it is not only easy to customize, but it will be easy for Ford to continually iterate exciting new variations as it has done with the Mustang over the years.

But the Bronco’s thirst at the pump is going to sting, so we have to hope that more efficient hybrid and electric versions are a sooner-rather-than-later thing. Judging from the popular reception of Ford’s planned battery-electric F-150 Lightning, it is probably safe to say that Blue Oval die-hards will be eager to check out both those electrified Broncos and today’s impressive gas model.

The post The 2021 Ford Bronco lives up to its massive hype appeared first on Popular Science.

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If you’ve ever heard someone refer to a supercar, a pony car, or even just a sports car and felt slightly out of depth, then we’re here to help. 

The meaning of words naturally changes over time, and the same is true with the definitions of high-performance specialty cars, whose names are evolving and whose upper ceiling keeps rising thanks to technical advances. Additionally, as mainstream models evolve into variations of crossover SUVs, boundaries between the definitions of the remaining cars for enthusiasts are blurring, too.

To understand these different car terms, it’s helpful to consider where they started and where they’ve landed today. Here’s what to know about the automotive categories of sports car, muscle car, pony car, supercar—and hypercar.

What is a sports car?

In the beginning, there was the sports car. Or, as motorcycle enthusiasts call some models “sport bikes,” there was a time when people like Carroll Shelby referred to track-inspired four-wheelers as “sport cars.”

Sports cars were a post-World War II development of minimalist machines designed for carving corners on the narrow, twisting roads of Europe and Britain. They were best exemplified by the MG TC: a front-engine, rear-drive roadster with only two seats and no amenities. 

Today, the TC looks more like a piece of agricultural equipment than a car meant for rapid transit, but compared to the ponderous everyday cars of the 1940s, the TC was practically a stand-up Jet Ski. American soldiers serving in Europe for WWII and the Cold War discovered these entertaining toys and brought them home.

The Sports Car Club of America was founded in 1944 and to this day the group’s logo is built around the image of the kind of wire-spoked wheel that would have been found on the MG TC. Over the decades there have been pressures on the meaning of “sports car” as manufacturers offered closed-roof versions of their two-seat roadsters that still seemed to qualify.

For a time in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, “America’s sports car,” the Chevrolet Corvette, was only available with a closed roof. The Corvette was always an outlier, because there was also the unwritten corollary to the definition of sports car that the term implied a small-displacement engine whose light weight would contribute to the car’s agility. As the Corvette’s optional engines grew to include big-block V8s engines and hard-top versions outsold drop-top ‘Vettes, sports car purists eyed the Corvette ever more suspiciously.

And what to make of the Porsche 911? Porsche started with two-seaters, but the 1964 Porsche 911 inaugurated a line of fun-to-drive coupes that included a back seat. Sports car, or no? This was the source of much discussion. It is a Porsche, after all, so it must be a sports car. But there was not even a convertible top option (that arrived in the 1980s), and it had a back seat! What to do? Eventually, the 911 earned admission to the exclusive sports car club, as wire-wheel roadster purists receded into the rear-view mirror.

These are the forces that have been pushing the meaning of “sports car” further from its explicit roots referring to two-seat roadsters to include a wider variety of cars that are entertaining to drive. Today, these include cars like the BMW Z4, Mazda MX-5 Miata, and Porsche 718 Boxster.

What is a muscle car?

Muscle cars can trace their origin to a specific moment in time: the introduction of the 1964 Pontiac Tempest GTO in the fall of 1963. The car was conceived by Pontiac chief engineer John Z. DeLorean, whose eponymously named car would later contribute to further muddying the meaning of the term “sports car” before it starred in Back to the Future.

The Pontiac Tempest was a mid-size model, and DeLorean engineered the car to accept Pontiac’s large-displacement big block 383 cubic-inch V8 from the company’s full-size models to provide the most power possible in a smaller car. The GTO, which would become its own standalone model, shamelessly stole its name from a famous sports car, the Ferrari 250 GTO. The letters were short for “Grand Tourismo Omologato,” a reference to the fact that the model was created to legalize a higher-performance version of the 250 for racing in sports car races like the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The only races that interested the Pontiac GTO’s drivers were short blasts of acceleration through the quarter mile, which was the car’s strength. Putting a heavy V8 into an average American sedan in the 1960s was no recipe for handling response. The Pontiac GTO’s popularity sparked other American carmakers to respond with muscle cars of their own. The 1969 Dodge Charger, best-known for its TV star turn as the orange-painted General Lee retired stock car of The Dukes of Hazzard, is a well-known example of a classic muscle car.

Its descendants, the Dodge Charger and Challenger, are the only remaining straightforward examples of pure muscle cars, though because boundaries are blurring we’re seeing pony cars like the Mustang and Camaro increasingly lumped into the muscle car category.

What is a pony car?

Pony cars not only arose from a single model, but the category’s name directly references that car. The 1964½ Ford Mustang debuted at the New York World’s Fair on April 17, 1964, and its explosive popularity instantly ignited the entirely new category of pony cars. Ford dealers across the country pulled the covers off the cars the same day and sold 22,000 Mustangs. The first year of production topped 400,000 cars.

Naturally, other companies took note and responded with their own versions of the Mustang, creating the pony car category. (A mustang is a horse. Get it?) Ford’s Mercury division rolled out its Cougar, and the Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird also debuted as 1967 models in the fall of 1966.

Ford’s template was easy enough to copy: the Mustang was built on the platform of Ford’s compact Falcon. The underpinnings were unchanged, but the body’s proportions shifted to a rakish coupe style with a long hood implying massive power and a tight, sporty trunk suggesting agility.

[Related: Ford’s electric Mustang Mach-E is an important leap into the future]

Because the Falcon was no road-burner, neither was the Mustang at first. But eventually pony cars started cashing the checks that their styling was writing, and they gained both power and handling.

Pony cars were so appealing that, unlike muscle cars, they spread to foreign brands too, with the development of Ford of Europe’s Capri, which was imported to America as a Mercury model, the Toyota Celica, and Opel Manta, among others.

The Mustang and Camaro continue, but the category has otherwise withered along with the coupe segment in general. While foreign pony cars disappeared entirely, some of their current cars fall very close to this segment. The BMW M4 and Lexus RC could certainly be granted honorary admission, even if their buyers likely never remotely considered buying a Mustang or view their rides as comparable to it.

So, how to tell the difference between a sports car, a muscle car, and a pony car? It’s possible for a car to fit in more than one category, as the definitions are not as stringent as they used to be. For example, the Mustang Shelby GT500 has the handling to be a sports car, the looks and double-date back seat of a pony car, and the under-hood power of a muscle car. But to figure out its primary category, look to the car’s roots and ask yourself which group it is more closely aligned with. 

If it is a two-seater, you’re solidly in sports car territory. The more useful the back seat and the more powerful the engine, the closer you are to muscle car land. As for pony cars, ask yourself: Did the nameplate arise in the 1960s to carve out a new niche? Then it is a pony car.

What is a supercar?

Supercars debuted with the introduction of a sexy new mid-engine V12 sports car at the 1966 Frankfurt Motor Show by Italian tractor-maker Lamborghini. The company says the gorgeous Miura was the world’s fastest car at the time, with a top speed of 175 mph and 0-62 mph acceleration in 6.7 seconds.

[Related: The Corvette is finally the supercar it deserves to be]

It was a two-seater, like a sports car, and it took corners like it was on rails. But it had a V12 engine that produced eye-popping muscle car-like performance. This spawned the creation of a new category, the supercar. Lamborghini followed the Miura with the even more outrageous Countach, a car that decorated adolescent bedroom walls for more than a decade until it was supplanted by the 1992 McLaren F1. That car set a world record top speed of 240 mph.

Today, familiar brands like Ferrari, McLaren, and Lamborghini build supercars, and they’ve been joined by newcomers like Pagani and Koenigsegg, along with contenders from mainstream brands like the Ford GT and Chevrolet Corvette. These cars employ the same mid-engine configuration as the cars from long standing brands in this category, though the engine cylinder count is smaller. 

[Related: The McLaren GT is a 200 mph supercar that’s comfortable to drive]

Typically, supercars start around a quarter of a million dollars and have 500 horsepower or more, though the Corvette upends that expectation with its starting price of $60,000. It squeaks in with an asterisk due to its 495 horsepower.

What is a hypercar?

Hypercars have arisen in response to this proliferation of mere supercars. Even exotic car makers wanted halo models to boost their brands’ reputations above that of rivals, and the result has been a category of cars that today typically cost a million dollars or more and boast 1,000 or more horsepower.

[Related: The Rimac Nevera goes from 0 to 100 MPH in 4.3 seconds]

The million-dollar, thousand horsepower, 253-mph, quad-turbocharged W16-powered Bugatti Veyron set the benchmark for hypercars in 2005 and its successor, the $3 million, 1,500-hp, 304-mph Chiron is the standard today. The limited-production, electrically-boosted McLaren P1 was another, along with the hybrid-electric V12 Ferrari LaFerrari.

Blurred boundaries 

The waters have become muddied by the simultaneous collapse of the market for coupes and convertibles along with the increasing performance and handling capability of models of all shapes and sizes.

Ford stakes a claim of having the world’s best-selling sports car in the Mustang and compares its sales to those of the Porsche 911. Both of these cars have big power and back seats, while the BMW Z4, Mazda MX-5 Miata, and Porsche 718 Boxster are probably the best examples of pure sports cars remaining.

And the Mustang, in Shelby GT500 form, is rated at an astounding 760 horsepower, which also surely classifies it as a muscle car against the likes of the Dodge Challenger Hellcat, which itself falls in the traditional muscle car category.

Where these definitions go from here is anyone’s guess, but with the migration toward electric power and crossover SUV body styles, it could be they’ll all end up in the graveyard of obsolete automotive terms together, resting in peace alongside “shooting brake” and “dual-cowl phaeton.” 

The post What’s the difference between a sports car, a supercar, and a hypercar? appeared first on Popular Science.

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During our recent test drive opportunity with the amazing Rolls-Royce Ghost luxury sedan—a vehicle that feels like a condominium on wheels—the one feature that left passengers awestruck was the car’s Starlight Headliner.

Rolls-Royce has many attention-grabbing signature features, which include the power-operated doors, the rear-hinged rear doors for maximum accessibility to the back seat, the power-retracting “Spirit of Ecstasy” hood ornament (with built-in up-lighting, natch!), and that British Isle’s must-have item, the umbrellas built into the doors for convenient access when exiting directly onto a rainy tarmac. You know, your basic car stuff. 

But it is the car’s headliner, the ceiling inside the mammoth sedan, that attracts the attention of anyone fortunate enough to crawl inside the car. The leather lining is perforated with between 1,400 and 1,600 holes that are hand-strung with fiber optic threads that, when illuminated, produce the effect of a star field inside the car.

The meticulous work by the craftspeople who hand build Rolls-Royce cars at the company’s Goodwood, England headquarters and factory trim each fiber’s end at a unique angle and fit it flush into the surface of the leather. The varying angles on the tips of the fibers create a twinkling effect for viewers, as the angle of the cut affects the direction of the light exiting the fiber.

[Related: The first Rolls-Royce SUV has tricks that might actually justify its price tag]

This mesmerizing feature debuted in a customized Rolls-Royce Phantom in 2006, when the client requested an 800-star headliner, and it was such a sensation that the Starlight Headliner is now standard equipment on Ghost models. Sun worshipers can specify a panoramic skylight instead, but most buyers choose the Starlight headliner, product manager Will Vetter reports.

Today’s headliner not only has at least twice as many stars as that first one—it has new capabilities and customized designs. A basic example takes the Rolls-Royce craftsperson at least nine hours of labor to create. Some of the additional stars represent an increase in the density of lights, but most of the added stars are there to fill the increase in the area covered by the synthetic star field.

“Originally it was really only focused on the back cabin,” notes Vetter. “It wasn’t the expanse that it is these days.”

Workers create the layout using a plexiglass template that indicates where the perforations should be for the optic fibers to shine through. They thread the hundreds of optical fibers in bundles, routing to between five and seven light modules that illuminate them.

[Related: Ford’s electric Mustang Mach-E is an important leap into the future]

Customers specify star fields such as the stars that would have been overhead the day they were born, their zodiac sign, popular constellations such as Ursa Major and Minor, a family coat of arms, or even a company logo.

Just as glare from the full moon spoils the view of stars at night in the outside world, so would a conventional overhead dome light ruin the effect of the Starlight Headliner. So Rolls-Royce employs the fiber optics to act as a virtual dome light, providing cabin illumination by turning up the brightness of all of them to bathe the car’s interior in all-encompassing light.

Additionally, areas of the “sky” stand in for reading lights and map lights, with localized brightness on request over specific seats in the car.

The newest innovation is a shooting star function that animates the sky scene with motion. The shooting star is created by a network of 24 path lines that animate the motion of a randomly appearing meteor that streaks across the sky. The shooting star can fly in either direction on its path, and it varies in brightness by using between one and four fibers to illuminate each star on the route. They can change the length of the fireball’s tail by using as many as five fibers to create a trailing effect, reports Vetter. There are 196 fibers dedicated to the shooting star effect.

Another dynamic star field effect is the continuous variability of the stars’ brightness, so they gently undulate in brightness and intensity to look more like they are shining through a turbulent atmosphere.

The company is continuing to experiment with still more ingenious modifications, like with its Collection cars such as “Tempus,” which features hand-painted images on the leather that go with a pulsar lighting effect. The company has pointed the way for alternative uses for the lighting with a customized Wraith coupe dubbed “Kryptos.” It employs the fiber optic lighting technology to put a printed circuit design onto the ceiling.

As Rolls-Royce executives frequently note, an economy car will deliver its occupants reliably to their destination, so the posh British brand has to deliver an experience rather than simple transportation. The reaction of our passengers during our weekend with the Ghost demonstrates convincingly that Rolls-Royce maintains its ability to astound people with its “surprise and delight” amenities.

The post The interior of Rolls-Royce’s new Ghost sedan is hauntingly beautiful appeared first on Popular Science.

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The Land Rover Defender is back. After a brief hiatus that saw the original iconic Land Rover cease production at the end of 2016, one of the world’s most recognizable 4x4s is back in all-new, but still unmistakable, form.

Most importantly for prospective U.S. buyers, this new Defender has been designed to meet our stringent government regulations, so for the first time in 21 years, the Defender will be in the showrooms of American Land Rover dealers.

Land Rover has already launched an online configurator to fire the imaginations of would-be buyers, who can fiddle with the exact equipment they would have for their own perfect Defender.

While the original Defender forged its reputation as an anvil-tough implement, the new one is packed with sophisticated technology. This isn’t technology for the sake of an impressive spec sheet. The 2020 Defender’s tech augments its off-road capability, protecting the vehicle and its occupants from off-road mishaps.

The Terrain Response 2 is a key addition, which lets the driver optimize settings of the transfer case and of the center and rear differentials to maintain traction no matter the terrain. In automatic mode, Terrain Response 2 can even identify the conditions and choose the best settings with no input from the driver. This is in contrast to the original Defender, which required the driver to lock the center differential manually.

Wade Sensing tech detects when you’ve driven the Defender into water. It can ford depths of three feet, but Land Rover wants it to take appropriate measures when it does. Changes include slowing response to throttle inputs to ensure smooth progress, switching the HVAC system to recirculate to discourage any water from coming inside, and putting the forward camera view on the Defender’s dashboard display to help the driver monitor the depth of the approaching water. Upon leaving the water, Wade Sensing automatically drags the brakes briefly to clean and dry the rotors so they’ll be ready for maximum performance if needed.

On the topic of braking, the Defender has gone to a brake-by-wire system that uses a hydraulic actuator commanded by brake pedal input, an arrangement we’ve seen previously on the Acura NSX, among other cars. Land Rover says this lets the system react more quickly in emergency braking situations, cutting brake response time by half, from 300 milliseconds to just 150 ms.

The Defender’s 10-inch central infotainment display pairs with the 12.3-inch instrument panel display ahead of the driver and the full-color head-up display on the windshield to convey a variety of information to the driver. The central display supports Android Auto and Apple CarPlay for using smartphone applications, while the on-board 3D GPS navigation can be shown on the instrument panel display.

Previous models employed a traditional body-on-frame construction, but Land Rover chose an aluminum unibody design for the new Defender that increases stiffness roughly 300 percent. By reducing the uncontrolled springing action of the twisting frame by so much, it makes it that much easier for engineers to design the Defender’s suspension to cope with the terrain it encounters.

That chassis rolls on a selection of wheels that start with 18-inch steel wheels that will appeal to fans of functionality, while the top-of-the-line 22-inch aluminum focus on the aesthetics.

As before, the Defender will be available in two configurations, the 90, with its short, maneuverable 90-inch wheelbase, and the 110, with its more spacious, practical 110-inch wheelbase. It will also come with either of two engines, the 296-horsepower turbocharged 2.0-liter inline four-cylinder P300 and the 395-hp turbocharged and electrically supercharged 3.0-liter inline six cylinder P400. The P400 also features a 48-volt mild hybrid belt alternator starter system that recovers energy for storage in a lithium-ion battery pack and uses that power to give the gas engine a boost during acceleration.

The P300 Defender accelerates to 60 mph in 7.7 seconds, while the P400 gets to 60 mph in just 5.8 seconds. Both engines are mated to a ZF-supplied 8-speed planetary automatic transmission and two-speed transfer case that provides the low range for off-road driving.

The 2020 Defender launches in the U.S. in 110 form initially, with the 90 following later. The base Defender 110 P300 starts at $49,900 and the P400 (which is available only in SE trim and higher levels) starts at $62,250.

The post Land Rover’s reborn Defender SUV can automatically adapt to gnarly terrain appeared first on Popular Science.

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The Ford Mustang Mach-E, Ford’s new battery-electric crossover SUV, is in no way, shape, or form a Mustang in the tradition of the pony car’s heritage as a sporty coupe with a cramped back seat and accessible combustion-based performance.

But that doesn’t matter. That’s because it didn’t matter to any of the people who flocked for a closer look at our test car. They all called the Mach-E a “Mustang,” and they did not do so ironically.

The second reason why it doesn’t matter: the “real” Mustang belongs to a breed of transportation that is going extinct. If anything called “Mustang” is to succeed as long into the future as the car’s history stretches into the past, it will be more like the Mach-E and less like any of the Mustangs that got us here. Adapt or die.

Ford has known this from the beginning. The company built shortened two-seat Mustangs, stretched four-door Mustangs, and station wagon Mustangs as prototypes that never reached production. A 1968 Mustang hatchback concept car forecast the second- and third-generation Mustangs built between 1974 and 1993 that were available as hatchbacks, because that is what customers at the time wanted.

For Mustang, the only constant is change. Today, drivers want tall wagons that we call “crossover SUVs.” But what of the 2021 Mustang Mach-E crossover? What is it like to drive and to live with daily?

The Mustang Mach-E’s performance and range

Let’s unpack what Mustang Mach-E delivers. The base model starts at $42,895, and our test car lists for $56,400. The base car’s battery pack holds 68 kilowatt-hours of energy, and our test car has the upgraded 88 kWh battery. For comparison, a Tesla Model Y compact crossover has a 75 kWh battery pack.

Driving range has been a source of concern for people potentially interested in EVs. The Mustang’s large battery and improved driving efficiency provide a maximum range of 270 miles in our all-wheel drive test car and the smaller standard pack is good for 210 miles with AWD. Both batteries propel the car another 30 miles in the rear-wheel drive versions.

The matrix of batteries and drivetrains also affects performance. This is a Mustang, after all, so that is important to the people who appreciate that heritage. Our high-end test car boasts 346 horsepower and 428 lb.-ft. of torque thanks to its big battery and electric motors at both the front and back of the car. At the other end of the spectrum, the base model with the small battery and rear-wheel drive is rated at 266 hp and 317 lb.-ft. Speed freaks should know that there is a GT model in the works with a predicted 459 horsepower.

The innovative volume knob on the Mach-E

The available color palette for the Mach-E is disappointingly monochromatic, with every shade of silver and gray spanning the gap between Star White Metallic and Shadow Black. There’s even a blue that is so dark it looks black. Among colors with actual pigmentation, there are only two for the Mach-E, and brilliant Grabber Blue only comes on the limited-production First Edition Mach-E. That leaves the somewhat ostentatious Rapid Red Metallic as the sole option for drivers who want a little color in their lives.

It is even worse inside, where the only choices are black and gray. Bring back interior colors in vehicles whose stated mission is to provide some excitement!

Today, the Mach-E wears a few Mustang styling cues, pasted on. Notice the taillights with the three vertical bars and the running horse logos. Those don’t matter. What does matter is the philosophy that the Mach-E will be distinctive, not generic. And that it will be exciting, not dull.

We’ve seen other sporty crossover EVs from Jaguar and Tesla, but the one area where the Mach-E truly breaks new ground is in the volume knob for its infotainment. Designers detest knobs and buttons cluttering their sleek dashboards. Programmers detest dumb hardware that can’t be repurposed. This is why some carmakers have tried to nudge drivers toward various swipe-to-change capacitive touch volume controls, only to learn from hard experience that drivers detest those. Honda had to backpedal and put volume knobs back into their cars.

The Mach-E’s volume control imaginatively bridges the divide. Drivers have a physical plastic knob that they can spin without taking their eyes off the road because the knob is right there at the bottom of the infotainment screen.

It is literally on the infotainment screen, which is the clue that this is no ordinary volume knob. Instead, it is just a simple piece of plastic with a rotating knob that is glued to the Mach-E’s 15.5-inch center stack display. The volume control is done through the infotainment system’s touch screen interface, with the knob acting as a virtual finger turning circles on the screen to raise and lower volume.

This provides drivers with the physical knob they can easily reach and operate without distraction. And it gives programmers a virtual device whose function can be adjusted with over-the-air software updates over the life of the vehicle.

Other systems with similar virtual control lag in response to changes, which drivers also detest. Ford’s programmers ensured that the software would be quick to respond to audio system input, according to Ford SYNC software supervisor Husein Dakroub.

Inspiration to combine the plastic knob with the touchscreen came from a Keurig cup on a conference room table during a meeting to discuss how to handle volume input, he said. A team member put the cup onto the display screen lying on the table and a concept was born. Ford has since patented the idea.

The Mach-E’s quirks and bugs

As we have seen with most of these dauntingly complex integrated infotainment systems with enough lines of programming code to fly spacecraft, bugs appear.

The Mach-E issue I experienced was a persistent preference for SiriusXM channel 2. Here’s what happens: Drive the car listening to the channel of your choice. Park at your destination and shut the car off. Return to the car and restart it, and the radio is now magically on channel 2, tormenting you with the lamest, er, greatest popular hits of our day. Fingers crossed that one of those over-the-air updates exterminates this bug without introducing something worse.

Another area where Ford sought to innovate was with the Mach-E’s door handles. The electric retracting door handles that Tesla uses are expensive and trouble-prone, so Ford wanted something simpler that was also unique and that wouldn’t stick out in the wind, causing aerodynamic drag and wind noise.

The solution is a push button at the bottom of the window above a small protruding ledge put there to give you something to pull the door open. Kudos to Ford for trying something new, but in practice the system feels awkward. It seems laid out to be used by the right hand.

But, as the driver stands to the right of the door so it can swing open, normally this is done with the left hand, and the little ledge seems harder to grasp left-handed. Maybe the design can evolve with left-hand-friendly geometric adjustments to improve it in the future, but as is, it frustrates and irritates with every opening of the driver’s door.

Sliding into the car and behind the wheel, the windshield frames a forward view that is reminiscent of that in Porsche’s SUVs, with a similarly curvaceous hood stretching out in front. There’s a compact 10.2-inch digital instrument cluster directly ahead of the driver providing key information such as vehicle speed to the driver.

The Mustang’s high-tech nature makes it a good candidate to have been the first vehicle to replace that instrument panel entirely with a head-up display, which would put the relevant information even more directly into the driver’s line of sight. Alas, we wait.

There’s another electronic box atop the steering column too. It is a camera, looking at the driver. The Mustang Mach-E does not currently have an ability to steer itself, but that is a feature that will be added in the future, according to Ford. When it arrives via an over-the-air update, the Mach-E will be able to watch its driver to ensure that they are paying attention.

Cold weather driving in the Mustang Mach-E

Testing the Mach-E this winter gave us the chance to see this electric horse in its least-suited situation. Cold weather increases electric energy consumption, as the car runs the cabin heat, defrosters, seat heaters, and lights. It also reduces the energy capacity of the battery, shortening driving range as if your combustion-engine car’s gas tank got smaller in the winter.

And the cold also prolongs charging time, as if the hose at the gas station turned into a straw when you refill your gas car in the winter. In brief: In the cold, the vehicle needs more energy, has a smaller battery capacity, and recharging takes longer. So, it was good to put the Mustang to the test in this worst-case scenario.

At 32 degrees F—hardly a polar vortex—we saw the estimated driving range shrink from 270 miles to 208 miles. With that in mind, we stopped for a quick pit stop at a 150 kW Electrify America charger to boost the battery before heading out for a drive.

During the ten minutes it was plugged in, the Mach-E only added a paltry 5 kWh. While that would be speedy for a traditional 240-volt AC Level 2 charger, it was disappointing for the DC fast charger.

An Audi E-Tron, along for the drive and plugged in alongside, got 13 kWh in 13 minutes, so it was charging twice as fast as the Mustang in the freezing weather. A charge on a warmer day showed speedier results, but it is important to be aware when planning winter drives that range is significantly shorter and recharging time is much slower.

Testing the Mach-E’s all-wheel drive system in a few inches of snow revealed it, unsurprisingly, to be the best Mustang ever for snow driving. Ford engineers tuned the AWD system to give the Mach-E a lively rear-drive feeling, and it shows both in good weather and bad. Through the snow and slush, the Mustang was stable, but the rear-wheel bias showed in periodic tail-wags.

This isn’t surprising under acceleration, but while driving in one-pedal mode with heavy regeneration when the driver lifts off the accelerator pedal, the Mach-E regenerates aggressively enough to break traction at the rear and fishtail from deceleration rather than acceleration. It was significant enough for the stability control system to automatically intervene.

The good news is that the stability control system is there to do its job, but it leaves us wondering why the Mach-E would destabilize itself in the first place. The Selectable Drive Mode settings for the car have three choices: Engage, Whisper, and Unbridled.

Ford labels “Engage” as the normal drive mode, while “Whisper” is the quiet mode where the car produces less of the artificial “engine noise” that tells the driver what’s happening with the drivetrain. The sound effect is reminiscent of the result of Captain Kirk calling down to the U.S.S. Enterprise’s engine room and demanding all the power they’ve got. Switch to “Whisper” mode, and the Mach-E hushes its Hollywood effects.

It also reduces the regeneration, so it turns out that Whisper is better for snow driving than Engage is. It seems like an all-wheel drive machine could probably also use a “Winter” mode that optimizes the system for stability in slippery conditions.

The Audi e-Tron felt much more sure-footed while making the same drive. This is a choice by the two companies’ engineers, but when there are modes offered for driver selection, a Winter mode seems like an obvious choice.

The third mode that is available in the Mach-E is Unbridled. This gives the car a quicker response to the accelerator pedal, it turns up the volume on the Enterprise-at-warp effect, and it turns the instrument panel orange as a reminder of the serious business at hand.

Cars with electronically adjustable shock absorbers can also change the ride and handling characteristics in different drive modes. The Mach-E has no such shocks now, and the default setting is biased, like the all-wheel-drive, to sporty driving. That means that the ride is stiff and more punishing than maybe a lot of crossover SUV buyers might anticipate.

As Porsche did with its early SUVs, Ford obviously felt the need to establish sporty credibility here. And as with Porsche first attempts, the ride quality suffers. Eventually Ford will probably not feel the need to prove the Mach-E’s Mustang bona fides with every model and trim level, and maybe the car will gain some electronically adjustable shocks to provide the best of both worlds. For now, the ride is stiff for a crossover. But it is pretty typical for a Mustang.

The post Ford’s electric Mustang Mach-E is an important leap into the future appeared first on Popular Science.

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Electric cars have long remained objects of fantasy, tantalizingly just out of reach for drivers who imagine the joy of whooshing silently around town, powered by electrons that were hopefully produced by renewable means.

But the coming flood of practical EVs with acceptable driving range, from mainstream manufacturers and boasting price tags that regular drivers can realistically afford, means that more people will finally be making the switch from combustion engines. For example, the Hyundai Kona Electric boasts a 248-mile estimated range and has a $37,390 base price before the available $7,500 federal tax rebate. The bigger, sportier Ford Mustang Mach-E base model starts at $42,895 before the tax rebate and has a 230-mile range with its standard battery.

Customers who decide to buy these new EVs are in for some surprises. Electric vehicles require many adjustments that go much deeper than not visiting gas stations, and if these newcomers are going to be satisfied with their cars, they need to go into EV ownership with their eyes open.

Driving an EV requires many adjustments—to your home, to your workplace, to your driving habits. Treating an EV like a quiet gas car is a recipe for disappointment and potentially, for stranding. Here’s what to know, and how to plan.

Not all plugs are created equal

While the Society of Automotive Engineers—the same people who assign the SAE grades for motor oil—has set standards for automotive power plugs, not everyone is in agreement.

Broadly, charging options break down into three categories: Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. The third is better known as “DC fast charging.”

1. Level 1: This is the charger that comes with the car that owners can plug into any 120-volt alternating current wall outlet. These provide nearly infinite charging opportunities, but require seemingly infinite charging times.
2. Level 2: This is a 240-volt AC charger and represents most of the currently installed public charging infrastructure. It is also the type of dedicated home charger that EV owners install at home, if possible. This is much faster than Level 1 charging, but still slow enough that it is more practical to consider it as an overnight or all-day service that is best used at home or while at work. Drivers traveling on a long-distance drive would find Level 2 impractically slow for en-route recharges.
3. Level 3: Though the term is rarely employed, DC fast charging is Level 3 EV charging. Tesla’s Superchargers are one form of DC fast charging. The latest Supercharger Version 3 can charge compatible Tesla models at 250 kWh, compared to the original chargers’ maximum of 120 kWh. The company charges customers $0.28 per kWh, according to its website.

DC fast chargers on networks such as Electrify America, which was started by Volkswagen and is now supported by Ford, are 150 kW or 350 kW, so they can really pour in the power.

Non-Tesla DC fast chargers employ SAE Combined Charging System (CCS) plugs. If a car lacks the on-board circuitry and power plug to accommodate them, as is the case with most older EVs, it can’t benefit from the faster charging times of DC fast chargers.

Also, Japanese companies have employed an alternative fast-charging specification, called CHADEMO. The Nissan Leaf continues to feature a CHADEMO charging port, so these cars cannot connect to SAE DC fast chargers without an adapter. And likewise, the rest of the CCS DC fast charging-capable EV fleet cannot charge at Nissan dealers’ CHADEMO charging stations. As with other DC fast-charging specifications, CHADEMO chargers began at about 150 kWh and have risen to 350 kWh for the newest units.

Finally, Tesla uses a proprietary plug connector shared by no other cars, so if you drive a Tesla, get an adapter so that you can charge your car from other kinds of charging stations. If you don’t drive a Tesla, understand that Tesla Supercharger stations may as well not exist for your purposes. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Move along.

Taking it home

Most EV charging is done at home or at work, using installed Level 2 chargers. This is the most cost-effective solution, because DC fast charging can be expensive. A half-hour of DC fast charging the Mach-E at an Electrify America charger added 51 kWh of electricity, the equivalent of 1.4 gallons of gasoline, at a cost of $21.93. That’s the same as $15.66 per gallon!

Charging at home is cheaper than gasoline, and many utilities will give you a lower rate on your power if you get a home charger installed, making it even more attractive. You’ll want to shop around to choose the best combination of price and charging power. The closer you can get to 50 amps, which is pretty much the maximum for home chargers, the better.

According to charger manufacturer ChargePoint, drivers can expect their home charger to add about 37 miles of driving range per hour it is plugged in. This is about nine times faster than using the car’s Level-1 120-volt wall plug connection.

Electric vehicles are not appliances

We’ve come to expect that we plug electric devices into a socket and they just work. That’s not the case with EVs. An EV charger isn’t a dumb electric plug, blindly pushing electrons down the wire. It is more like a USB socket, with both communication and power capabilities.

The power portion is pretty straightforward, but the communication, as with human languages, can run into some challenges with dialect, even when they speak the same language. This is why a Tesla with an adapter and connected to a non-Tesla charging station may charge far slower than both the charger and the car are capable of doing.

Even cars that are certified compatible with charging networks can have charging times that are much slower than advertised. And freezing temperatures can dramatically slow charging times.

PopSci’s winter tests with the Ford Mustang Mach-E and the Audi e-tron produced charging levels of 28 kW and 47 kW, respectively, on a Level-3 150-kW charger on the Electrify America network. On a different, 350-kW charger, they recharged at 150 kW, as advertised.

So, while the Porsche Taycan is currently the only available EV that can exploit the 350 kW DC fast chargers’ top speed, maybe that extra capacity provides some cushion so they can hit those fast charging speeds in less-than-ideal conditions.

A range of ranges

How often your EV needs charging will depend on its use. Vehicle makers and the EPA provide highway driving range estimates that, while achievable, require driving at speeds few of us actually maintain. Around-town driving range seems to be less variable, and the shorter drives are more often broken up by recharging opportunities.

But when you want to get the 258 miles of driving range promised for the Hyundai Kona EV, for example, it will require religious use of the car’s cruise control system with the speed set to 55 mph. Driving faster than that, as most highway traffic does, greatly diminishes the range, forcing more frequent stops at fast chargers on long trips, and introducing more opportunities for chargers to be occupied or for them to charge at slower-than-anticipated rates.

Winter trips will also shorten driving range. The headlights, cabin heat, seat heaters, and defrosters all drain power and shorten driving range. Be sure to have a hat and gloves handy to put on when the remaining driving range gets short and you turn off the climate control to prolong the drive.

These tips are really just the beginning. The point here is to send prospective EV drivers into the experience with their eyes open. EVs are very different from gas cars and require some adjustments from their drivers. But their fans have found that once they’ve adapted to the new way of using their vehicle that the differences are just that—differences—and not necessarily shortcomings.

The post What to know before you buy an electric vehicle appeared first on Popular Science.

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They’re called “winter tires” now, not “snow tires.” This is because driving in winter poses a variety of challenges to be met by tires that may or may not involve snow.

This is just one of the things drivers need to understand when considering driving during cold weather. Here are some others: Ice isn’t slippery. For traction in snow, you need more snow. All-season tires aren’t really for all seasons. All-wheel drive won’t help you stop or turn in slick conditions.

According to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, there are 500,000 crashes a year in the U.S. in which winter storms, bad weather and sloppy road conditions are a factor. The crashes in those conditions lead to 2,000 road deaths each year, reports the Federal Highway Safety Administration.

The lie of all-season tires

Tires for street cars (we’re leaving out the off-road tires you might have on your 4×4 for this discussion) fall into three categories: summer, all-season, and winter. Summer tires are designed for maximum grip in warm weather and they are often found on high performance cars like Porsches.

Summer tires are made using a rubber compound that is optimized to sticky as glue in warm temperatures. But that same rubber turns hard and slick when the temperature drops into the 50s. Cars that have summer tires on them need different rubber for the winter unless you live someplace where you rarely need a jacket or sweatshirt.

“Those tires get rock hard when the temp get cool,” observed Matt Edmonds, executive vice president of mail order tire giant Tire Rack. That’s the opposite of the soft, gummy consistency needed to grip the road, which is why summer tires are so bad when the seasons change. All-season tires stay soft down to about 44 degrees, after which they start to harden, prolonging your braking distances and giving you less grip to swerve around crashes.

Compound

Winter tires employ rubber that stays soft and pliable in the cold, so that they provide better cold-weather grip than other tires, even when the pavement is clear and dry.

We may imagine winter tires with gnarly tread that claws through snow, but tread pattern is only part of the story, and it probably doesn’t work the way you think. Instead, the rubber itself is the most important component of a winter tire.

“When we’re talking winter, we’re not just talking snow,” emphasized Pirelli’s chief technology officer, Ian Coke. “Driving below 44 degrees, you’re passing the point where the rubber compound becomes much more rigid.” Pirelli outlines its guidance for winter driving in its Pro Guide: Winter.

The city of Montreal saw a 46 percent reduction in serious crashes after it began mandating winter tires in the cold months, according to Tire & Rubber Association of Canada’s Consumer Winter Tire Study.

Testing by Tire Rack on the University of Notre Dame’s hockey rink shows why. A front-drive Toyota Camry needed 7.31 seconds to drive 60 feet from a stop on all-season tires, but sprinted away in just 4.34 seconds on winter tires. Acceleration is more balanced in their test of an all-wheel drive Toyota RAV4, which needed 3.7 seconds on the all-seasons and 3.1 seconds on the winter tires.

But all-wheel-drive doesn’t help with stopping. The Camry stopped from 12 mph on the Fighting Irish’s ice in 50.9 feet on all-season rubber and needed just 37.6 feet on winter tires. The splits were even bigger for the RAV4, which needed 57 feet to halt from 12 mph on all-seasons and stopped in just 33.7 feet on the winter tires. That (very) roughly half the braking distance from just 12 mph, illustrating how those Canadian drivers in Montreal were able to avoid so many crashes.

Texture

In addition to the softness of the rubber compound, there is also the matter of the physical configuration of the tread. Bridgestone’s Blizzak winter tires employ a rubber that is made with microscopic pores. Their job is to sop up the thin water layer that materializes on ice from the pressure of the car’s tires rolling on it.

It is this water lubricating the interface between the rubber and the ice that makes ice seem slippery. Blizzaks are designed to defeat this water layer to provide direct contact with the ice, reports Dale Harrigle, who is Chief Engineer, Consumer Replacement Tire Development for Bridgestone Americas.

“The compound is formed with very small voids in it to remove the water layer that is present on the surface of all ice that causes ice to be slippery,” he said. “When you remove that water film, the rubber contacts the ice directly.”

Indeed, many of us are familiar with the function of this water layer from visits to the ice skating rink, Harrigle pointed out. “It is exactly opposite of how an ice skate works, where a thin steel blade applies high pressure to melt the ice and glide on the film of water.”

Siping

The sipes are tiny slits in the face of the tread. Like the pores, these help soak up the water layer, but their main job is to provide additional biting edges to cut into the ice, just like the cleats of a ballplayer making his break to steal second base cut into the dirt. All-season tires have some siping, but in winter tires they become more plentiful and more pronounced, according to Edmonds.

Earlier generations of winter tires with such siping suffered from a side effect on dry pavement, when the tread would seem to squirm beneath the car, creating an unsettled, disconnected feeling for drivers. New winter tires employ “3D” sipes. Rather than cutting straight down into the rubber tread blocs, the 3D sipes zigzag their way through the rubber, so that when the car is turning on a dry surface, the rubber is able to support the load better, eliminating the squirming feeling.

“It has made winter tires a little more predictable in dry conditions and it helps with the wear because the blocks aren’t squirming so much,” Edmonds adds.

Tread pattern

While summer tires are nearly solid rubber, in the manner of a racing slick, and all-season tires have abundance tread grooves to flush away water, winter tires need large openings to pack in snow.

Yes, that’s right, winter tires work better when they are packed with snow. “A key feature is to hold onto the snow, because snow has good grip to itself,” Harrigle says. “The ice crystals kind of interlock with each other.”

You’ve likely experienced this when packing a snowball or rolling a snowman. Once packed, the snowballs tend to remain pretty sturdy.

Here again, the rubber compound is important, because the tread blocks need to remain flexible at very low temperatures so they can better grab snow. “We like that pattern to open up and trap snow,” Coke explained. “It is important blocks aren’t rigid or they don’t open up and give you that snow to snow grip.”

So there you have it. Ice isn’t slippery, and packed snow in your tires improves the grip on snow. But if you still can’t wrap your mind around the physics of those facts, just keep these rules of thumb in mind. If you need winter boots where you live, your car needs winter tires. And when you can see your breath outside, it is time to put them on for the season.

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If you’ve ever tried it, you know: Backing up a car with a trailer behind it is very, very hard.

But recently, we tested a new solution from Lincoln: a $100,000 Lincoln Navigator Black Label that features Pro Trailer Backup Assist technology. We rented a camping trailer via Outdoorsy.com to accompany it, so we could put the Navigator through the paces as a tow vehicle.

No one should feel embarrassed when needing a hand backing up a trailer, says Ford chassis control supervisor Don Mattern, who developed Pro Trailer Backup Assist. That’s because trailers resist efforts to back them in the intended direction. “It is a naturally unstable system,” he observes. “It is like an upside-down pendulum.”

The Navigator features the company’s first-generation version of the tech. It requires a bit of preparation work with a tape measure—measuring dimensions such as the distance from the tow vehicle’s bumper to the trailer’s axles—but starting with the 2021 Ford F-150 pickup, Ford and Lincoln full-size pickups and SUVs will start switching over to a system that automatically identifies the important measurements of the trailer.

Even with the new system, it will still be necessary to place a target sticker on the tongue of the trailer, as one has to do with the current system, so the camera can lock onto that spot to detect when the trailer is turning. But that is a simple procedure.

Nevertheless, the function of both systems after calibration is the same. The Navigator features a small dial on the dashboard that the driver turns in the direction they want the trailer to go, like a steering wheel for the trailer. The driver continues to operate the brake and throttle normally, but the system turns the Navigator’s steering wheel automatically.

It takes a little practice to get a feel for how much response results from input into that steering knob. And for experienced trailer backers who are used to doing it manually, there may not be a lot of benefit for simple jobs, like just sliding the trailer back into a parking space.

But the system is very good, especially for keeping that unstable setup under control for long back-ups. Plus, with no input into the trailer’s steering knob, Pro Trailer Backup Assist keeps the trailer tracking in a straight line while backing up, avoiding the potential for an abrupt jackknife when the trailer suddenly veers to the side and potentially slams into the towing vehicle.

The Navigator includes other towing-assistance technologies, such as an integrated trailer brake controller. That automatically applies the trailer’s electric brakes whenever you slow down to avoid overloading the truck’s own brakes. Traditional add-on aftermarket trailer brake control systems have to guess what is happening, and so they usually clamp down too hard at parking lot speeds, while not providing enough help when there’s a sudden backup on the highway.

The Navigator’s integrated system works so smoothly that it is invisible and helps make the trailer feel invisible, too. A leveling air suspension system helps with that too, automatically keeping the Navigator on an even keel when the Fleetwood camper is hitched up.

And there’s a welcome safety net called automatic sway control. Properly loaded and hitched trailers driven at prudent speeds do not tend to sway. But even trailers that aren’t too heavy in the rear or driven too fast can start to wobble on a downhill stretch or when a passing tractor-trailer’s wind blast shoves it to the side.

In our case, the weight-distributing hitch we got from the trailer’s owner was set up with the ball a little too high on our high-riding Navigator, so the trailer was borderline too high in the front, which also can instigate sway. We found that at reasonable speeds the camper was fine, though it wiggled occasionally on the downhills.

In those cases it is reassuring to know that the Navigator’s stability control system is there as a backup, ready to clamp down on the truck’s brakes individually to reign the trailer in if needed. Fortunately, we haven’t tested that system in action.

The Navigator’s radar-controlled adaptive cruise control system makes it easy to set and maintain an appropriate speed on our highway miles to and from Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, where we were camping. The 450-horsepower twin-turbocharged 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 engine surely contributes to the Navigator’s ease holding the desired speed up hills and down. It probably also helped it score its second straight win as the top luxury SUV in the AutoPacific Vehicle Satisfaction Awards.

The engine is matched to a 10-speed automatic transmission. Carmakers are adding gear ratios to their transmissions at a frantic pace, but really, there is no huge advantage in regular driving over a vehicle with half as many speeds. Modern direct-injected, turbocharged engines like the Lincoln’s EcoBoost eke out their efficiency advantage over conventional engines only when run in a very narrow RPM band, and these many-speed transmissions help keep them running in that efficiency sweet spot.

However, we found that while towing the trailer, the 10-speed is great in its role using engine braking to reign in vehicle speed on downhills. The Navigator automatically switches to its tow/haul mode when the trailer is plugged in, and among other things, this causes the transmission to downshift aggressively on downhills so that the engine can provide braking and save the brakes until they are needed for the real work.

With fewer gears, these downshifts can be jarring in other vehicles. In the Navigator, the small differences between its many gear ratios keep the down-changes subtle and smooth, in keeping with the big luxury SUV’s overall character.

That power comes at a cost. The EPA rates the Navigator at 18 mpg in combined driving, but pulling the camper we get just half that. What that means is that you’ve got half the usual driving range. If you’re going somewhere very remote, you’ll use twice as much gas as usual getting there and need twice as much getting back from a place where gas stations are likely to be few and far between. You’ll want to top off the tank when you reach the edge of civilization so that you aren’t in the position of trying to return on fumes.

The Navigator has other amenities that assist with life in the boondocks. Cellular reception varies between “poor” and “none” at places in Shenandoah National Park, so having a Wi-Fi hotspot built into the vehicle can make the difference between getting a connection and not. That’s because the car-based device has a bigger antenna and transmits with much more power than a smartphone does.

It also pays to remember to charge your devices before you go camping and to charge your portable battery packs, too. Don’t assume things will work just because they should; actually test everything before you go, lest you discover that your boombox batteries have corroded and left you without campsite tuneage.

Some campgrounds provide connections for your camper to plug in to the electric power grid, water supply, and sewer line. Our national park campground did not. This is when it helps to get a site near to the bathroom building.

Also, some campers include generators to provide power when there are no hook-ups, but remember that campgrounds may have limited hours when those generators can run. And if you went to the woods for some peace and quiet, you’re probably going to want a site in a generator-free part of the campground, where they’re not allowed at all. You didn’t flee the drone of weed whackers and leaf blowers just to hear the drone of generators powering your neighbor’s TV so he can watch a marathon of The Office.

When it comes time to leave, hitching the trailer back up to the Navigator is a snap, thanks to the backup camera that provides alignment reticles, like those on a gun scope, that make it easy to bullseye the target when placing the hitch ball directly beneath the trailer’s receptacle.

It’s a great time to go camping, too. The getaway was rated as the safest travel option by consumers surveyed by the Cairn Consulting Group for Kampgrounds of America, finishing far ahead of resorts, hotels, Airbnb and air travel. And nearly half of people who had done tent camping expressed an interest in using a recreational vehicle, like the 18-foot Fleetwood trailer we rented from a private owner. Newcomers to RV camping might appreciate a little help shepherding their borrowed house into its campsite when they reach their destination, which spurred our interest in the Lincoln’s Pro Trailer Backup Assist.

The verdict? We found that the feature delivers on its promise of taking the stress out of backing that trailer into your campsite, which should let trailer-towing newbies feel more confident in renting a camper and heading to the great outdoors. And trailer-towing veterans might find the technology cool enough to devise challenges for themselves to see what new things they can do even better with a little bit of digital help.

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Posh folks who drive a Rolls-Royce have always boasted about what the company describes as a “magic carpet ride.” But with the 2020 Rolls-Royce Cullinan—the traditional luxury icon’s first foray into the SUV segment—translating customer expectations of that smooth ride into what is ostensibly an off-road bruiser would seem to be a challenge.

But happily for those fancy Rollers, Rolls-Royce’s engineers have been able to deliver on the magical status quo, perhaps with some secret assistance in the bowels of their Goodwood, England headquarters from unseen wizards.

After all, the famous Rolls-Royce World War II fighter plane engine, employed in the Supermarine Spitfire and the North American P-51 Mustang, was called “Merlin.” Coincidence? You decide.

Our opulent test car’s “Twilight Purple” finish is a reasonable approximation of the royal color. The name “Cullinan” refers to the largest diamond ever found; it was cut into the British Crown Jewels.

The off-road part of SUVs like the Cullinan is mostly illusionary. Drivers like to think they might go off-roading sometime, when what they really want is all-weather on-road security and the ability to occasionally navigate a rutted driveway to a cabin in the woods without tearing the muffler off their car.

The mantra guiding Rolls-Royce in the development of the Cullinan and its adaptable air suspension system is “Effortless Everywhere.” On startup, the Cullinan automatic lifts an inch and a half, providing a touch more ground clearance, permitting it to ford streams as deep as 21 inches without risk of the engine inhaling water.

As the first Rolls-Royce with all-wheel drive, the Cullinan represents an impressive first effort. The Off-Road button on the console activates the air-spring suspension and the computer-controlled all-wheel drive system to maximize traction. That includes actually extending the suspension when the computer thinks a wheel might be in danger of losing contact with the ground.

In an earlier test, we had the chance to hurl a Cullinan along a snow-frosted, high-altitude gravel fire road. Driving on the Cullinan’s specially designed 22-inch tires, which are optimized for a quiet ride, the vehicle performed amazingly. Even with its near-6,000 lb. mass and surely handicapped by less-than-ideal rubber for the situation, the Cullinan flew like a rally car in that test. It was like witchcraft.

Speaking of the tires, the Cullinan’s “RR” wheel centers are separate from the wheels themselves, so they don’t spin. Instead, the “RR” emblems remain perpetually upright and composed, as one would expect from a Rolls-Royce.

Pop the bonnet and it is easy to see why the Cullinan is so quick; here’s the abode of the 571-horsepower, 627 lb.-ft. (that’s a lot!) 6.75-liter twin-turbocharged V12 power plant. It may not be a Spitfire’s Merlin V12, but its design definitely descends from the know-how that built Merlins in wartime.

Shifts by the 8-speed automatic are stealthy, as changes to the pitch of the V12′s exhaust note are hushed and the shifts are executed slickly; it’s difficult to detect them. This comes in part from the fact that the Cullinan has a cheat sheet. Like the rest of us, it can turn to the internet for information, in this case, about the road ahead, so it knows when it is approaching a hill, for example, and can shift accordingly.

And then there’s the tailgating feature, perhaps to observe a horse race. The Cullinan takes this business very seriously. There is none of that unloading of folding chairs or anything else so ordinary. No, our Cullinan is fitted with the available Viewing Suite, which is a built-in pair of folding seats that extend out to the tailgate with the touch of a button. There’s a pop-up cocktail table too, ensuring that refreshments are close at hand while cheering for your favorite equestrians.

There are other activity centers available too, in case you’re allergic to horses. Consider the Hosting Service, if you’d rather be able to tend bar in the backcountry. And there’s an available Urban Photography module that includes a DJI Mavic Mini photo drone, Apple iPad Pro, and MacBook Pro, along with Sennheiser headphones, to permit in-the-field photography and photo editing.

Naturally, the Cullinan includes a crystal ball that shows the future. It comes in the form of the head-up display which, in addition to the usual vehicle speed information, also shows warnings from the Wildlife and Pedestrian Warning system.

During our drive home from dinner, an apparition of a yellow deer appears to me, seeming to float in the air over the Cullinan’s massive bonnet. I slow, and the passenger immediately points out the deer standing on the right shoulder. The Cullinan knows there’s a deer in my future and helps prevent a messy situation with a timely preview of things to come.

Perhaps we should expect nothing less than a magical experience from a vehicle that costs $426,700. Maybe sumptuous hides, warm wood trim and all-encompassing 16-speaker Bespoke audio aren’t enough when your car carries a condominium’s price tag. The base price is actually $330,000, but our test car is loaded, so it runs a bit more. Some of the goodies include the eye-catching two-tone paint, the tailgating seats, rear-seat entertainment, and opulent lambswool floor mats. Maybe it’s money that makes the magic.

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Earlier this month, before the country knew who former Vice President Joe Biden’s running mate would be, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee punningly tweeted about his “vetting process.” He was talking, of course, about his classic 1967 Chevrolet ‘Vette.

As much as the Veep likes his ‘Vette, his 327 small block V8, four-on-the-floor manual transmission roadster is a relic of the past. Which is why Biden said he wants to drive an electric Corvette.

“I believe we can own the 21st-century market again by moving to electric vehicles,” he says in the video. “And by the way, they tell me—and I’m looking forward, if it’s true, to driving one—that they’re making an electric Corvette that can go 200 miles an hour.”

You know politicians: always playing fast and loose with the facts. Obviously, there’s no such thing as an electric Corvette that goes 200 mph. In fact, it goes 212 mph. (Well, 211.8 mph, to be precise.) It is a world record for electric vehicles.

Chevy doesn’t build the car. It was created in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Rockville, Maryland by Genovation Cars, Inc. Genovation is a 12-year-old EV startup that aims to build an EV the hard way: by developing their own high-performance battery-electric technology. They call their $750,000, 800-horsepower electric ‘Vette the Genovation GXE.

Genovation founder and CEO Andrew Saul builds his electric dream using the seventh-generation front-engine 2012-2018 Corvette as the foundation, preferring it to the current mid-engine C8 Corvette. “I feel very confident with what we’ve done with the C7. It is a very good platform,” he explains. It is very rigid and makes a very fine car.”

Sports car purists will be pleased to know that like Biden’s classic, the GXE can be had with a traditional manual transmission. Or an automatic. Buyer’s choice, as it should be. In either case, that’s unusual for an EV, which are typically direct-drive, with no gears at all.

At speed, the GXE produces a hair-raising whoosh that sounds like an approaching jet fighter. Indeed, during the record run at NASA’s former Space Shuttle runway at the Kennedy Space Center, the team occasionally worried that a plane was mistakenly landing on the runway they’d rented for the test, Saul remembers.

The car can go around turns too, as demonstrated by its record-setting lap of the Thunderhill West Circuit, which beat the existing electric car mark by 13 seconds.

We did not get a chance to experience the manual transmission version of the GXE, unfortunately. However, the calibration of the electric motors’ power delivery and the transmission’s shifts with the automatic is impeccable. This is the kind of hard detail work that even major manufacturers sometimes flub and that small companies generally lack the resources to execute properly, so it is an impressive accomplishment.

Drive the GXE fast, and it goes fast. Drive it gently, and it is utterly docile and smoother than any combustion-powered car ever could be. Curiously, the automatic transmission version has none of the lift-throttle regeneration that is typical of EVs. That’s because the automatic transmission’s pumps need the electric motors to keep spinning, even when you lift your foot off the “gas” pedal. The manual transmission version does have that familiar electric regeneration, because it doesn’t require pumps to keep fluid flowing.

The prototype we’re driving carries a 52 kilowatt-hour battery pack, but the eventual production pack will be 60 kWh, according to Saul. That puts the Corvette on par, in terms of battery capacity, of the earliest Tesla Model S cars.

The GXE squirts out of corners faster than you’d expect for a car carrying the extra mass of that battery pack. And superbly tuned coil-over dampers from Dynamic Suspension Control Sport keep that mass under control over bumps and dips, further concealing its heft.

Making a car go 211.8 mph generates insane amounts of waste heat, whether the propulsion source is petroleum or electrons, and Genovation has developed particular expertise in dealing with that, Saul says. Indeed, most EVs switch to a lower-power safe mode to cool off when they are asked to demonstrate their maximum performance, which is why Saul says he hopes Genovation can license some of this know-how to other EV makers.

The industry needs to tap all possible sources of EV expertise during its transformation to electric drive. “The US auto industry is moving at laser speed to transform itself in the face of the dynamic challenges of: electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles and the rise of Chinese manufacturers,” Saul observes. “Only by embracing the inevitability of electric propulsion and automation will the US car industry thrive and we’re seeing significant movement in that direction.”

It would be a shame to limit the fruits of their knowledge to just the 75 GXEs that Genovation plans to sell. The calling card for those production models is planned to be a top speed of 220 mph.

If they need a test driver to find out, Biden sounds like he was auditioning when he took Jay Leno for a ride in his ’67 back in 2016. “I like speed,” Biden told Leno. “I buried this [160-mph speedometer], you know, when I was younger.” Fortunately, the GXE’s speedometer goes higher, and there’s no speed limit at Kennedy Space Center.

This story was first published in August, 2020.

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If there is a better looking hardtop convertible than the racehorse-like Ferrari Portofino, we haven’t seen it.

Ferrari designers claim styling inspiration for the Portofino came from the Ferrari Daytona of the 1970s. (You may recall seeing the fake Daytona that was used for shooting the TV show Miami Vice in the 1980s.) The Portofino is Ferrari’s lovely interpretation of a cushy long-distance Grand Touring car, with the added feature of that hardtop convertible roof, providing true coupe styling when it’s up.

Our test car’s lush green Verde Zeltweg finish gave this Italian sports car an entirely different vibe than commonplace red paint would lend. In addition to being gorgeous, the style options selected for our test car were distinctive, so there’ll be no danger of encountering a doppleganger at cars and coffee, or of the valet bringing the wrong Ferrari to the curb after dinner (SO embarrassing!).

But at $13,500 for the paint plus $1,856 for the yellow Scuderia Ferrari fender badges, $1,687 for the chrome-edged grille, $1,519 for the yellow-painted brake calipers and $844 for sport exhaust pipes, and finally $6,243 for the 20-inch forged aluminum painted wheels, this example’s design portfolio did not come cheap. All told, our test car cost a little north of $300,000.

The Portofino not only looks more graceful than its slightly lumpy California T predecessor, but Ferrari has an airtight technical presentation proving beyond a shadow of a doubt, your honor, that the defendant is guilty of technical superiority in every category. Case closed!

And yet, there is the matter of the Portofino’s racehorse-like relentless champing at the bit to surge to the front. This is an admirable characteristic for a hard-core sports car with track-going aspirations. But in the low-key, laid-back world of GT car long-distance cruising or café trolling, maybe a Thoroughbred isn’t the best solution.

Despite its front-engine layout, its 2+2 seating, and its folding convertible top, the Portofino proves to be an impressive sports car, with genuine performance, handling and braking capabilities that exceed expectations. It shouldn’t be any surprise, after all—this is a Ferrari!

Charging into corners, when a front-engine car could be expected to understeer, the Portofino turns in crisply, providing the steering feedback needed to balance the car through the turn with the steering, brakes, and throttle. The car’s electronic differential surely contributes imperceptibly to this handling response, routing power to the wheel that will best help shepherd the Portofino around turns while making drivers feel heroic for their steering prowess.

Ferrari’s red steering-wheel-mounted Manettino switch lets drivers adjust the car’s electronics to suit the conditions, and in the case of the Portofino, this switch offers only three choices: Comfort, Sport and ESC (Electronic Stability Control) Off. Other Ferrari models include Wet, Race and Traction Control Off options, but apparently these aren’t needed for the Portofino’s grand-touring mission.

The Manettino switch lets drivers optimize the car’s electronically adjustable systems such as the engine’s throttle response, the exhaust’s muffler bypass valves, the transmission’s shift points, the electromagnetically adjustable shock absorbers, the electronic differential, the traction control and the stability control system to perform best under the circumstances. We found the difference between Comfort and Sport to be more subtle than expected, other than the immediate tendency for the car to run one gear lower when switched to Sport.

An area where Ferrari has taken obvious measures to tame the Portofino for life away from the race track is the brakes. We didn’t drive the car on the track to gauge the effectiveness of its standard carbon ceramic brakes in that environment, but because they are carbon ceramic, we would expect them to perform faultlessly.

Other Ferrari models, however, have their brakes tuned to provide immediate friction the instant the driver just begins to touch the car’s cast aluminum brake pedal. This is good for track use, but can feel grabby and intrusive on the street. For the Portofino, Ferrari has wisely selected brake pad material that is less aggressive, making it easy to brake smoothly in everyday driving, without the jerkiness or brake squeal that are typical among Ferrari’s sportier models.

Don’t let this deceive you into thinking the Portofino is somehow diluted. Look at its specifications: 592 hp, 561 pound-feet of torque. The Portofino is a beast—a beast that is outfitted with Ferrari’s 3.85-liter twin-turbocharged V8 and paddle-shifted 7-speed dual-clutch transmission that rips to 60 mph in less than 3.5 seconds and reaches a top speed stated as “more than 199 mph.”

Though much of the California T’s foundation remains beneath the Portofino, the differences are impressive. They start with the sheetmetal, which is undeniably gorgeous, while the California just wanted to be. A weight-saving program trimmed 175 pounds of performance-sapping mass in the Portofino, and the chassis is stiffer, further aiding its quicker responses with 35 percent better torsional rigidity. That means when you turn the steering wheel, you turn the car rather than twisting a flexible body structure.

Ferrari provided us with technical charts demonstrating how the Portofino handles better and provides better steering feel and feedback than the California. Those charts seem plausible, though we didn’t drive the cars back-to-back. This is important, because Ferrari ditched the traditional hydraulic power steering assist employed on the California in favor of electric power steering in the Portofino. Hydraulic assistance is valued for its usual better feel and feedback, but Ferrari seems not to have lost ground in the switch to electric power steering assistance.

But the Portofino says that it is a lover, not a fighter. Fighting is for Ferrari’s mid-engine pure sports cars, like the F8 Tributo. The Portofino is meant for cruising South Beach and for snug double dates that employ the car’s more spacious back seat.

Here is where Ferrari leaves us scratching our head.

The Portofino’s race-tuned flat crankshaft, twin-turbo V8 has a raspy, cigarette-scorched voice when driven gently. Ferrari employs active muffler bypass valves to manage the engine’s sounds to suit the conditions, but there’s only so much to be done with the sound from a turbocharged race engine like this when full power is not required.

Because, for the Portofino’s $301,743 as-tested price, you have tasty options from other automakers, especially the traditional British purveyors of fabulous GT cars. Chugging through traffic, just off idle, the engine also feels short of the muscular torque that effortlessly powers rivals like the Bentley Continental GT V8 Convertible and the Aston Martin Vantage Roadster through urban no-wake zones.

Those English cars burble along purposefully, with crisp response to the driver’s toe on the accelerator, and smooth, seamless gear changes from the transmission that propel the car and its occupants forward with no fuss. The Portofino, meanwhile, seems to be jostling to get to the front of the race, with its engine’s industrial-grade audio accompaniment and less-than graceful gear changes from the track-ready dual-clutch transmission.

In this sort of use, relaxation seems the furthest thing from the Portofino’s mind, or even its range of capability. Which is fine, if your goal is to have a purebred race car that has space for friends or family to enjoy the car with you. For comfortable long-distance cruising or for low-speed café trolling, however, there are much more relaxing alternatives that do these jobs without feeling so frenetic.

Your preference may depend on whether you need to be the horse at the front of the pack or if you’re happy to just take things as they come.

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On the street, the eighth-generation Chevrolet Corvette Stingray—aka the C8— draws waves and shouts like no Corvette in memory. The vehicles also fulfills a long-explored switch to a mid-engine layout, like the configuration of exotic European supercars from Ferrari and Lamborghini.

At the track at Spring Mountain Motor Resort in Nevada, we were able to lap behind instructors from the Ron Fellows driving school who were in 2019 Corvette ZR1s. Before I slid into that seat, the Fellows crew hands me a black balaclava to line the white open-face helmet, while they lock the helmet into a chest-wrapping hybrid Head And Neck Support (HANS) device in anticipation of my high-speed laps. With the HANS cinched tight, I get in.

I power the seat all the way back with its electric adjuster. Then I pull the seat belt all the way out to activate the ratcheting adjuster, which in most cars is used for tightening the belt onto an infant seat. By locking the belt in place and then powering the seat forward into the correct position, it pulls the regular three-point seat belt tight, providing a quick alternative to a racing harness to help hold the driver in position.

The Corvette will pull 1.3 Gs of cornering force on this track, and while the car is equipped with competition seats, tightening the belts down like this helps hold the driver in position to focus on the steering, rather than using the steering wheel to hold on.

That ratcheted-down seat belt also helps better secure the HANS device, so it will be more effective in the event of a crash. Not that we’d crash Chevy’s $83,330 test car. That was the bottom line cost for our track vehicle, with its 3LT premium equipment package, Z51 performance package and magnetic ride adjustable shock absorbers.

Pressing the Start button brings the ‘Vette’s 495-horsepower, 470 lb.-ft., LT2 6.2-liter small block V8 to life. The engine’s sound is muscular and menacing at all speeds, with the rumbling threat of power to come at idle, and the ferocious blast of Nascar thunder as revs climb to the 6,500 rpm redline.

But some of this superbly inspiring soundtrack is, alas, actually electronically enhanced. Assistant chief engineer Mark Stheiner goes to lengths to explain that it isn’t really fake sound, because it is sound that the engine can and does make. However, the reality of requirements such as catalytic converters in the exhaust stream take a chunk out of the small block’s aural spectrum, producing a less satisfying voice at the exhaust pipes. So in the cabin, the car’s stereo system puts those frequencies back in place to produce a true V8 sound, but the sound of one without pollution-scrubbing catalysts.

Away from the track, the V8’s fuel consumption is EPA-rated at 15 mpg in city driving and 27 mpg on the highway, which is good for a supercar. On the track, we have to guess the fuel economy is, um, worse.

In the mid-engine C8, the compact pushrod V8 is located behind the cabin, visible to the passenger if they twist around in their seat and crane their neck to spot it. The driver can see a little bit out the back through the rearview mirror.

The mirror doubles as a display for a rearview camera that is mounted atop the engine cover to provide an expansive view behind the car that isn’t possible from anywhere inside the cockpit. This is helpful for visibility, but the camera’s unfamiliar wide field of view and unnatural video-camera brightness make it feel odd in regular driving. Maybe we’ll get used to such devices over time, but for now, I prefer the plain mirror, restricted view and all.

The Corvette’s center console is anchored by a rotary selector wheel that is mostly covered by a wrist rest that keeps the driver’s hand stable while adjusting the knob. Sitting stationary in the pit lane, I scroll through the car’s drive modes to select Track, and then dial up Sport 2 for the electronic stability control mode.

The Corvette has a unique shifter solution, with a compact row of buttons along the car’s longitudinal axis. It employs conventional push buttons for Park and Neutral, and lift buttons that you curl your finger beneath (like with many power window switches) for Reverse and Drive. The ability to feel these different buttons and their different actuation methods makes the Corvette’s shifter an above-average execution of the push-button shifter concept.

With the car in Drive, I begin to edge toward the pit exit to start lapping behind my lead driver ahead. Creeping forward, the 8-speed Tremec dual-clutch transmission exhibits some shuddering as the clutches slip, trying to do their best impersonation of a planetary automatic’s buttery smooth and torque-multiplying torque converter. Stheiner says this issue was resolved in the final software programming for the first true production models for customers. “We made some calibration changes that address that,” he says.

Underway, the computer-controlled dual-clutch transmission can shift itself, like an ordinary automatic transmission, or the driver can take manual control of upshifts and downshifts using the steering column-mounted shift paddles.

We roll out onto the track and my lead driver reminds me on the radio that the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires are still cold, so we steer into the sweeping, medium-speed first turn at a modest pace to begin bringing the tires to operating temperature. The run-flat Pilot Sport 4S tires come with the Stingray’s $5,000 Z51 performance package, which also includes an electronic limited slip differential and aerodynamic upgrades.

When the tires are warm, the Z51-equipped Stingray can launch to 60 mph from a standstill in 2.9 seconds, and thanks to an automatic launch control system, it can do it time after time.

Powering through the ensuing curves, grip starts to build and I can push the car harder. Even in its new, improved mid-engine configuration, the 495-hp C8 Stingray is no match for the lead driver’s 755-hp C7 ZR1. This was exacerbated by the C8 Stingray’s use of Michelin’s Pilot Sport 4S tires rather than the maximum-performance Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires on the ZR1. The ZR1’s power and grip advantage, combined with its driver’s intimate knowledge of the track, left my lead driver the surplus bandwidth to lap while seemingly only looking in his mirrors to provide feedback and coaching to help me learn the circuit over the walkie-talkies.

The practical run-flat PS 4S tires have presumably longer tread life in street driving, but on the track they produce noticeably more squeal in turns that more performance-focused Cup 2 rubber. The slightly lower grip threshold of these tires provides ample opportunity to experience the Stingray’s improved balance, thanks to the 40/60 front/rear weight distribution that lets the driver steer and point the Corvette precisely using the accelerator. The benefits are even more clear on corner exit, where front-engine Corvettes demanded delicacy to accelerate without sliding the rear of the car.

I’d have had more latitude to slide the car around a bit with the stability control in Track mode, but in the Sport 2 setting the ‘Vette is still able to build slip angles in turns and wiggle under braking and turn-in. I am never able to identify any interventions by the computer, unlike in the bad old days when such systems clamped down on the car’s performance intrusively. However, in the data overlay from the Performance Data Recorder, you can see the flicker of imperceptible mid-corner stability control activation once or twice.

The Stingray’s Brembo brakes are impressive, with a firm, communicative pedal, demonstrating strong friction but not gripping so abruptly as to upset the car. Hammering the pedal with strong initial application at the end of the track’s one straight helps shed speed quickly so the driver turns the car into the subsequent mid-speed right and keeps it balanced before eventually slowing more as the turn tightens. The benefit of having its mass centralized by the mid-engine layout gives the Corvette a fundamentally benign character that invites balancing the sliding car at its limit.

While driving in Track mode, the transmission makes mostly faultless decisions about gear changes, banging off redline upshifts and clicking down through the gears while braking smoothly enough to avoid upsetting the car. There were occasional two-gear downshifts while accelerating out of slower corners that seemed to have the potential to disturb the Corvette’s balance, so in those instances I’d have probably clicked it down only one when shifting manually on the paddles.

Those paddles are nice ones, which, like Ferrari’s and Lamborghini’s, are mounted to the steering column where they can always be found in the same places even while turning. Previous-generation Corvettes were frequently criticized for the delay between a pull on the shift paddle and the transmission’s response.

This time, engineers wired the buttons directly to the transmission’s shift controller, bypassing the car’s Controller Area Network, which can get clogged with traffic, to send shift requests straight to the transmission. It works. This Corvette responds instantly to shift requests. The paddles also shift to Neutral when you pull both of them at the same time. This is important, because as much as the Corvette lives up to its exotic new appearance with its racy on-track performance, there are also calls from bystanders who are hoping to hear a bit of the LT2’s exhaust note, which is easy to deliver with a quick shift to Neutral.

Passers-by are fired up about America’s new sports car, and it’s nice to give them a quick acknowledgement. If these fans can’t visit Spring Mountain themselves to pilot ‘Vettes from the Fellows school on track, at least they can imagine doing so, courtesy of a quick blast of exhaust sound.

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The philosophical distance between the Portuguese cities of workaday Porto and cosmopolitan Lisbon can feel greater than the physical distance. Perhaps that made the route between them—including an eastward diversion to spend time on some of Europe’s finest driving roads—the perfect place for Jaguar to demonstrate changes to the newly refreshed 2021 Jaguar F-Type that are as significant to the car’s evolving philosophy as to its upgraded technical specifications.

Their 2021 update of its $103,200 F-Type two-seat sports car (the convertible version costs $105,900) is a glorious return to form for a company that built its reputation on the 24 Hours of Le Mans-winning performance of its D-Type, and the voluptuous styling of its E-Type.

Carmakers like Jaguar, which enjoy the benefit of an illustrious heritage, risk being captured by that heritage and doomed to being thought of as “classics” even though they are new. When Jag returned to the market for proper two-seat sports cars with the F-Type in 2013, it understandably took a conservative approach that reminded prospective buyers of the brand’s history. But now that it has reestablished itself as a player in the sports car market, Jaguar designers were unshackled from heritage and freed to deliver a fresh, contemporary update.

New slimline LED headlights are now mounted below the hood’s shut line, lending the F-Type a sinister visage in place of the previous edition’s wide-eyed throwback styling. “The new headlight pulls your eye down, making the bonnet look much longer,” explains design director Julian Thomson.

His design team’s creativity is apparent in the new F-Type, and the ability of the styling to speak loud and clear perhaps encouraged the engineering team to dial back the engine’s voice a little bit. For 2021, the F-Type offers a “quiet start” mode that keeps the muffler bypass valves closed on startup to hush the bark of the 575-horsepower, 516-pound-foot 5.0-liter supercharged V8, saving drivers from their neighbor’s stink eye during early morning starts.

In regular driving, Jaguar has long touted the “theater” of the F-Type’s exhaust crackle on overrun. However, this carefully cultivated exuberance is excessive no more: Jag doesn’t say they’ve toned it down, but the F-Type’s V8 does wear close-coupled particulate filters on its exhaust manifolds, so maybe the pollution scrubbers also serve to put a sock in it.

However it happened, the over-the-top vocalizing of the previous model has been replaced by something that is dialed back just enough to seem more authentic in the ebb and flow of throttle application while slicing through Portugal’s Gardunha Mountains. Small changes to the V8 bump its output by 25 hp and 14 pound-foot from last year, contributing to a 0 to 60 mph acceleration of 3.5 seconds (which we experienced during the test drive) and an electronically limited top speed of 186 mph (which we did not).

Drivers on a more restrictive purchase or fuel budget can opt for the F-Type R-Dynamic P380, which is an all-wheel-drive supercharged 380-hp, 339-pound-foot 3.0-liter V6 that lists for $81,800 for the coupe, or $84,900 in drop-top roadster form. The P380 sprints to 60 mph in 4.9 seconds and tops out at 171 mph. (This is a U.S.-only edition that was not available for our testing on the roads of Portugal.)

Even more frugal buyers, or those seeking something a little more elemental, can choose the rear-drive P300, which is powered by a 296-hp, 295-pound-foot turbocharged 2.0-liter inline four-cylinder engine that delivers a suitably feline growl that sounds perfectly appropriate in a premium brand like a Jaguar. At 3,351 pounds, the four-cylinder, rear-drive P300 weighs 500 pounds less than the V8, all-wheel drive R model, which contributes to the car’s ability to squirt to 60 mph in just 5.4 seconds. Its top speed is electronically limited to 155 mph. Which seems like enough.

Traditionalists will be dismayed to learn that even the most stripped-down model of the 2021 F-Type is fitted with an 8-speed planetary automatic transmission. This gearbox enjoys clever programming to ooze between gears when driving in comfort mode and cracking off crisp shifts at just the right time in sport mode.

It responds instantly to squeezes on the steering wheel-mounted shift paddles, in contrast to the lag that plagued the previous-generation C7 Chevrolet Corvette, which employed a similar automatic transmission. But there’s no old-school H-pattern shifter and clutch pedal for those of us who’d rather do it ourselves. We have to believe the F-Type P300 convertible would be a really special car with a manual transmission.

The real technical improvements for 2021 are in the F-Type’s suspension. The original car was good, but could feel vague when steering into turns and twitchy when accelerating out of them with the V8’s ferocious power.

Jag grabbed engineer Tanmay Dube from McLaren Automotive, where he recently oversaw development of that company’s spectacular 720S, and he applied his know-how to massage the F-Type’s suspension. Naturally, Dube fiddled with the spring rates, anti-roll bar stiffness and shock absorber damping rates to move the car in the direction he wanted.

But before that, he addressed some inherent shortcomings to the rear suspension. A new die cast aluminum rear hub carrier, enlarged wheel bearings and revised upper ball joints increased camber (how vertical the wheel is) stiffness by 37 percent and the toe (how much the wheels point inward toward each other) stiffness by 41 percent, which eliminates any squirrely movement the old suspension might have experienced under hard cornering loads.

That increased rigidity improved the accuracy of the car’s steering feel from the contact patches of the tires. And those are larger too, because the front and rear Pirelli P Zero tires are 10 mm wider than the ones on last year’s model. “The old V8 had a tendency to be a bit more scary,” says Dube during our trip. “This is more progressive.”

Despite all those hardware changes, for Dube’s money, the biggest upgrade came in the car’s software. “The real standout feature is the recalibrated power steering,” he says. “It has sharper on-center feel and more effort on turn in. It took us months and months tuning the steering with [test driver] Mike Cross.”

That meant engineers riding along in the passenger seat, data flowing from their laptop to make changes in response to Cross’s feedback as the car circulated Jaguar’s test track. (No word on the bill for engineers’ airsickness bags during this part of the job.)

The F-Type backs up those claims, perfectly dissecting Portugal’s mountain switchbacks then absorbing the highway miles with aplomb once we’re crossing the plain toward Lisbon. After the sun sets, we get to enjoy the F-Type’s advanced LED matrix headlights, as they automatically cast shadows on other vehicles, while still brilliantly lighting the road ahead. It’s an impressive, if slightly distracting, technology, as I watch the lights continuously adjust. Alas, these lights aren’t legal in the U.S.

The day behind the wheel in the 2021 F-Type underscores both the success of the car’s maturation into a more refined and contemporary sports car as well as the effectiveness of the hard work that went into making the car worth the hundred grand it costs to call one yours. All our journeys of philosophical self-discovery should be so successful!

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While automakers have loaded their cars with increasingly sophisticated and effective safety technology in recent years, motorcycles—which are in more desperate need of a safety upgrade—have been left behind.

That was the observation of the founders of Damon Motorcycles, a startup out of Vancouver, Canada. They’ve resolved to address the shortcomings of current two-wheelers with the battery-electric Damon Hypersport, scheduled for delivery to riders in 2021. It is a no-excuses superbike that happens to be powered by a 200-horsepower electric motor and that boasts an array of rider-assistance sensors worthy of an F-35 fighter jet.

“Why are cars the only vehicles afforded safety?” asks Damon’s chief technical officer Dom Kwong, who previously worked on head-up display technology for Intel.

Damon is the dream of founders Kwong and Jay Giraud, who are serious motorcyclists with tech industry backgrounds; their chief operating officer was previously at the electric dirtbike company Alta Motors. They set out to develop safety technology to assist riders and then decided the only way to deliver that technology was to bake it into their own motorcycle.

“Motorcycles haven’t really changed in 100 years,” Kwong asserts. We can quibble with the hyperbole in that statement, but it is easy to see most of the fundamentals of today’s bikes in a motorcycle from 1920.

The problem is that while motorcyclists are menaced by oblivious drivers traveling in armored steel cages that are padded by air bags, riders have been left to rely on their eyes, ears, experience and reflexes to protect them.

The Damon Hypersport will supplement the human’s senses and skill with an accident warning system using cameras, radar, and artificial intelligence built on the bike. Damon calls the system CoPilot, and it uses 1080p cameras and front and rear 77 GHz radars to feed an onboard neural network that identifies potential threats.

This represents a fundamental change in philosophy from existing motorcycle safety systems such as anti-lock brakes and traction control, Kwong asserts. “ABS and traction control are reactive systems,” he said. “That’s already happened. We’re providing information to the rider so they can avoid the accident.”

The information from the computer does the rider no good if they don’t understand the meaning of the warnings in the split-second they may have to react, so Damon employs interfaces that it considers unmistakable.

The Hypersport has a row of LEDs on the trailing edge of its windscreen, where they are in the rider’s plain view. A center section of red LEDs will flash for collision alerts, while amber LEDs to the left and right sides provide blind spot warning. Motorcycles in general and sport bikes in particular have terrible blind spots in the rear-view mirrors, which typically provide a good view mainly of the rider’s elbows.

But a display screen in the Hypersport’s instrument panel shows the wide-angle view of the rear camera, without any elbows in the way, and the bike’s handlebars will vibrate with haptic feedback if the computer thinks a collision is imminent, literally shaking the rider to pay attention.

“These are very simple cues,” Kwong says. “I want the rider not to have to think about what is going on.”

The Hypersport, on the other hand, is paying close attention—not only to other vehicles nearby, but also to the rider, using sensors in the seat to know the rider’s position and force sensors in the hand grips to gauge how tightly the rider is squeezing.

“These can give me an idea how the rider is feeling,” Kwong explains, as a death grip indicates anxiety and interferes with the bike’s handling. A rider sliding smoothly from side-to-side in the saddle as the bike slices through corners, on the other hand, demonstrates comfort and proficiency.

This knowledge lets the Hypersport adjust the response to the twist-grip accelerator and its use of traction control based on its estimate of the rider’s comfort and skill level.

The Hypersport’s Shift system also can help the rider with comfort: it allows the handlebars, windscreen, seat and footpegs to adjust and change position. This lets the bike shift between full-on track-ready positions and more relaxed commuting-to-work positions, as well as making the bike configurable to suit riders of different sizes.

Shift uses power adjusters like the electric servos in your car’s power seats to move all the Hypersport’s controls to the rider’s preferred positions. “The subtly of the adjustment is so fine that it allows the rider to get the comfort they need on the fly,” said Kwong.

With all of these electronics, it is easy to overlook the Hypersport’s electric drivetrain. The 200-horsepower electric motor rockets the Hypersport to 60 mph in less than 3.0 seconds and to a top speed of 200 mph. The 21.5 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack (about the same size as the battery in the original Nissan Leaf) provides 200 miles of highway riding range at a steady 60 mph. At a more realistic 70 mph, range drops to 160 miles on the open road, but around town, regenerative braking recovers enough juice to bump range to 300 miles.

Even with a battery pack that is huge by motorcycle standards (the Harley-Davidson LiveWire has a 15.5 kWh pack), Damon claims that the Hypersport weighs only 440 lbs., which if true, is a coup. The Livewire weighs more than 100 pounds more than that with a smaller battery.

And for comparison, Zero Motorcycles, from Northern California, makes electric motorcycles like the Zero SR (which we tested) and that weighs 313 pounds and costs $15,495. But as nice as the SR is, it lacks the predicted performance and the safety technologies of the Hypersport.

Pricing for the standard Hypersport HS starts at $24,995. The Premier launch edition of the Hypersport is sold out, and is equipped with primo hardware such as Ohlins suspension components, Brembo brakes, and a carbon fiber single-sided rear swingarm. The suppliers of the standard bike’s components are still being determined, Kwong says.

And if you’re wondering what “Damon” refers to, that’s the first name of the company co-founder, Jay Girard.

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For less than the price of a Porsche 911 GT3, you can buy a stock car just like the ones that hammer around NASCAR ovals—and then take it to the track yourself. That’s the promise of the Hendrick Track Attack Camaro and Chevrolet SS track day cars, which promise to put you into a driver’s seat that is very much like the one Jimmie Johnson slides into weekly.

Prestigious sports car manufacturers like Porsche and Ferrari have made a tidy side business selling their trademark sports cars with upgrades to make them more suitable for race tracks than for commuting. In fact, vehicles like the Porsche 911 GT3 and the Ferrari Pista proved to be thrillingly fast and fabulously capable when we track-tested them last year. But they are not only expensive to buy, they can be eye-wateringly costly to repair.

This was the observation of Bill Snider, director of the Track Attack program for Hendrick Motorsports, the team that has won a raft of NASCAR championships with drivers Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. For less than those souped-up sports cars cost, wannabe racers could buy a stock car from Hendrick’s racing stable, he figured.

And when they crash it, drivers will be better protected inside the stock car’s steel safety cage and the car will be far less expensive to repair than one of those automotive gems from Stuttgart or Maranello. “It is more inexpensive to buy one of our cars, it is safer, and if it is tuned right, it is faster,” Snider says.

The Hendrick team has some design innovations in its version of Chevrolet stock cars that it’s understandably wanted to keep secret from competitors. But now that teams have had to lock in their designs for the 2020 season, and new rules for 2021 require all-new cars with more shared standardized parts, there is no reason for Hendrick to keep its car technology to itself.

The Hendrick Track Attack cars are not watered-down stock cars with generic designs and components, according to Lance McGrew, who oversees construction of the cars at Hendrick. Indeed, the first Track Attack car for a customer was originally meant to be a backup road racing car for one of the team’s race drivers.

“We were super careful about letting some of our technology get out, but now this car is how we would have brought it to the race track,” McGrew says.

Teams like Hendrick Motorsports build specific cars for NASCAR’s races on curvy road courses such as Watkins Glen rather than the banked, left-turning ovals. Track-day customers normally also drive on their local road courses, so the suspension in Track Attack cars is optimized for that duty.

Hendrick’s secrets lay mostly in the front suspension, McGrew says, in details of geometry, the camber and caster settings, lower control arm lengths, and height of the front spindles/steering knuckles. “Our cars turn really well on the road courses,” McGrew says proudly. “We’ve worked on that for years and years, so that’s proprietary information as far as we’re concerned. But now it’s not something you’ve got to keep a lid on.”

The result? Anyone with $125,000 now has access to the deepest secrets of Hendrick’s chassis technology in a Camaro or SS-bodied stock car that looks, sounds, and drives just like the ones the team races.

That means a full 1.75-inch diameter steel tube chassis with adjustable front double-wishbone suspension and rear trailing arm suspension for the solid axle. Shocks are Penske racing dampers with no external adjustments, and brakes are AP Racing one-piece aluminum units, six-piston front calipers and four-piston rears.

There’s an ATL explosion-suppressing fuel cell to hold the gasoline, same as in the race cars, and the car rolls on the same steel racing wheels from Aero Race Wheels. The driver sits in Hendrick’s own carbon fiber NASCAR-compliant racing seat and looks at an AIM Technologies MXG 1.2 Strada data display. Traditionalists who don’t want the LCD screen spoiling their NASCAR fantasy can specify NASCAR Cup-style analog instruments instead, McGrew said.

For that base car, customers will get an off-the-shelf 627-horsepower, 586 pound-foot, 454 cubic-inch General Motors small block LSX V8 with a dry sump oil system and forged rotating parts. It connects to a standard Andrews A431 four-speed manual transmission with short-throw H-pattern shifter. The engine is a production-based powerplant, but the gearbox is the very same one used in NASCAR Cup racing, complete with multiple gear ratios that can be installed.

If the idea of a street car engine powering your race replica doesn’t sit right with you, Hendrick will go ahead and sell you the whole-hog 725-hp, 490 pound-foot, 358-cubic-inch Hendrick Motorsports R07 V8.

There’s a change coming down the pike with the way drivers will shift their NASCAR vehicles, and the Hendrick vehicles will match that. In 2021, NASCAR will switch from today’s traditional four-speed H-pattern manual transmissions to six-speed sequential shift gearboxes. The new ones are like motorcycle transmissions, where you click up and down through each gear to get to the next one rather than sliding the shifter to a neutral position, from which any gear can be selected.

Sequential gearboxes allow faster shifts and they make it less likely that drivers will miss a shift and over-rev the engine, so they are popular with racers. With NASCAR moving to that technology after this season, Hendrick will build your car with a Race Tech 6XD sequential six-speed with optional automatic rev matching. Calibrating the software for that rev matching was a chore the team finished just in time for the car’s announcement, McGrew says.

Add all the options and the Track Attack car’s price tag could reach $175,000, but most of the cars are expected to sell in the $125,000 to $150,000 range, Snider predicts.

However, some customers are reportedly interested in spending even more money. NASCAR will be switching to independent rear suspension from the traditional solid rear axle design in 2021, and some prospective customers are asking for this on the Track Attack car, Snider says.

Hendrick is considering an independent rear suspension option for the car, though the solid axle design is so well engineered that “if your springs are tight enough, you might not be able to tell the difference,” he says.

Mix and match your perfect matrix of engine, transmission and rear suspension, then pick the Camaro or SS body to adorn your new toy and head out for a track day. It will cost less to buy than an exotic European sports car, and you’ll be able to drive it all-out. Plus, you can remain comfortable in the knowledge that crunching it into a tire barrier will almost certainly be a reasonable repair bill rather than a potential write-off from a fragile unibody production-car chassis.

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The Corvette was a hell-raising sports car that pioneered leading-edge performance technologies like fuel injection, independent rear suspension, rear disc brakes, unidirectional tires, magnetically adjustable shock absorbers (the same ones Ferrari uses now) and more. There was a reason astronauts drove Corvettes.

In recent decades, however, its reputation has tarnished. The Corvette is seen too often as an anachronism or a sad totem of mid-life crises. The ‘Vette wasn’t supposed to be a relic, trapped in ember in the 1970s and frozen in time to be idolized by drivers who are now in their golden years. We shouldn’t be in the place where the mighty Chevy Corvette—“America’s sports car” and bearer of the Stars and Stripes in international competition against the likes of Porsche and Ferrari in prestigious races like the 24 Hours of Le Mans—would come to be viewed so skeptically.

Yet here we are, with the Corvette commonly held in low regard by enthusiasts, no matter how many times Chevrolet’s bright yellow beasts defeat the Europeans at their own game at Le Mans. That’s eight class wins in 20 races for the current racing program.

It went wrong when Chevrolet failed to execute plans to switch the Corvette from a front-engine design to a mid-engine layout, despite numerous efforts to do just that. Either due to executive disinterest, failure of a planned rotary engine in the 1970s, or corporate bankruptcy in 2009, Chevrolet engineers’ plans to keep the Corvette modern stumbled time and again.

Until now. Finally, the mid-engine 2020 Corvette Stingray is a reality, and one drive demonstrates why the engine needs to sit behind the driver. It should have been there for decades, but it’s there now and it elevates the new ‘Vette to a new level.

Consider that the last front-engine car won in Formula 1 in 1960. The front-engine roadster passed into Indy 500 history after the 1968 race. Iconoclastic entrepreneur Don Panoz famously fielded front-engine LMP-1 sports racers at Le Mans between 1999 and 2002, using bellowing Ford V8 power to stun the Europeans, but alas, never defeat them for the overall victory.

The physics simply demand that the engine goes behind the driver. A car that accelerates forward transfers weight to its rear wheels, increasing the available traction from those tires to accelerate faster, even while cornering. There is no way to overcome this fact, and when the heaviest part of a car— its engine—sits over the front wheels rather than the rears, it is prone to spinning those rear tires under acceleration or sliding the rear tires and spinning while trying to accelerate out of corners.

Not coincidentally, those were the exact criticisms of the outgoing seventh-generation Corvette (C7), especially in its fastest, most powerful Z06 and ZR1 iterations.

Putting the engine at one end of the car and the transmission at the other, as the old Corvette did, also creates a high polar moment of inertia because the mass is concentrated at the ends of the vehicle rather than at its center. This makes it easier to spin the car, or at least, harder to catch once it starts to rotate about its center.

Now, with the C8 2020 mid-engine Corvette, Chevrolet has addressed those shortcomings. Bolting the engine, transaxle, and rear suspension directly together in one assembly that is securely fastened to the chassis produced a foundation that is 40 percent more resistant to twisting forces, reducing the undamped spring action of the frame and leaving that work to the suspension and tires, as designers intended.

That let vehicle dynamics engineer Mike Hurley finally do his job to the best of his ability, unshackled by the inherent shortcomings of the old configuration. At the same time, the tools at his disposal are better than ever, as the Corvette debuts the fourth generation of the Magnaride magnetically adjustable shock absorbers that co-debuted with the Corvette and Cadillac models.

The damper body itself is unchanged from the third generation, explained Hurley, but the electronic controller has improved and it now incorporates an accelerometer to directly measure vehicle motion rather than calculating it from the sensors measuring suspension travel. And Chevy has upgraded those sensors too, changing from simple mechanical position sensors to accelerometers mounted at each corner.

The old mechanical system suffered from a margin of error due to movement and vibration in the linkage that limited the ability to precisely understand the conditions during small movements, Hurley explained. Driving over a lightly textured surface like gravel could lose all of the information within the “noise” of that variability, so the suspension team couldn’t calibrate the system to smooth out the ride in those conditions, he said.

The accelerometers at the wheels and the one within the control unit provide more accurate information on the state of the car, therefore making it easier for engineers to address the situation with adjustments to the magnetic dampers.

The resulting refinement and serenity of the Corvette’s ride during our test drive outside Phoenix is a revelation compared to the old model. Making the frame stiffer means the springs can be softer, and the damping action can be more compliant.

With more weight on the rear of the car, the team, which had no experience with mid-engine designs, learned through trial and error that old remedies for familiar problems no longer worked, Hurley reported. Where an issue might previously have been addressed by firming the response at the front dampers, the new car might require softening the rear to solve the same problem, for example.

Cabin noise is noticeably diminished by the engine’s relocation. You’ve likely seen this before. Remember how noisy that front-engine school bus you used to ride was? But city buses, with their engines out back, are whisper-quiet by comparison, as all the noise goes back toward drivers in cars behind the bus.

In the new Corvette, that engine is a gem. It is the latest version of the famous small block Chevy V8, dating back to 1955, and at 495 horsepower and 470 lb.-ft., it is the most powerful base engine in the Corvette’s history.

This new LT2 engine is similar to the LT1 that powered the 2019 Stingray, with some tweaks related to its new location. The engine sits an inch lower in the car and bolts directly to the Tremec eight-speed, dual-clutch transaxle. Front engine Corvettes since the 1980s had a rigid torque tube connecting the front-mounted engine to the rear-mounted transaxle.

Mounting the engine lower is good for lowering the car’s center of gravity, but it requires some adaptation. The new dry sump oil pan shaves an inch of depth from the bottom (and more than a pound of weight), so it is not too close to the road surface. The pan features oil and coolant passages that increase cooling capacity by 25 percent compared to the LT1 in the C7.

Sitting that low, there’s no space beneath the engine now for the exhaust manifolds to dump the LT2’s spent gases. So new tuned-length tubular headers that replace the previous cast aluminum exhaust manifolds now tip upward and run the exhaust out over the top. This, of course, brings exhaust heat from the fire of combustion to areas that were previously shielded, and so the engineering team relocated the heat-sensitive ignition coil packs from atop the valve covers down to the sides of the engine block.

The space vacated atop the valve covers now serves as a billboard for a badge touting the pride of the workers at GM’s Tonawanda engine plant that builds the LT2 engine. Corvette engines wore such badging in the 1960s, and GM president Mark Reuss personally advocated for their return on the C8’s powerplant.

The LT2’s camshaft has 12 degrees more duration and a millimeter more lift on the exhaust lobes to help evacuate exhaust gas from the combustion chamber to the headers, and there is tiny 4-degree increase in intake duration too. As before, the electronic cam phaser permits 62 degrees of variability to adjust to load and throttle position.

The cam’s aggressive profile previously led to a somewhat uneven idle, which didn’t project an impression of refinement and quality, which is another reason Europhiles were dismissive of America’s sports car. Advancements to the engine management system and the increased precision of a Wide-Range Air-Fuel sensor have made it possible to smooth that idle even with the still more aggressive cam profile in the LT2, and the improvement is unmistakable when the C8 is idling at traffic lights.

On the intake side there are improvements made possible by the extra space available. When the engine was in front, the Corvette’s swoopy, low hoodline forced the top of the engine to be as flat as possible. Now that the engine sits an inch lower and is behind the occupants, there’s plenty of space above.

Chevy used that space to enlarge the intake air plenum from 11.1 liters of volume to 14.1 liters. That provides room for all eight intake runners to measure 210 mm in length. Previously two of the cylinders had shorter intake runners than the other six to make space for the fuel pump. It would have been hard to have identical combustion in all eight cylinders with different-length intake runners, so this change should also contribute to smoothing the idle.

Moving the engine forced changes to the external oil tank used by the dry sump oil system to contain the oil that normally sloshes around in the bottom of wet sump oil pans. This new plastic tank mounts directly to the front of the engine, which is an area whose temperatures aren’t friendly to normal plastic materials. The Corvette’s oil tank is made of heat-tolerant composite resin, from two-pieces that are hot-gas welded together and containing an integrated oil centrifuge and separator system.

Improved efficiency in the tank’s design to separate oil from the frothy foam and in the scavenging system that recovers oil from the dry sump pan let engineers reduce the total oil system capacity by 2.25 quarts compared to the system in the C7 Corvette, while providing a reliable supply of lubricant during sustained 1.25-g cornering.

Transmissions used to be another Corvette component that technophile derided as out of date. The traditional H-pattern shifted manual transmission with a clutch pedal is a favorite of traditionalist do-it-yourselfers, but declared obsolete by others.

The C7 Corvette’s automatic transmission was a classic planetary automatic with a torque converter. These are great transmissions, and the Corvette’s was superb when left to its own devices so the computer controlled the shifting. But for manual shifts triggered by the steering wheel-mounted shift paddles, the automatic’s responses could be slow and clumsy, frustrating drivers attempting to emulate their Formula 1 heroes by clicking those paddles themselves.

The C8 Corvette Stingray has just one transmission, a fashionable eight-speed dual-clutch automated manual transmission. Such gearboxes are effectively a pair of manual transmissions with dual computer-controlled clutches that switch instantly and imperceptibly between the gear selected in one of these transmissions to a different gear in the other one.

While this Tremec TR-9080 arrives simultaneously with the seven-speed Tremec TR-9070 in the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 as Tremec’s first dual-clutch transmissions, Chevrolet says that the two gearboxes surprisingly share very few parts.

Tremec says the TR-9080 DCT can change gears in less than 100 milliseconds without interrupting torque. “The lightning fast shift time is made possible by the integrated design approach with advanced Tremec-developed software algorithms, our transmission controller, proprietary clutch friction material, and world-famous hydraulic controls” said Antonio Herrera, managing director of Tremec.

In street driving, with a test of the Corvette’s launch control system, we found the DCT delivers on its promises. Early testers complained of some shift irregularities at the track, but it isn’t clear whether that was because of the different requirements of track driving or because their tests took place months ago and the problems they identified in their pre-production prototypes have since been fixed as the ‘Vette progresses toward its spring 2020 delivery to customers.

While the GT500’s launch control system lets drivers select from a range of engine speeds at launch, the Corvette’s launches are fixed at 3,500 rpm. The supercharged GT500 has significantly more torque to manage, making launches trickier. But also, the Corvette’s relocated engine sits over the drive wheels, ensuring better traction for acceleration, which means there is less variation from one run to another, so a fixed launch rpm is appropriate, reports Hurley.

Chevy’s stopwatch records a 2.9-second 0-60 mph acceleration time for the Stingray, but it fails to capture the laughs that the ridiculously easy and quick launches elicit from the driver. The Corvette is also programmed with the all-important dual-paddle pull feature that instantly shifts the car into Neutral, permitting a gratuitous rev of the engine in response to the waves and thumbs-up from other drivers seeing the C8 for the first time.

The car’s three driving modes, Touring, Sport and Track render decidedly different characteristics, even in street driving. As expected, Tour produces a comfortable ride from the Magnaride shocks and sedate behavior from the engine and transmission, making the Corvette a comfortable highway cruiser.

In sport mode, ride motions are tighter and the transmission becomes more involved. I noticed a subtle downshift when I lifted off the gas cresting a rise, which had the effect of using a little engine braking to help stick the front of the car to the ground over the crest.

Track mode yields the firm ride and frenetic transmission operation expected on the track that is not especially suitable for most street driving. We look forward to trying it on the track in final production form.

In the meantime, we’re left with plenty to appreciate from the Corvette’s move from nostalgia machine to contemporary super sports car. It may have been overdue, but it is no less impressive an achievement. It is time for the snobs to update their view of the Corvette and give this excellent sports car its due.

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Braking into turn one at the end of the short pit straight on the 2.4-mile outside road course at Las Vegas Motor Speedway feels like it could be a close-your-eyes-and-hope proposition. At the wheel of the 2020 Mustang Shelby GT500, you’re stopping a 760-horsepower rocket that weighs 4,171 lbs., so slowing it reliably and turning in to the corner accurately seem like they could be exercises in wishful thinking.

Incredibly, lap after lap, turn after turn, the GT500 does exactly what it is supposed to do, despite the obvious challenges. Ford’s engineers created a machine capable of going 0-60 mph in 3.3 seconds and covering a quarter mile in just 10.7 seconds. Relying on the GT500’s launch control system, we scored back-to-back runs of 11.4 seconds at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway’s drag strip.

But the old GT500 was quick at the strip too. This new car seems best defined by what it isn’t, because it continually defies expectations based on the model’s history, its lineage, its power, and its mass.

This is possible partly because the GT500 defies a familiar Mustang convention: affordability. Mustangs are appreciated for their accessibility to everyday drivers, but our eye-searing Grabber Lime test car’s MSRP was an eye-watering $93,890. Add the optional $10,000 paint stripes (as most buyers apparently do) and the price tag easily clears the six-figure hurdle.

That’s a lot of money for a Mustang, but the GT500 packs a supercar-worthy roster of hardware to justify it. And fortunately, those go-fast goodies aren’t mere check-box window dressing. This Shelby is a perfectly cohesive whole rather than a collection of parts thanks to impressive attention to detail by the engineering team.

It is no surprise that the GT500 boasts big power: by now we’ve seen plenty of supercharged V8s before. The previous-generation GT500, the Dodge Hellcat and its Redeye and Demon variants, and the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 and ZR1. The GT500’s 5.2-liter V8’s 760 horsepower makes it Ford’s most powerful car ever, and the 625 lb.-ft of torque provides pickup truck-grade grunt.

This particular engine incorporates a couple noteworthy innovations. It is the first engine to employ Eaton’s new inverted 2.65-liter supercharger that places the heavy twin rotors at the bottom of the unit, with the lighter air-to-water heat exchanger for the intercooler at the top. This improves the packaging efficiency by squeezing the blower into the valley of the engine’s vee better and it lowers the engine’s center of gravity. This is especially beneficial in a car like the Shelby that stands relatively tall by performance car standards.

The engine’s wet-sump oil pan includes special features to provide the continuous supply of oil under high-g track conditions that usually require a racing-style dry sump system. An upside of the Mustang’s height is that there’s ample room beneath the engine for an enlarged oil pan, with side-saddle expansion tanks for added oil capacity. There is a maze of baffles in the bottom of the pan and hinged flaps control flow to the side tanks. All of this combines to prevent oil from gathering out of reach of the oil pump’s pickup, ensuring a steady supply of lubrication.

Power from the engine channels through a 7-speed Tremec TR-9070 dual-clutch transmission. Ford’s collaboration with Tremec in calibrating the transmission’s shift characteristics is evident in both the speed and the seamlessness of gearchanges, which were always perfectly timed in both street and track driving without the need to use the steering wheel-mounted shift paddles for manual control.

That includes making aggressive downshifts under hard braking into corners and timing upshifts exiting corners so they don’t upset the GT500’s balance while simultaneously accelerating and unwinding the steering wheel.

All of the underhood motive force generates a massive amount of heat, so Ford doubled the size of the air intake in the grille and added a hood exhaust vent that measures six square feet in area. The result is the ability to shed an incredible 230 kilowatts of waste heat, a capability developed using PowerFLOW computational fluid dynamics software from Dassault Systèmes.

This is especially important because while the engine is rated at “only” 760 net horsepower, because the supercharger takes 100 horsepower to spin at the engine’s redline speed, the V8 is actually producing 860 horsepower and the corresponding amount of waste heat.

Obviously, that heat comes from the combustion of gasoline, and the EPA rates the GT500 at 12 mpg in city driving and 18 mpg on the highway. But that is in placid driving that leaves most of the Shelby’s 760 horses in the corral. Unleash them on the track and the consumption turns nearly comically bad, because that power has to come from somewhere.

Ford engineers boasted that, despite its high-strung nature and rarefied performance, the GT500 endured all of the company’s regular durability testing. However, the Shelby couldn’t complete one test that involves 30 minutes of hard driving at full power. The reason: it emptied the 16-gallon gas tank in just 25 minutes.

During our track testing, we saw the low fuel warning light illuminate almost immediately after refueling, which indicated that the car’s computer predicted there was only 50 miles of driving range remaining even though the tank was full.

Even with the carefully designed airflow, there’s so much positive pressure under the hood that test drivers found it was lifting an inch during top speed testing at 180 mph, so the team added hood locking pins to supplement the regular latch.

The optional carbon package of aerodynamic add-ons was tested for effectiveness at the Windsheer rolling road wind tunnel in North Carolina, with the result of very slight front downforce of 2 lbs. at top speed and rear downforce of 550 lbs. with the optional taller wing. Grip added by this downforce was noticeable in the fast right-hand kink in the back straight at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway’s outside road course.

It is critical to be able to stop a car that is this heavy and capable of an electronically limited top speed of 180 mph, and we are pleased (and relieved) to report that the GT500 excels in this area. This is not something to be taken for granted, because cars like the Hellcat exhibit unnervingly long brake pedal travel and long stopping distances from high speeds and even a purebred supercar like the Lamborghini Aventador SVJ hunts around worryingly when braking at the end of a long straight.

In contrast, the GT500 is confidently stable under hard braking, making it easy to place the car precisely on the track and to blend from braking to turning into the curve without any of the oops-the-rear-is-trying-to-come-around drama that occurs in cars with less stability and less accurate control.

The front six-piston Brembo calipers grip enormous 420mm rotors. The system has 20 percent more swept area than the excellent stoppers on the GT350 and has 30 percent more thermal mass for absorbing kinetic energy as it turns to heat.

There is nothing particularly special about the rear brakes, but credit the BWI Magnaride magnetically adjustable active dampers for keeping the GT500 on an even keel, with little roll or pitch as the car rockets around the track. This lets the rear brakes do more of their share of the work because the car doesn’t tilt wildly forward even while braking hard enough to activate the anti-lock braking system. A cool detail on the rear brakes however is the use of a 3D-printed bracket for the wire running to the electric parking brake calipers that the Shelby uses.

Stopping grip for those brakes comes from the GT500’s 305/30R20 front and 315/30R20 rear Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires, which are mounted on 20×11-inch carbon fiber wheels. Lightweight carbon fiber wheels are normally touted for reducing unsprung mass and rotational inertia, both of which are typically high with fashionable large-diameter wheels.

But according to Jake Dingle, CEO of Carbon Revolution, the company that supplies the wheels, their real benefit to the GT500 is increased stiffness. Such large wheels are prone to significant deflection at the rim under the load of cornering in a heavy car with sticky tires, and that deflection saps the driver’s feel for accurate steering response. The stiffer carbon fiber wheels restore that feeling in the GT500, helping instill confidence in fast corners because the car responds as expected.

Another downside of fat, grippy tires is that they tend to follow the contours of the road surface rather than letting the car track effortlessly in a straight line. The tiresome inclination for the front tires to roam around is called “tramlining,” after a train that is locked onto its tracks, or “rut wander” because of the tendency of such cars to discover and follow subtle ruts pressed into asphalt by heavy trucks.

The Dodge Challenger Hellcat Widebody and Porsche 911 Turbo have both been notable offenders in this category, which could lead us to conclude that tramlining is an inescapable tradeoff that enthusiast drivers must accept for the traction provided by wide front tires.

But increasing the trail of the front wheel hub uprights, also known as spindles, kingpins or steering knuckles, by increasing the castor angle tilt from vertical increases the self-centering force of spinning wheels enough to overcome the problem of the wide tires wandering in the lane like a Beagle seeking a rabbit’s trail. Higher castor angles also increase the feedback provided to the driver through the steering wheel during cornering, which also benefits GT500 drivers’ confidence.

Attention to each of these kinds of details shows how engineers executed on their plan for the GT500 to achieve greatness, rather than simply relying on a few impressive performance specifications or name-dropping a couple respected component suppliers’ brands. The result is a car that feels like it defies known laws of physics as it rips around the racetrack like a vehicle that weighs much less than it does. Just remember to keep an eye on the gas gauge during track driving.

The post Behind the wheel of the 2020 Mustang Shelby GT500—the most powerful car Ford has ever made appeared first on Popular Science.

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Elva Cars Ltd. is a mostly forgotten member of the British cottage sports car fraternity of the 1960s, like TVR, Sunbeam and Morgan. But the company had the distinction of building the first roadgoing McLaren when it adapted the open cockpit McLaren M1A sports racer into the McLaren-Elva M1A in 1964.

Interest was high for a street version of McLaren’s successful racer, but as the company employed only seven workers at the time and they were busy building cars for racing customers. The solution was to hand off street car production to Elva.

When McLaren Automotive decided it was time to build its first topless sports car, secured the rights to the Elva name and applied it to the company’s quickest, and lightest, car yet. The result: the McLaren Elva, which lacks a roof or even a windshield, just like its forebear.

The old M1A was powered by a 340-horsepower aluminum 4.5-liter Oldsmobile V8. It’s a variant of the better-known Buick engine design that was sold to Rover and powered decades of Range Rovers. The Oldsmobile is distinguished from the Buick by different cylinder heads and piston crown.

Elva’s marriage of a steel tube spaceframe and a powerful, lightweight engine produced a car that Road & Track magazine pronounced “the fastest car we’ve ever tested and an example of the latest thinking in sports/racing cars.”

But today’s customers, no matter how dedicated, have entirely different expectations than those of a half-century ago. So when McLaren contemplated building a car that has no roof at all, they needed to get creative in dealing with airflow and climate control to provide a modicum of comfort inside the car. The solution is the Active Air Management System (AAMS), which shelters occupants by manipulating airflow to create a bubble of turbulence-free air in the Elva’s cockpit.

The Elva takes air in through a scoop under the car’s nose just above the splitter that blocks air from sneaking under the bodywork and ducts it out in the cockpit ahead of the occupants to deflect the wind blast that would otherwise hit them directly in the face.

The nozzle blasting out the air into the cockpit features a carbon fiber active deflector that automatically rises nearly six inches to steer the airflow higher as the car’s speed increases.

Eliminating the roof structure and heavy glass ensures that the Elva is McLaren’s lightest model, but the company isn’t offering specifics yet on exactly what that weight. In keeping with family tradition, the Elva employs a version of the corporate twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8 as seen in the Senna.

In the Elva’s state of tune, the engine is rated at 804 horsepower and 590 lb.-ft. Driving through a seven-speed paddle-shift dual-clutch transmission, the engine rockets the Elva to 60 mph in less than 3.0 seconds. It continues to 124 mph in 6.7 seconds (!), which is faster than the Senna we drove last year.

All this pure sports car goodness can be yours for the low, low price of just $1.7 million. That’s before you load it up with options anyway, which can include a windshield if you’re afraid of bugs in your teeth. Act now, because McLaren’s only building 399 Elvas, with deliveries scheduled to commence in a year.

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The Route Napoleon is the path that the previously imprisoned former emperor of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, took in his march from Elba to Grenoble in his bid to overthrow King Louis 18th and reclaim lost glory.

Today, this route is a scenic and challenging driver’s road, twisting through the Alps Maritime, so it seems appropriate that Bentley would choose this road to demonstrate the handling prowess of the new Flying Spur sedan. Along the way, the new car reclaimed the mantle of the original 1952 Bentley Flying Spur, a position that had been lost by the disappointing rendition of 2005 to 2018, which was an ungainly adaptation of a front-drive chassis to premium sedan duty.

The most important element in the car’s rehabilitation, which is vastly more successful than Napoleon’s ill-fated comeback attempt, is a switch to the excellent aluminum rear-drive chassis that debuted in last year’s Continental GT coupe, a car that feels lighter to drive than seems possible for a car of its size.

Bentley’s engineers promised that the Flying Spur, as a four-door interpretation of the Continental GT, would feel equally adept slicing up Alpine switchbacks. It sounded like hyperbole in the technical briefing, but the Flying Spur delivered on those promises on the road.

Cars like this aim to coddle occupants with plush comfort and amenities. The new Spur surely provides that, with details like “sculptural” diamond-knurled air vents, open-pore Crown Cut Walnut wood veneers, and three-dimensional quilted leather. And of course, there are dedicated champagne flute holders built into the rear seat’s center armrest. Because Bentley!

But these things, along with the panoramic sunroof, detachable rear seat Touch Screen Remote Control for the sunshades, seat massagers, climate control and mood lighting, and the “digital detox” Bentley Rotating Display that replaces the dashboard’s center display screen with either a trio of classic analog instruments or a smooth wood veneer panel, are all the expectation for a prestige sedan that lists for $214,600.

And in this age of forced-induction mega-horsepower, even the Flying Spur’s 626 horsepower, 664 lb.-ft. 6.0-liter twin-turbocharged W12 (with fuel-saving cylinder deactivation, for the frugal mogul) is not surprising, despite its smooth excellence. Things start to bend toward real performance as we follow the W12’s power output on its way to the pavement.

Bentley has replaced the old car’s conventional planetary automatic transmission with a sporty dual-clutch 8-speed automatic transmission, using a dual-mass flywheel to dampen driveline vibrations in place of the torque converter used before.

This strong powertrain has the grunt to push the heavy 6,614-lb. vehicle to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds and to keep going to a shocking top speed of 207 mph. The drivetrain is abetted in the top speed run by a sub-0.30 coefficient of drag, which is an impressive accomplishment for a large sedan that honors its design heritage of blocky, upright lines. The low drag must also contribute to the surprising 19 mpg the Spur scored in combined driving on the European fuel-economy test.

Tearing through the Alps on the Route Napoleon, the Flying Spur continued to disguise its corpulent mass. This is accomplished by the car’s improved front-rear balance compared to the outgoing model, as a result of moving the front axle forward 5.1 inches, shifting the weight rearward and reducing understeer.

Further, the old car’s front-drive-based all-wheel drive system delivered a fixed 40 percent of engine torque to the front wheels, which also contributed to understeer. The new model is primarily rear-wheel drive, with an active system that can shift some power to the front as needed. With power going to the rear wheels under most circumstances, the Flying Spur benefits from the crisp steering response on initial turn-in to corners that isn’t blunted by the front tires struggling to provide grip for both turning and acceleration.

Additionally, the Flying Spur has a rear-wheel steering system that contributes to turning into tight mountain switchbacks, creating the effect of driving a car with the shorter wheelbase of the Continental GT rather than a long-wheelbase sedan. That was the promise by Bentley’s engineers, and driving the car through the mountains proved that not only did it help with handling in sporty driving, the rear steer system also works in practical situations where the turns are so tight and the road is so narrow that a three-point turn would otherwise be needed. The amazing part of this is that Bentley’s team calibrated the system so well that it works imperceptibly. The car just feels shorter than it is.

The new Spur replaces the old two-chamber air springs with improved three-chamber Active Dynamic Ride devices that have an improved ability to control body movement. This system’s ride control is augmented with 48-volt active anti-roll bars front and rear. The higher-voltage system provides the necessary force on the bars to offset the 3+ ton Flying Spur from heeling like a schooner in the turns, and as with the car’s other systems, it delivers on its promise and does so imperceptibly.

It also helps to be able to slow a massive vehicle on the approach to turns, and the Flying Spur’s 420 mm cast iron front rotors are the largest iron brake discs in the industry. Carbon ceramic brake rotors are fashionable on super sports cars, but they are costly, tend to be noisy, and they provide benefits only during prolonged track driving, which is not an expected use case for the Flying Spur. Better to instead provide suitably huge iron rotors, which contribute to a brake system that exhibits superb finesse and power, perfect for hustling along Napoleon’s invasion route.

Bentley executives repeatedly described the Flying Spur’s relaunch as the company’s most significant in recent years. That sounds surprising considering that the model hasn’t been a big seller. But that is because it was underperforming, as customers chose alternatives in consideration of the car’s shortcomings. This new Flying Spur has no evident shortcomings, so we expect its march to reclaim the glory of the original 1950s model to be entirely successful.

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Watches that measure the passage of time by tracking the oscillations of a quartz crystal are cheaper, more durable and more accurate than those that tick off the seconds with a ratcheting, spring-driven flywheel. But the most interesting, expensive and sought-after watches are mechanical because only they can instill a sense of wonder. Similarly, the fastest cars employ automatic transmissions in which computers select the perfect gear ratio for the circumstances and use it to apply the ideal amount of power to just the right tire. But at least some of the most interesting, fun and sought-after cars have manual transmissions, because only they can instill a sense of mechanical wonder that is enhanced by a person’s active participation in the act of driving.

That’s the raison d’etre of the 2020 Aston Martin Vantage AMR. It is a new version of the famed British marque’s hot rod Vantage, introduced in 2018, that includes a manual transmission in place of the usual paddle-shifted automatic. The original car proved its mettle when we tested it at Portugal’s Portimao circuit on its debut, and it left no question as to the effectiveness of an automatic gearbox in a sports car turning laps around a racetrack.

The Vantage AMR is a special edition, with a limited production run of just 200 unique cars this year, differentiated from regular Vantages by their own color palette and an array of standard features that are optional on other models. No worries if you’re feeling like you might not be quite ready to pull the trigger on the purchase of one of these before they sell out; the AMR’s manual transmission becomes a regular stand-alone option next year, so it will still be possible to get a three-pedal Vantage even without being a member of the privileged few AMR owners.

The transmission in question is the same Graziano 7-speed used by Aston’s Vanquish V12S, which would reasonably lead us to believe that it is a simple swap to bolt that gearbox into the Vantage. But, that is not the case.

First of all, the manual transmission and its clutch are unable to withstand the full fury of the 505 lb.-ft. of the twin-turbocharged V8 engine’s torque in the automatic transmission car, so it is detuned to 461 lb.-ft. for duty in the Vantage AMR in the interest of preserving the driveline. Peak horsepower is unchanged at 503 hp.

“It is a long, long process,” explained driveline engineer Ray Brown. “You already have the gearbox, but you can’t just bolt it in.” If there is an example of how the devil can be in the details, tuning a transmission, shifter and clutch for a sports car is it. “It is all small tuning,” he said. “It is an art. There is a lot that can make it bad.”

The engineering team said that effectively damping driveline resonance of the bolted-together engine, torque tube and gearbox was the top challenge. They mixed and matched mounting bushings to find the best hardness, and installed a dual-mass flywheel to help absorb shocks as the driver dips into and out of the throttle.

The shift lever length and throw distance, shift effort and detent strength were all variables they juggled through trial and error. After too many times back and forth between evaluators and engineers, Brown said he gave them the shifter with a stack of washers for spacing the length and told them to set it at the preferred throw length themselves.

It came within a millimeter or so of the Vanquish V12S’s shifter, but is not exactly the same, he shrugged. Perhaps only those persnickety test drivers know why they vary by a distance indiscernible by most of us.

The Vantage’s footwell is shorter than that of the Vanquish, so to get appropriate clutch travel and pedal feel, Aston turned to AP Racing for a dual-piston master cylinder that can displace enough fluid on just a short pedal stroke. F1 drivers rejected the dual-piston clutch master cylinder, but it has become popular with German Touring Car drivers, according to Aston.

In use, the clutch pedal effort is light, but feel for the engagement point is excellent, making it easy when starting on hills or maneuvering in tight spaces. The shifter is maybe a tougher challenge, because with seven forward speeds and reverse, there are four fore-aft gates on the shifter’s ‘H’ pattern, which squeezes them tightly together.

That can make it challenging to hit the right gear. First gear is very low, so Aston moved it off the main ‘H’, putting it below Reverse on the far left side and adding some additional spring pressure to that gate to let drivers know that it isn’t third gear. Getting first when aiming for third could be disastrous, so it is important to get it right.

Because it is easy to start off in second gear under most circumstances and drive the Vantage AMR as a 6-speed, ignoring first gear, I think an even stiffer spring would be helpful or even a traditional reverse gate lockout, so that first gear is really only ever selected in parking lot situations where you’re also likely to use Reverse.

Recognizing the importance of finesse to the process of driving with a manual transmission, Aston also reduced the assistance provided by the booster for the Brembo brake system. Making the brake pedal a little less sensitive to light pressure makes it easier to brake smoothly while conducting a heel-and-toe downshift using the same foot to brake and press the accelerator.

Alternatively, the Vantage has automatic rev matching available to take care of the throttle on gear changes. But the pedals are well placed and the pedal effort and travel make it easy to heel and toe, so letting the computer rev the engine on gear changes seems self-defeating if the point was for the driver to be involved and controlling the variables directly. It is easy to turn rev-matching off by pressing a dedicated button on the center console, so there’s no navigating layers of on-screen menus so drive the Vantage yourself.

Another aspect of DIY is Aston’s substitution of a traditional mechanical limited slip differential in place of the automatic car’s computer-controlled e-differential.

Replacing the porky automatic transmission and e-diff whittles 154 lbs. from the AMR’s weight, and the AMR’s included forged aluminum wheels and carbon ceramic brakes trim an additional 66 lbs., bringing the total weight loss to a meaningful 220 lbs.

To adjust for the reduced weight, Aston engineers softened the rear springs, revalved the shocks and installed a stiffer rear anti-roll bar to maintain a neutral handling balance.

The Vantage AMR’s top speed is 200 mph, and it accelerates to 60 mph in just 3.9 seconds. On the open Autobahn, the AMR was very comfortable and steady at 125 mph. By 150-160 mph, the car distinctly tracks the very subtle ruts in the lanes carved by trucks, making it seem less comfortable. We topped out at 170 mph, which was a situation that demanded very full attention of the sort that probably wouldn’t be comfortable to maintain for extended periods. But 140 mph felt like an easy all-day pace in the AMR.

And that is the point of a beautiful grand touring coupe like the AMR. Driving one is meant to be a sensory experience that involves the driver, but not one that punishes the driver and passenger. The AMR’s manual transmission provides a greater degree of involvement, while the car’s carefully tuned suspension and steering make it easy to drive briskly for hours on end.

It is certainly more interesting than driving the quartz watch equivalent, even if such a watch might indicate that the AMR is a tick slower than an automatic transmission Vantage.

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Earlier this year, Chevrolet announced that—after decades of teasing—the Corvette was finally moving the engine behind the driver. Even more surprising, however, was the fact that the mid-engine “C8” 2020 Corvette Stingray will start at just $59,995. That’s an absurdly low number when you consider its competition.

Ford has sold a tiny number of mid-engine super sports cars with an impossibly short list of vetted buyers, with the cars priced at more than half a million dollars. Traditional competitors in the mid-engine segment like Ferrari, Lamborghini and McLaren have models starting at around a quarter-million dollars. Upstart Audi has been a competitor in this segment for a decade or so, and the buy-in for an R8 starts at $171,000. Acura’s NSX starts at $159,495.

How is it even possible to build and sell an aluminum-intensive mid-engine sports car at a price that is an incredibly small fraction of the existing models?

Making things even more complicated, Chevrolet had to solve this problem on a totally different scale than other manufacturers in the space. Companies like Ferrari might build about 5,000 cars per year. Last year, Chevy sold 40,000 Corvettes, and the new one will surely be a hot property with even more demand.

“When you get to that volume, it gets more difficult,” acknowledges Ed Moss, Corvette structures engineer. Making a car that could hit that low price point at such high volume required careful selection of materials and processes.

For the 2020 Corvette, GM carried over its backbone chassis configuration, which features a central structural tunnel. Now, however, the engine sits behind the driver, to create a layout similar to that of the old Lotus Esprit and the DeLorean DMC12.

But those were steel cars. The Corvette employs complex, thin-wall aluminum vacuum die-castings at the corners to support the suspension mounts and then connects them with Tinkertoy-like aluminum extrusions that are “glued and screwed” into place, said Moss. There are six large castings at the car’s corners, plus two more for the halves of the engine cradle. In total, the car has 20 castings.

The thin-wall technique produces parts that are between 2.5mm and 3mm thick, compared to a thickness of between 5mm and 6mm for castings used on the C7 Corvette. This technique permits consistent dimensional control during assembly, ensuring consistency for the cars.

Aston Martin used a similar design for the ‘Vertical-Horizontal’ chassis in its previous generation of cars like the DB-9. The basic layout could stretch or widen for different models by changing the lengths of the extrusions.

As with the Corvette, Aston used sheet metal screws to lock the components in place during assembly and structural adhesive epoxy to secure them. In some cases, technicians spot weld the components in place, if they have access to both sides of the joint. Screws are easier to use when there is only access to one side, Moss reports.

The previous-generation ‘C7’ Corvette had an aluminum chassis, but that one was MIG (metal inert gas) welded rather than glued-and-screwed. The advantage of gluing is the strength of a bond over the continuous length of the joint rather than just at the welds. “The C8 has more than 100 meters of glue,” Moss pointed out.

The result is an open-topped chassis with no roof structure between the windshield header and the hoop behind the doors, which makes it easier to includ a removable roof panel. More importantly, the structure is 25 percent and 30 percent stiffer than two open-topped competitors in the segment, according to Moss.

“The trick for torsional stiffness is that you’ve got to get the load through the tunnel and back to the shock towers and it is hard with the engine there,” Moss said. The car’s central spine, or tunnel, carries load from the front suspension back to the rear of the car, where the engine cradle castings transmit loads to the rear suspension mount castings.

That makes the tunnel a crucial link. It is a three-sided aluminum square tube, with an open bottom. For the C8 Corvette, Chevrolet applies a carbon fiber panel to the bottom to close that tunnel off, boosting its strength by 10 percent.

Chevy engineers applied carbon fiber judiciously to keep the ‘Vette’s cost down, selecting the fashionable material for the tunnel close-out panel and for the rear bumper beam. With the engine and transmission at the car’s rear end, it was important to minimize the weight of other components at the back, which is why the rear bumper beam is carbon fiber, Moss explained.

“We started with more carbon pieces, but those are the only ones we thought added enough value to be worth the money,” he said.

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The bikes of the MotoGP racing series are incredibly fast, exotic and expensive, putting them out of the reach of all but the talented few contracted to race them. But the second-tier Moto2 series is slightly more within reach, thanks in large part to its reliance on a spec engine provided by Triumph.

Triumph is using a version of that Moto2 engine to power its Daytona Moto2 765 Limited Edition bike, an impressive near-race bike which will be available in limited quantities of only 765 motorcycles for North American buyers (with another 765 for the rest of the world). According to the company, it’s the closest thing you can get to an actual race bike for the road.

The carbon fiber bodywork wraps a machine that is lighter than the previous-generation Daytona, though official curb weight is not yet available. The 128-horsepower, 59 lb.-ft. engine is in Triumph’s signature parallel three-cylinder configuration and revs to a race-ready 13,250 rpm. The engine sounds travel through a stainless steel exhaust that is finished with a lightweight titanium muffler to deliver an authentic Moto2 race soundtrack.

The Daytona’s engine benefits from direct technology transfer from its Moto2 counterpart, with new upgrades that include titanium intake valves, stronger pistons, MotoGP-spec diamond-like coating wrist pins, hotter camshaft profiles, and higher compression. Triumph has also modified the connecting rods, intake ports, crankshaft, and cylinder barrels.

The all-new 6-speed gearbox employs a range of optimized ratios that include a first gear derived directly from Moto2 experience, according to Triumph.

In racing style, the engine’s output is adjustable via the Daytona’s data system that is integrated into the full-color video instrument panel. Just to remind riders, this limited-edition ride starts up with its own unique Moto2 splash screen.

Once the computer has started, it lets riders select among five riding modes: Rain, Road, Rider Configurable, Sport and Track. These changes adjust the throttle map, traction control, and anti-lock braking to suit the conditions. It also includes Triumph Shift Assist, for speed clutchless up- and down-shifts. And, of course, there’s a built-in lap timer.

As for suspension, an inverted Ohlins 43mm fork offers adjustable spring pre-load, compression, and rebound damping on the front wheel. On the back, a twin-tube Ohlins monoshock with a piggyback external reservoir and adjustability for compression and rebound damping handles the shock absorption.

The compact, sculpted Brembo Stylema 4-piston radial-mounted monobloc front calipers squeeze 310mm rotors and are backed by switchable anti-lock braking control. The less-crucial rear is a single-piston caliper on a single, smaller 220mm rotor.

Triumph says the five-spoke 17-inch cast-aluminum wheels are the lightest in the Daytona’s class. They carry Pirelli Diablo Supercorsa SP tires front and back, the tiremaker’s latest, highest-performing motorcycle rubber to deliver the expected performance of a race-replica bike.

The ingredients suggest that Triumph isn’t engaging in hyperbole when it says the new Daytona is the next-closest thing to a Moto2 race bike, but hopefully we’ll get the chance to see for ourselves.

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The Indian FTR 1200 S is a fantastically fun contemporary bike that is good enough to challenge European rivals and drag Indian from the past to the future. That might sound like a steep task for a single new model, but with the FTR, Indian Motorcycle shows how it aims to change its place in the world.

Revitalized by the brand’s acquisition by Polaris in 2011, Indian has understandably played to its strengths, starting with a line of traditional air-cooled big V-twin cruisers catering to wealthy traditionalists. Yes, the “investment bikers” who cosplay on motorcycles during their free time. Then Indian went after beginners with the affordable, lightweight Scout family of compact, water-cooled V-twin machines.

The FTR 1200 S we tested represents the launch of a new fully contemporary product line directly targeting enthusiast riders who currently have traditionally favored the Ducati Monster, Triumph Speed Triple and BMW R nineT. Those are formidable machines, so challenging them is a daunting task. The FTR’s Ducati Monster-style steel tube trellis frame will make comparison shoppers feel right at home.

The FTR 1200 S is relentlessly comfortable and easy to ride despite its 120 horsepower and 85 lb.-ft. torque.

The clutch lever pull is light and it engages with the feedback needed to avoid embarrassing parking lot tip-overs. Spills from standing might be easier than expected with the FTR, however, because its flat track racing-inspired design has produced a seat as high as that of a knobby-tired dual-sport model with off-road pretensions. With a 32-inch inseam, I was left stretching my tip toes to the ground when stopped on the FTR. Anyone shorter would be left to try to flop to one side or the other.

The FTR’s transmission clicks into gear slick as a cocktail olive evading your toothpick. As easily as it snicks up and down through its range of six gears, it is the ability to intuitively hit Neutral when stopping that is its best feature in everyday riding. Where some bikes leaving you clunking the shifter back and forth between first and second gear, then releasing the clutch tentatively when the ‘N’ light glows because it doesn’t seem certain you’ve finally got it, the FTR feels like it slid into Neutral so positively that there’s barely need to double-check with the instrument panel to confirm.

This, along with the tractable, smooth power of the FTR’s 1,203 cc water-cooled 60-degree V-twin, make the 1200 S the most user-friendly bike I’ve ridden since the discontinued Triumph Sprint ST. But the FTR has a lot more power, style and charisma than the old Triumph sport tourer ever had, so its friendliness will never be misconstrued as blandness.

Instead, it is a true American sport bike, like Harley-Davidson’s Buell line was, but without the archaic engine, dubious styling and annoying rim-mounted front brake rotor that caused Buells to stand up when braking in corners.

In contrast, the FTR holds its line in turns no matter what is going on with the powerful, linear brakes. They provide a nice alternative to the grabbiness of Ducati brakes, which can be challenging to bleed just a touch of speed. It employs four-piston Brembo front calipers squeezing 320mm rotors in front and a two-piston rear Brembo with a 265mm rotor.

One puzzling unfriendly characteristic I noticed in my time on the FTR was its cold-start and idle problem. It would start right up, no problem. But then after idling for a little while, it would sometimes just stall for no reason. It did this only on cold starts, but “cold” in this situation means only that the bike hadn’t run yet that day; the ambient temperature was in the 70s. It never did this once the engine reached operating temperature.

There could be no doubt when this was achieved, because the placement of the radiator and the airflow through it cooks the rider, even in a warm climate. The radiator itself is no aesthetic triumph, and the exposed radiator cap jutting out on the right side is the worst aesthetic offender. Surely there are less clumsy alternatives to a radiator placement and design that neither flatters the otherwise handsome bike nor protects the rider from bathing in the heat it removes from the engine.

When cruising along the temperature is fine and life is good. It is an easy reach to the Texas longhorn-wide ProTaper handlebars that provide good leverage in turns and lend to the FTR’s flat track racing aesthetic. The footpegs are surprisingly high for a bike in this class, leaving the knees bent in the sportbike crouch even while the upper body is comfortably upright.

This points to the obvious possibility of mounting road race-style clip-on handlebars and replacing the 19-inch front and 18-inch rear wheels with 17-inch road race-sized wheels to create a sportier variant in the future.

Certainly the inverted 43mm cartridge fork, which is adjustable for preload, compression and rebound and the rear shock, which is also adjustable for those factors, seem plenty capable for serious back road corner carving. The FTR wears special flat track-inspired Dunlop DT3-R tires, which seem to work fine for a fashion-first tire design. But I’d love to ride this bike with some proper high-performance tires on it to see the difference, especially with 17-inch wheels.

The tested FTR 1200 S enjoys some hardware upgrades over the base 1200 model, including better suspension hardware and a 4.3-inch Ride Command LCD touchscreen display instrument panel in place of analog gauges. The distance-to-empty indicator on the display was especially helpful.

Our test bike also featured the optional Akrapovic slip-on mufflers, which provide a great exhaust tone without being excess volume.

The FTR test bike was painted to resemble Indian’s FTR 750 racebikes, which makes sense. The FTR 1200 S is a great-looking machine that attracts deserved compliments. But I found the retro-style Indian script lettering on the faux gas tank (it is really the airbox) out of step with the FTR’s contemporary mission. I realize that it is Indian’s logo, but modern lettering here would seem better-suited to the FTR’s purpose of expanding the brand’s appeal beyond the fringed leather chaps set.

The bill for all this FTR awesomeness comes to $16,999, which is right in line with the bike’s European rivals. It is nice to see such a modern, high-quality domestic challenger to the pantheon of established Europeans, so I hope the FTR 1200 S attracts the customers it deserves. I also look forward to seeing potential future variants, as Indian will surely expand from the two current versions to a whole family with the aforementioned clip-on handlebar sport bike or a high-exhaust scrambler model.

The FTR is by far my favorite Indian model and is absolutely on par with the likes of the Ducati Monster 1200 S for style and fun.

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Fantasy meeting reality is often a source of disappointment. Racy, mid-engine supercars have sexy lines and a hair-raising soundtrack on the way to astounding speeds, but lack certain comforts we’ve come to expect. For instance, the available cargo space will cause you to redefine your definition of “packing light” if you hope to take a trip in one.

The 2020 McLaren GT aims to be the supercar you can live with, by applying McLaren’s established carbon fiber chassis, linked hydraulic suspension system and twin-turbocharged V8 engine to a car that prioritizes comfort and practicality over racetrack lap times.

Because its fundamental design demands excellent performance, the GT can afford to give away a few percent of absolute track acumen in exchange for the ability to drive the car with an unexpected degree of comfort.

So while the basic carbon fiber MonoCell II tub carries over, this is the “T” variant, which is one of the changes McLaren made to the GT to create a more livable—but still blindingly fast—supercar.

This diminished performance from the sport-centric 720S results in a top speed of “only” 203 mph. Zero to 60 mph acceleration might as well be measured by sundial, as the 612-horsepower 4.0-liter V8 engine needs 3.1 whole seconds to get there. You still click the steering wheel-mounted paddles to shift the 7-speed dual-clutch transmission along the way.

McLaren’s calibration engineers put in the easy-to-overlook sweat and late nights to ensure proper calibration. That means slick gearchanges that are barely perceptible, and an active muffler system that ensure the GT is seen but not heard until the appropriate time.

This drivetrain achieved 18 mpg on the EPA’s city test and 22 mpg on the highway, so the GT escapes the government’s punishing gas guzzler tax. If you can afford our gorgeous Nakama Blue test car’s $233,500 MSRP, you can probably also afford the gas guzzler tax, but still it is nice to not waste fuel—or money.

Usable cargo space

The GT rolls on the same 105.3-inch wheelbase as the 720S, but it stretches 4.5 inches longer and its roof arches higher over the engine bay to provide an unexpected 20.1 cubic feet of total storage space. The 14.1-cubic-foot space atop the engine will accept two pairs of skis or a single golf bag, while the front trunk will hold a more normal duffel bag-shaped parcel.

Pliant suspension

The GT rolls on front springs that are 64 percent as stiff as those in the 720S, which contributes to a cushier ride for the long haul. The rear Z-bar anti-roll device is correspondingly softer to maintain balanced handling.

Trick doors

McLaren’s flip-up “dihedral” doors are sort of a hybrid between Lamborghini-style “scissor” doors that flip forward and, say, the Ford GT, whose gullwing doors are hinged in the center of the roof.

These alternative kinds of doors can make ingress and egress challenging, but McLaren cuts out enough of the roof as part of the door to make it a little easier getting in.

For the GT, they’ve improved the doors by also cutting back into the bottom of the door jamb, so you stand closer to the seats when getting in or climbing out. This contributes to making dramatic doors more tolerable, especially if the driver chooses to wear a dress.

New infotainment

Track rats might have tolerated McLaren’s obtuse infotainment interface, but luxury-oriented GT drivers probably have no patience for such things. Fortunately, McLaren has installed new hardware and software to support its iPad Mini-sized, vertically oriented infotainment display.

Now, it is backed by a ten-core processor that is five times faster than the old chip, and it displays navigation information from the HERE network. The system’s menu system has been flattened, making it quicker and easier to get to important functions too.

Real seats

Too many supercars are fitted with torturous, fixed, one-piece carbon fiber racing seats. The GT, in contrast, features adjustable seats that are packed with support for the back and shoulders and wrapped in soft nappa leather to cosset the occupants. The front wheelwells intrude into the GT’s footwells, impeding long-term comfort, but the seats are opulent and will keep occupants happy even when slogging through the kind of resort traffic we encounted approaching our hotel following a drive through the Alps Maritimes.

In those mountains, the GT showed that its driving pedigree had not been compromised in any discernible way, even if a stopwatch or radar gun reveals that the 720S is faster. Preserving the McLaren carbon fiber chassis and mid-engine layout lets the GT retain a center of gravity near the driver’s hips rather than near the car’s dashboard.

The GT’s responsive driving dynamics flow directly from the sound fundamentals, without the manufacturer having to try to shore up fundamental weaknesses with unyielding springs, shock absorbers and sway bars.

Rolling into the Cannes Intercontinental hotel behind the wheel of a gorgeous dream car like the GT will not result in your needing to be extracted from the car with the doorman’s assistance, thanks to the comfort the car provides.

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Lamborghini previewed the future of its hyper-performance cars with the announcement of the Sián, a hybrid-electric V12 that is the marque’s fastest and most powerful model yet. At 819 horsepower, the Sián (Bolognese slang for a flash of lightning) rockets to 62 mph in just 2.8 seconds. Its top speed exceeds 217 mph.

To achieve this performance, Lamborghini is employing a 48-volt, 34-horsepower hybrid electric motor built into the car’s transmission to supplement the 6.5-liter V12’s 785 horsepower. To maximize the effect of the electric motor, it is powered by a supercapacitor rather than the usual lithium-ion battery pack. These cells don’t hold a charge as long as a typical battery, but they charge in quickly and in short bursts. It’s similar to the tech Samsung uses to quickly charge the battery in the S-Pen stylus that comes with its Galaxy Note 10 smartphone.

The result is a very lightweight 75-lb. system that can very quickly absorb energy during braking and unleash it during acceleration. The electric motor also works in low-speed situations, such as parking, to make mundane chores a little easier in what would otherwise be a high-strung thoroughbred.

It also provides torque to smooth acceleration during gearshifts. Lamborghini’s old-tech automated shifting manual transmission can seem jerky when driven on the street, especially if the driver is expecting the experience of an automatic transmission. We’ve found that in track mode, those jerky shifts smooth out, but most of the time these cars will be driving on the road, where wide-open throttle track mode shift probably aren’t appropriate, so the smoother experience of the hybrid-electric-fortified transmission will surely be welcome.

And if the system means that I’ll be able to creep out of my neighborhood on electric power when testing Lamborghinis rather than annoying my neighbors with the bark of a lightly muffled V12 in the morning, that will surely be appreciated too.

There won’t be any Sián test cars, however, because this is a limited-production run of just 63 cars, all of which have already been sold. Lamborghini chose that number because it the year Automobili Lamborghini was founded. The original tractor company pre-dated the car company.

Lamborghini has openly spoken of its intent to apply hybrid-electric assistance to its iconic naturally aspirated V12 engines rather than turbocharge them in pursuit of improved performance.

Turbocharging provides such performance benefits, along with some efficiency gains in a carefully managed window of operation, so most car makers expect to apply forced induction universally to their gasoline engines in the same way that turbodiesels long ago pushed naturally aspirated diesels to extinction.

But turbocharging fundamentally changes the character of an engine. The “on steroids” headline cliche is apt; turbocharged engines are stronger than naturally aspirated ones, with muscle from low revs, while regular engines need to spin up to make power.

The turbines in the exhaust stream that recover otherwise lost energy also change the engine’s voice. In family cars, looking to boost power and efficiency, the change is irrelevant. When that voice is that of a shrieking Lamborghini V12 clawing its way to redline, the loss is comparable to defacing the Mona Lisa.

Which is why Lamborghini has eschewed turbos for the Sián, and says it plans to do so for other upcoming models.

Each of the 63 Sián Lamborghini builds will be distinctly unique, designed to the customer’s preferences in consultation with Lamborghini’s Centro Stile through the Ad Personam customization program.

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After months of previews, Porsche has finally revealed its first step into a post-combustion car market with the introduction of the 2020 Taycan. The 750-horsepower, 774 lb.-ft. all-wheel drive, four-door rocket ship launches to 60 mph in as little as 2.6 seconds and reaches a top speed of 161 mph.

That’s in $187,610 Turbo S form, with the Overboost and launch control performance options set to maximum, as we’ve seen previously with Tesla’s “Ludicrous” mode. Electric vehicle batteries like to be treated more gingerly than that for maximum life, which is why EV makers have a special mode to deliver maximum performance rather than just having it on tap all the time.

The Taycan has turned a 7:42 lap of the Nurburgring, which doesn’t break any records, but does put it on par with older mid-engine V12 supercars like the Lamborghini Murcielago and the Pagani Zonda.

While existing EVs can often achieve eye-popping performance over short distances, they tend to overheat and switch to a lower-powered mode to protect their components. Porsche kept going with the Taycan beyond its fast lap, achieving a distance of more than 2,100 miles over 24 hours for an average of nearly 90 mph even with the stopped time for charging.

The $153,310 Turbo is rated at 670 hp and 626 lb.-ft., and these two high-end models will be the only available versions of the Taycan (pronounced “Tie-con”) at launch, with regular base models to follow later.

Porsche has decided, apparently, that it has so much equity in the Turbo nomenclature that it is going to continue using it for non-combustion performance models. This is part of the company’s greater migration toward an electrified fleet that will total half of the brand’s sales by 2025, according to Detlev von Platen, Porsche’s board member for sales and marketing.

“Porsche is moving from being a builder of sports cars to being a provider of sporty and exclusive mobility,” he explained at the Taycan’s media introduction in Niagara Falls. If Porsche fans aren’t quite ready for non-turbocharged Turbos, well, Porsche isn’t waiting for their permission.

The official driving range rating for the 93.4-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack is 280 miles on the European driving cycle. There are no official EPA range numbers yet, but its charging time from 5 percent to 80 percent can be as little as 22.5 minutes using a 270-kilowatt DC quick charger. This speedy time is possible because the Taycan is the world’s first 800-volt EV, rather than the 400-volt level that is the current standard.

Another innovation is the use of a two-speed transmission for the rear axle and electric motor. This gives the Taycan stronger acceleration without over speeding the electric motor at high speeds. Two-speed transmissions are a common announcement component that has so far not achieved production in an EV because of the punishing torque delivered by electric motors. The original Tesla Roadster was supposed to use one, but the company changed to a direct drive system before production.

Porsche claims the Taycan’s motors have the most power from the least space of any in the industry. This is thanks to “hairpin” windings of the stator coils, which pack more copper into less volume than is otherwise possible, according to the company.

In keeping with the Taycan’s high-tech theme, the cabin is awash in screen real estate and sparing in the use of traditional switches and knobs. One prominent knob on the steering wheel lets drivers select among drive modes; Normal, Sport, Sport Plus, Range and Individual.

This adjusts the Porsche 4D Chassis Control, which the company says “analyzes and synchronizes all chassis systems in real-time.” These systems include Porsche Active Suspension Management electronic damper control, Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control Sport electromechanical roll stabilization, Porsche Torque Vectoring for the car’s all-wheel-drive system.

While the Taycan has the now-typical array of display screens seen in most premium cars, with a digital instrument panel and two screens in the center of the dashboard, the car also has an optional fourth display in front of the passenger seat. This one lets the passenger use the GPS navigation system while the car is in motion with none of the driver lockouts applied to the other screens that are within the driver’s reach.

While the Taycan’s silhouette is reminiscent of the Panamera, it is a smaller car, with cabin space more similar to that of the Aston Martin Rapide sedan. Sliding into any of the Taycan’s four sport seats cocoons the occupant into place. There’s no excess of rear-seat legroom, but a six-footer can sit comfortably behind another six-footer in the front seat.

Luggage space is similarly snug, with a small 2.8-cubic-foot front bin and a 12.9-cubic-foot trunk that will require some thought while packing for four people. But the Taycan looks as futuristically exotic as Doc Brown’s DeLorean ever did, so perhaps where the Taycan is going, we don’t need suitcases.

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Bugatti’s 1,500-horsepower Chiron hypercar has reclaimed the world speed record for production cars with a run of 304.773 mph, making the French luxury marque the first to top 300 mph in a production model.

The Chiron seemed destined to be the world’s first production car to top 300 mph when it was introduced as the replacement for the Veyron. After all, that car held the record of 267.8 mph, and the Chiron is more powerful.

Especially after Swedish rival Koenigsegg wrested the record away in 2017 with a run of 284 mph in that company’s Agera RS.

The record-setting car drew its power from an 8.0-liter, W16 engine, but a run like this requires more than pure power.

At speeds faster than 150 mph, cars become aircraft first and ground vehicles second, as aerodynamic forces become stronger than gravity and friction, so Bugatti was understandably wary of pursuing records. This modified version of the Chiron sits lower and has a 10-inch longer body than the production version.

Indeed, now that it has been the first brand to exceed 300 mph, Bugatti has pre-emptively withdrawn from any further top speed competitions. “In future we will focus on other areas” explained Stephan Winkelmann, President of Bugatti.

This is because the technical obstacles to safely going that fast in a ground vehicle are formidable, and no car maker wants to be associated with the negative results of careless attempts at record speeds. Bugatti maximized the safety of this attempt in every respect.

The driver was Andy Wallace. If that name rings a bell, it might be because he previously set the 243 mph top speed record in a McLaren F1.

The Chiron was reinforced with a safety cage to protect Wallace and of course, he used a full six-point racing harness, fire suit and helmet for the record attempt. Bugatti selected the test track at Ehra-Lessien in Lower Saxony, Germany for the record run. This was also the same venue where Wallace piloted the McLaren F1 to its earlier record.

The circuit lies nearly at sea level, which is good for engine power, but the same dense air that contributes to horsepower becomes a virtual impenetrable wall at such ludicrous speed. Nevertheless, Bugatti likes the track because it is lined with guard rails for its entire 13-mile length and has safety crews positioned at both ends of the course.

“A world record attempt at such an extreme speed of over 400 kph (250 mph) always involves a certain risk,” remarked Bugatti head of development Stefan Ellrott. “Everything has to be right – the car, the weather and the track. Ehra-Lessien offers the greatest possible safety, which is why we opted for this track.”

Indeed, the team, whose effort was backed by Italian IndyCar constructor Dallara, which has experience operating cars at very high speeds, employed the equivalent of the world’s largest lint roller to clean the track surface of any stones or grit prior to the run.

If there was any one primary obstacle to driving 300 mph, it was the tires. At such speeds, they spin at 4,100 rpm, generating forces of 5300 g. Michelin supplied reinforced Pilot Sport Cup 2 high-performance tires for the effort, testing them at 318 mph on a test bench to ensure they can take the extreme forces at such speeds. The tires used on the car were individually x-rayed to ensure flawless construction.

Such extensive preparation may seem like overkill, but Wallace is well aware of the hazards presented by these speeds.

“I think most people have been 150 mph at some time during their life,” said Wallace, perhaps optimistically. “If you then add just 30 to make it 180 mph, that’s a whole different world. Then when you get to 200, it’s a lot faster than 180. But when you’re talking about 300, it’s a massive, massive step.”

To reach terminal velocity on the track’s 5.5-mile straight, Wallace had to exit the preceding curve at 124 mph before holding the gas pedal to the floor for 70 continuous seconds to reach the target speed. That left him a little more than a mile to slow back to 124 mph for the onrushing curve.

“A world record attempt on an open track can have a few surprises in store,” noted Ellrott. “We were lucky today and everything went well.” Unlike so many gamblers, Bugatti has decided to get up from the table with all its winnings and turn its attention to different challenges for future models. Now, no rival can ever be the first to reach 300 mph, no matter how fast they might go.

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Steering a car while strapped tightly into a seat as may look more like relaxation than exertion. But piloting a race car is a draining effort that demands everything from the athletes of Formula 1, Indy Car, Nascar, and Le Mans sports cars.

This is why increasing numbers of race drivers are undertaking serious training routines to optimize their fitness. Explosive strength might not be absolutely necessary for success, but both physical and mental endurance are crucial, especially late in the race, when fatigue is taking its toll and the stakes are highest.

Nascar’s Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. have taken up serious cycling, and Johnson ran the New York Marathon earlier this year. Recently retired F1 pilot Fernando Alonso is such a serious cyclist that there was speculation that he could launch his own team for the Tour de France.

Martin Poole is the personal trainer for Renault F1 Team driver Nico Hulkenberg, so he has an inside view of the fitness demands on today’s racers. He says that Hulkenberg prefers running to cycling because biking can add muscle that is counterproductive when every ounce of extra weight slows the car. “We find that cycling puts on some muscle mass that is not so great for us,” he says.

Away-from-the track training produces drivers whose VO2 max scores are typically in the range of 55 to 65, according to Poole. This is a common metric for evaluating the overall fitness of an athlete. The Livestrong health site says that trained individuals normally fall around 50, and that elite athletes are normally over 60.

We can see how hard they are working by monitoring their heartrates, which climb during stressful situations such as qualifying laps, starting laps, rain racing and the final laps as drivers fight for finishing position.

“A driver’s heart rate over the course of a one and a half hour or two-hour race, on average, would be around 150 beats per minute,” Poole reported. “It would peak around 170 to 180 beats per minute, which does depend on the individual and their own heartrate response.”

Recent NASA descriptions of the Apollo 11 moon landing for its 50th anniversary similarly revealed that during the crucial descent to the moon’s surface, when they found the intended landing site rougher than expected and decided to fly further along in search of a better spot, Neil Armstrong’s heartrate climbed to 150.

It’s not just the racing action that raises heart rate BPM—pitstops can be particularly stressful. That’s because drivers will typically push to go as fast as possible on the lap when they plan to stop in the hopes of getting an advantage over their opponents’ stop. This makes it possible to gain a position with the risk of overtaking the other car directly on the track.

“They’re encouraged by their race engineer to really push on that in-lap,” Poole said. “So the heart rate goes up then, because they are really putting everything into that in lap. They want to make sure they push that in lap right to the start of the pit lane.”

It is important to distinguish current drivers from those of the not-too-distant past, when visibly out-of-shape racers enjoyed significant success. That’s because they would probably not have been able to win so often against the modern crop of health-focused racers, Poole asserts.

“Yes, drivers do come in all different shapes and sizes,” he acknowledged. “In some ways you could say this is a non-athletic sport because you can be a little bit out of shape. Drivers over the years have proved that. There have been drivers where you can see that fitness isn’t their main priority, but they are still able to drive a Formula One car quite well.”

The catalyst for the change in Formula 1 was the success of seven-time world champion driver Michael Schumacher. “He was responsible for bringing in driver fitness training, and then other drivers started thinking, “Wow, maybe that’s what’s giving Michael this amazing edge and making him so competitive. Then philosophies changed and people started to take fitness more seriously in motor racing.”

The difference might not be easily visible to fans because the work the drivers are doing inside the car is not apparent. “During a race, looking from the outside, it is very easy to think that driving a Formula One car is not that physical because we just see the driver’s helmet and the top of the cockpit,” Poole noted. “We don’t see what’s happening.”

Inside the F1 cockpit, the driver endures abusive g-forces as the car corners and brakes its way around a circuit. The loads can be as high as five times the driver’s body weight, according to Poole.

“This is lateral Gs, also under braking as well,” said Poole. “It is very hard to describe how heavy the braking is. Even when they come off the accelerator, before they even apply the brakes, that force you get is almost like you are doing an emergency stop in your road car. It is extremely heavy and it is really violent.”

This is why drivers work to build leg strength and especially neck strength. “What we find works best is manual training,” Poole explained. “Often he’ll be seated maybe on a ball or something like this to create a bit of instability. I’ll stand behind him and create forces on his head and vibrations with my hands. Rather than doing it with bands or with fixed-weight machines, this is way he finds is the best way to do it.”

This preparation causes race drivers to build large and strong neck muscles. “Nico’s sternocleidomastoid, the muscle in the neck, it is three times the size you’d ever see in anybody else,” he said.

Driver hydtration has improved in recent years, too. Today’s cars have powered water bottles in them that can squirt water into the driver’s mouth at the press of a button.

It sounds more helpful in theory than it is in practice, however, says Poole. That’s because drivers are busy, not just driving the car, but also adjusting its many settings through the steering wheel controls, so even at times when it seems like they would be able to push the water button, they might not be able to.

Excess heat inside the car warms up the water, which makes it unappealing to drink, he added. As a result, drivers may lose two liters of water during a race and drink only about half a liter during that time.

Does all this preparation make racers potentially competitive athletes in other sports? Probably not, observes Poole.

To be good at other sports requires practice playing those other sports, and anyone sufficiently dedicated to race driving to become a top professional hasn’t had time for that. “They’ve dedicated their lives to learning to drive cars,” said Poole.

“They were go-karting when they were kids. Sometimes you come across a 16-year-old racing driver with very bad hand-eye coordination. When I’m throwing balls to them when we’ve taken them to play tennis or squash, and they can’t even hit the ball; ‘What’s going on here?’ Because every single weekend of their childhood they’ve spent at a kart track.”

If we’ll never be as good as they are at driving, maybe we can beat them at our own favorite sports activities. “We find they are not that good at many other sports,” observed Poole. “As athletes they’re not always as adaptable as you’ll think they’ll be.”

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Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport scored its first victory of the Formula One hybrid-electric era at the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix, with driver Lewis Hamilton. That early system relied on discrete battery pack and power electronics modules that sent energy to and recovered it from a 60-kilowatt electric-assist motor. It also laid the groundwork for the mighty Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Coupe Electric Drive of 2013, according to Andy Cowell, managing director of Mercedes-AMG High-Performance Powertrains, in a video released by the F1 team.

Formula One termed these systems “Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems” or “KERS.” “Today we would call that a ‘regenerative braking system,’ recovering waste energy from the car,” said Cowell. “The mass and velocity of the car, recovering that energy through an electric motor, energy converted in the power electronics and stored in the cells of the energy store, then using that energy to then propel the car as the car accelerates.”

While hybrid-electric production models seek to improve fuel efficiency, the technology at work is the same. “In motorsport we use it to go quicker, in the road car world we use it to go further with the same amount of fuel,” he explained.

The motorsport world is also noted for its relentless development pace, and that has seen Mercedes make impressive progress on its technology since the beginning. The prototype system first tested in 2007 was larger and heavier, at 236 pounds. By the time Hamilton won the Hungarian Grand Prix two years later, the race system was whittled down to 55.8 pounds, and system efficiency improved from 39 percent to 70 percent.

“Two years later in 2011, we had taken these two units and combined them into this single box, where we had the energy store system, the control electronics, and the computation to manage it,” explained Cowell.

The real advance came a few years later. “This has then evolved in 2014 into a slightly larger box, but it’s got double the energy store in it, three times the amount of power delivered, two inverters and significantly more processing power,” he said.

Today, the module containing the batteries weighs only 44 pounds, which is the lightest permitted by F1 regulations. A 12-fold increase in the energy density of the battery cells lets the pack provide 200 kW of boost, while efficiency has climbed to 96 percent.

An increase in overall system voltage has driven these improvements. “The higher you go in voltage the lower you go in current for the same amount of power,” said Cowell.

As with aerodynamic drag on the outside of the car, which increases with the square of vehicle speed, electrical losses within the drivetrain increase with the current pumping through the system.

That’s why today’s race car operates just shy of 1,000 volts, and has charted a course that production models can follow. “That is a journey that the road car world is also taking,” Cowell said. “A lot of the current systems operate at 400 volts. In a few years time we’ll see them go up to 800 volts and then get close to the thousand-volt mark.”

So while it may be difficult at times to see the connection between the speeding missiles on the Formula One circuit and efficient cars for commuting to work, that connection is there, Cowell insists. “All of this development work that goes on in Formula One does help feed into the learning journey that takes place in the road car world,” he said.

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Stopping the $3 million, 1,500-horsepower, 16-cylinder, 4,500-lb. Bugatti Chiron from its mind-boggling 261-mph top speed requires locomotive-scale brakes. But big, heavy calipers hinder crucial performance characteristics like ride and handling, so Bugatti has pioneered development of a laser-sintered, 3-D-printed titanium component that will slash the weight of the Chiron’s monstrous brake calipers by 40 percent.

Each titanium caliper weighs just 6.4 lbs., compared to 10.8 lbs. for the current aluminum units and thanks to the stiffness properties of titanium, the lighter printed part is stronger. They are the world’s first brake calipers to be produced by 3-D printing and the largest functional titanium 3-D printed components.

The Chiron currently in production employs forged aluminum, eight-piston front calipers and six-piston rear calipers. The fronts are the largest brake calipers on any production car in the world.

Because of titanium’s extra strength, it is impossible to make titanium calipers using the same milling and forging techniques as employed for the aluminum parts. By switching to 3-D printing, it is possible to create very complex shapes that are lighter still.

The delicately shaped final part has wall thicknesses between 1mm and 4mm. This is possible in part due to the selection of the very high-grade aerospace titanium alloy, Ti6AI4V. It is mainly used for highly stressed aircraft undercarriage and wing components or in aircraft and rocket engines, according to Bugatti.

“In terms of volume, this is the largest functional component produced from titanium by additive manufacturing methods,” Frank Götzke, head of new technologies in the Technical Development Department of Bugatti Automobiles Engineering, development and prototyping of the first part took only three months. German additive manufacturing specialist Laser Zentrum Nord handled the production with what was the world’s largest titanium 3-D printer at the time. It is outfitted with four 400-watt lasers for melting 2,213 layers of the titanium powder over 45 hours.

Once the part emerges from the printer, Bugatti engineers heat-treat the caliper to 1,300 degrees F and gradually reduce the heat to 200 degrees, which eliminates residual stresses in the part and ensures dimensional stability.

Then they remove the brackets and braces that were printed in place as supporting structure. Finally, a five-axis milling machine grinds all the critical mating surfaces smooth over in an 11-hour process. The final product can endure 1,850-degree F temperatures according to brake dynamometer testing.

As a member company of the Volkswagen Group, Bugatti serves to pioneer technologies too costly for cars affordable by mere mortals, so even 3-D printed titanium can be expected to find its way into other applications.

“Everyone can and should benefit from our projects,” Götzke said. “This is also part of Bugatti’s role as the Group laboratory for high-tech applications.”

Bugatti has also printed a 25-inch lightweight aluminum windshield wiper board as an example. The board weighs just under a pound, which is half the weight of a conventional die-cast lightweight aluminum board, with the same rigidity.

So maybe this technology will soon trickle down to VW Group brands like Bentley and Bugatti, but you probably shouldn’t expect to see any 3-D-printed titanium on your next VW Golf.

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You’ve probably heard the joke about how various northern states have two seasons: winter and highway construction season. That’s because big road repair projects often take months and severely disrupt residents’ mobility. Recently, however, the Virginia Department of Transportation swapped a worn out 61-year-old bridge for brand new one in just a weekend in an amazing time-lapse video depicting the process.

In this case, the bridge was one of several in the complicated Seven Corners intersection in Falls Church, Va. The overpass crosses U.S. Route 50, a very busy commuter route in suburban Washington D.C., and the usual months-long process of demolishing the old bridge and putting up a new one would have created a traffic headache in an area that already has enough of them.

So VDOT’s Northern Virginia office got the idea to do the NASCAR pit stop version of bridge replacement instead. Replacing an 87-foot span of concrete and steel in just 54 hours was an amazing accomplishment that was based on exactly the same kind of planning and preparation.

When the weather forecast looked acceptable for the weekend of Aug 2-4, the team sprung into action. In NASCAR, they don’t remove a wheel from the car, take it to the tire-changing machine, remove the tire from the wheel, mount a new tire, balance it and then carry it back to the car to be reattached. They have four new wheels ready with new tires already mounted on them, ready to be swapped into place.

That’s exactly what VDOT did, by building the replacement bridge in pieces nearby and loading them onto trucks, so everything was at the ready. They not only pre-cast all the concrete pieces rather than pouring concrete onto the bridge deck and waiting for it to cure, they even pre-fit all the pieces together to ensure everything would work together. They also upgraded the bridge’s abutments ahead of time, to be ready for the new span.

Pulling all of these elements together required the right equipment. Just as NASCAR crews use powerful hydraulic jacks rather than the flimsy contraption in your car’s trunk, the VDOT team used a huge crane rated to lift 550 tons to move the 70-ton bridge pieces, said district bridge engineer for the project, Gary Runco. “It was worth it to pay a few extra dollars to be sure the crane absolutely would work,” he observed.

One important difference between this and a pit stop is that the old bridge was maybe more like your family car, whose wheels aren’t removed regularly. So, when the bridge replacement pit crew went to remove the old bridge’s bearings, they found them well stuck after more than six decades in place. As every DIYer expects on a project, of course the access to them was poor, making the job of breaking them loose even harder, Runco reported.

This was their first time doing a quick replacement, so the team also didn’t think to label all the parts when they pre-fit the bridge pieces together. This led to some head-scratching during the swap, as some of the diaphragms that connect bridge girders got mixed up and had to be sorted out during the operation.

Another hiccup in the operation came in estimating how far back to cut the so-called “cheek” walls of the concrete to make room for the new bridge to fit into place, leaving workers to cut out a bit more room during the installation. For a first-time effort, it is incredible that the team was able to execute it with so few surprises and finish right on time in a schedule that wisely anticipated some delays.

Unsurprisingly, many residents are thrilled with the quick-change operation. “We’ve had no complaints and a lot of accolades for getting it done so quickly,” said Runco. Doing so increased the price tag by about 33 percent over traditional methods, but provided a huge benefit in terms of reduced disruption.

After such a successful first effort, VDOT will be looking at other upcoming bridge replacements as candidates for this same quick-swap process to minimize interference with traffic flow, he said. “You can never justify anything with any delays if you include user cost” in the considerations, Runco explained.

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A turbocharged, Ferrari-built 590-horsepower 3.8-liter V8 engine makes the Levante Trofeo the most powerful production Maserati in the company’s storied history. The $169,980 vehicle is also the most exclusive, thanks to the availability of 400,000 option combinations, plus Maserati’s available personalization program.

For the uninitiated, Maserati is one of Italy’s old’s exotic car brands, founded in 1914 as an engineering company; it’s been building sexy Italian automobiles since 1926. Today, it is one brand in the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles group, alongside its neighbor, Ferrari. The two companies cooperate on technology, and Maserati relies on Ferrari for its cars’ V8 engines.

Sales of 55,000 Levantes since the car’s launch in 2016 make it the best-selling Maserati ever. And its crossover SUV body style, and sophisticated all-wheel drive system, make it the most capable off-road Maserati ever, too. Active suspension, computer-controlled all-wheel drive and turbo power let the Levante Trofeo transform between an Italian hot rod and an off-roading beast literally by pushing a button. By switching modes, the vehicle will move from having 6.9 inches of clearance all the way up 9.85 inches.

Off-roading

We put this vehicle to the test in a quarry outside the company’s Modena, Italy headquarters, where the rip-snorting, track-ready Levante Trofeo crawled effortlessly up absurdly steep inclines, rolled over blind crests, and sure-footedly descended from what felt like a cliff’s edge with the security of electronic hill descent control.

The Trofeo’s V8 engine is derived from the one seen previously in Maerati’s flagship Quattroporte GTS sedan. Revised turbocharger impellers boost airflow, while higher-lift camshafts and freer-flowing valves let the air from those turbos blow through the engine more efficiently. A reprogrammed engine management computer wrings the most out of this new hardware to produce the Trofeo’s 590 horsepower.

The turbo V8 drives all four wheels through a new 8-speed automatic transmission from the German specialist ZF. The Q4 Intelligent All-Wheel Drives sends 100 percent of the power to the rear wheels under most circumstances, lending the Levante Trofeo the lively rear-drive steering response fans expect of a Maserati. It only diverts power to the front when needed—like when you’ve foolishly decided to drive in a quarry.

At the airport

Tasking the front tires with handling both steering force and engine power means splitting the available traction between them. The result is that when driving fast on the street, the steering can be more sluggish, as more steering wheel angle is needed to get the same result. That’s why the Trofeo avoids sending power to the front wheels if it can.

Slicing through the mountains outside Modena, the Levante delivers on the promise of its Italian sports car heritage, with crisp turn-in and powerful cornering grip that combine to provide spirited driving without the drama that could be expected of a vehicle that is technically an SUV.

Power does go to the front wheels when performing drag-race-style acceleration runs at the Modena airport, where we were able to experience the Trofeo’s launch control system that works in concert with the all-wheel drive to produce 0-60 mph runs of 3.9 seconds.

Switch the Levante’s drive mode to “Corsa,” (Normal, Sport, Ice, and Off-Road modes are also available) and the Skyhook active suspension crouches down from an SUV-spec 8.25 inches to a more car-like 6.9 inches. In Off-Road mode, the Levante rises to a quarry-conquering 9.85 inches of ground clearance.

Corsa mode quickens the transmission’s response, dropping average shift times from 230 milliseconds to 150. Keep your foot down after the acceleration run, and the Trofeo will top 186 mph, making this Levante fully compliant with the Maserati requirements laid out in the classic Joe Walsh song, Life is Good. (“My Maserati goes one-eighty-five. I lost my license, now I don’t drive.”)

The party comes to an efficiently quick end thanks to the six-piston Brembo front brake calipers squeezing monstrous 380 mm front rotors, with 330 mm rotors at the rear. The anti-lock brake software is recalibrated for the V8 to permit a little sportier response.

Channeling all of this accelerative and decelerative power to the tarmac is Maserati’s first-ever set of 22-inch forged aluminum wheels mounted with Continental’s SportContact6 tires for peak performance from tires that can withstand the Trofeo’s 4,784-pound mass. Rapid driving through switchbacks demonstrated that the tires are up to the task, a reality made all the more astounding by their simultaneous ability to claw the Levante up rocky inclines.

The driver gets to appreciate these capabilities from inside a lavish cabin. Classic Maseratis had nice-looking leather-wrapped cockpits that were frequently assembled with evident indifference. And while they looked great, those classic Italian cars’ interiors were burdened with ridiculous ergonomics that required drivers to steer from the bottom edge of a forward-tilted steering wheel.

Not so in the Levante. Its control placement and seating feel similar to the layout of its Jeep Grand Cherokee corporate cousin, from which the Levante borrows fundamental underpinnings.

Ultimately, unlike the original Levante V6, which fell decidedly short of the Maserati legend in terms of performance, the Trofeo is indeed a true Maserati—as befits the most powerful and best-selling production car in Maserati’s history.

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While electric drive provides environmental benefits, it has characteristics that make it ideal for prestige vehicles too. In addition to using increased efficiently over gas-powered vehicles, EVs are smooth, silent and powerful. Those are all traits traditionally assigned to posh luxury vehicles from carmakers like Bentley. They have normally achieved this by adding many cylinders, as in the Bentley Bentayga W12.

The new Bentayga Hybrid, however, matches an electric drive system with a turbocharged gasoline V6 engine.

From this starting point, Bentley is targeting a full battery EV like the EXP 100 GT by the end of 2025. Bentley has a tradition of showing daring EXP concept cars and then launching production models that incorporate some of their flavor without being actual replicas of the concepts.

The new Bentley Continental GT shows the influence of the earlier EXP 10 Speed 6 concept, but with the expected accommodations for manufacturing and road-driving realities, and so it will likely go with the EXP 100 GT’s eventual production descendent.

Bentley’s current schedule is to roll out the Bentayga hybrid to U.S. showrooms by early 2020, and to electrify every Bentley model with some degree of hybridization by 2023, according to spokesman Wayne Bruce. Finally, by the end of 2025, Bentley will roll out its first full battery-electric model, he added.

With its hybrids, the company hopes to maintain its level of performance, while totally cutting emissions during city driving. As the world’s largest cities that are home to many Bentley customers are increasingly requiring emissions-free operation in their center cores. Bentley says the Bentayga Hybrid can drive 30 miles on electric power alone on the European testing cycle, and our miles behind the wheel in the San Francisco area mirrored that range estimate. The EPA, on the other hand, says it will only go 16 miles on battery power, and perhaps that will be the case when it is cold and dark rather than warm and sunny.

The car’s computer knows how quickly it is using its stored electricity and it projects an estimated driving radius from its current location onto the navigation system’s map. Because the roads don’t lead directly in all directions, there is traffic along some portions of available routes and hills that distance varies, the resulting range outline has an irregular shape has been dubbed the ‘fried egg’ by Bentley insiders. This is the sort of technology that will only become more crucial for future electric-only Bentleys like the production version of the EXP 100 GT.

Charging time with a proper home charger is two and half hours, and plugging into a regular 110-volt wall outlet will top off the 13 kilowatt-hour battery pack in seven and a half hours.

The Bentayga Hybrid has three driver-selectable modes: EV Drive, Hybrid, and Hold. In EV Drive mode, the Bentayga relies on its 126-horsepower, 258 pound-feet, electric drive system to whoosh silently around town.

It is more hushed and placid than anyone could hope for a Bentley at parking lots and around-town speeds. As with other plug-in electrics, at highway speed road and wind noise become prominent enough that the power source doesn’t matter as much, so it is harder to appreciate the silence of the electric drive while cruising the Interstate, though it can reach 84 mph on electric power alone.

In Hybrid mode, the 335 horsepower, 332 pound-feet turbocharged gasoline 3.0-liter V6 engine comes online as needed, combining with the electric drive for 443 horsepower. You’ll notice this number does not equal the peak power of each of the two drive systems. That is because gas and electric motors produce their peak power under different circumstances, and so they will not both hit their peaks at the same time.

In this mode, the Bentayga tends to use the electric motor for a quiet, torquey launch and then blends in the gas engine as the vehicle gains a little speed. As a hybrid, the Bentayga feels exactly like a regular gas Bentayga, but one that uses less fuel.

Hold mode keeps the battery topped up rather than depleting it to save fuel. In this mode, the Bentayga Hybrid offers maximum performance because the battery is always available to provide some assistance to the gas motor as needed.

Bentley says the Hybrid will scoot from a standstill to 60 mph in 5.2 seconds and that it reaches a top speed of 158 mph.

Another component of Bentley’s electric drive future is also available now: a Phillipe Starck-designed home charging unit made using “pressed eco-linen with bio-sourced thermosetting resin” and a “hot-pressed aluminum casting.” Bentley says the aim was to provide “a functional piece of art that will enhance any home,” rather than an industrial-looking tangle of cables like the ones behind your TV.

The EXP 100 GT concept forecasts a future when the all-wheel-drive, all-electric drive system will apply 50 percent more power from 35 percent less mass. This not only yields harder corning capability but also quicker acceleration. Sixty miles per hour is only 2.5 seconds away in the EXP 100 GT and top speed is 186 mph. But the battery has enough juice to cruise 425 miles at legal speeds and the advanced charging system will reach 80 percent battery capacity in just 15 minutes.

It has active air intakes in the front grille that not only channel cooling air to the batteries and power electronics but also routing some out the back of the car to reduce aerodynamic drag.

Naturally, the EXP 100 GT is expected to offer the choice of autonomous driving mode. When a car with capabilities like this arrive, it can trace its roots back to the 2020 Bentayga Hybrid.

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Consider these two vehicles, twins in both names and looks: the 2019 Porsche 911 GT2 RS, and the 2019 Porsche 911 GT3 RS.

The nearly indistinguishable designations of these cars—one has a “2” in the name, the other, a “3”—and their doppelganger appearance will lead fans to wonder what exactly the difference is between them. Our efforts to answer that question while driving them on the track identified one of the cars (the GT2) as almost incomprehensibly fast on the straights, while the other rips around corners with confidence.

Mat the accelerator and time slows down in the 700-horsepower GT2 RS. Road America’s 4,400-foot straightaway at its track in Wisconsin shrinks at your command. Plot a tangent into the ensuing turn in the GT3 RS, and the car bends into an obedient arc at improbable speed. Hyperspace jumps or precision turns? It is a tough call.

The family tree

Porsche’s iconic 911 sports car debuted in 1964 and has since evolved into a sometimes bewildering family of variants that include a coupe, targa, and convertible, as well as options like rear-wheel drive, all-wheel drive, and more.

The high-performance pinnacles of this family are the track-centric 911 GT2 RS and the GT3 RS. But the basic design of the 911 is sublime—a platform that is capable of impressive acrobatics. It’s considered to be an accessible high-performance sports car, so while the price does start at $91,100, that is far less expensive than other European super sports cars.

Climbing the 911 hierarchy to the very top, where the 911 GT2 RS and GT3 RS reside, means discovering a vehicle made of copious amounts of carbon fiber and magnesium instead of heavier material, and tires and brakes that are 100-percent ready to withstand the most furious track attack.

These substitutions leave the 911’s core intact, but they explain why the brilliant Guards Red GT2 RS’s price reached $328,880, while the gorgeous Lizard Green GT3 RS I tested has a bottom line on its window sticker of $209,320.

Both cars are equipped with generous amounts of carbon-fiber aerodynamic aids that give them the look of race cars that have been stripped of their numbers. There is a front splitter, fender flares with air extractor vents, side skirts, a diffuser, and an enormous rear wing.

Beneath the skin, on the receiving end of both cars’ various air intake scoops and vents, are an array of heat exchangers tasked with shedding the warmth generated in accelerating to, and decelerating from, the GT2 RS’s top speed of 211. Comparatively, the GT3 RS reaches a tortoise-like 198 mph.

‘RS’ means they go to 11

Both cars carry enlarged 23.7-gallon extended-range fuel tanks to permit longer track runs at the copious rate of consumption that occurs at such speeds, and they blast spent exhaust gas out through lightweight titanium mufflers that save 15 pounds of weight. Porsche even installs smartphone-style Gorilla Glass in the RS’s back window and rear side windows to save weight, compared to the heft of regular glass.

They both hold the RS designation, which indicates that they are a step beyond regular GT2 and GT3 models, and carry still more track-centric hardware. The differences can be subtle: In the case of the GT3 RS, it also means that the bodywork is 1.1 inches wider than that of the regular GT3.

The RS enjoys wider wheels and tires than a regular GT3 too, putting a larger contact patch onto the track for maximum grip. The rubber suspension bushings that filter the bumps of the real world are eliminated, leaving only metal bearings that convey instant and accurate feedback on the suspension’s activity. That’s a godsend on the race track. Whether you can actually live with it on the road probably depends on the street’s condition and your personal ability to tolerate discomfort.

Behind the wheel, both RS cars feature warm-to-the-touch carbon-fiber steering-wheel-mounted shift paddles in place of the regular GT2/GT3 cool-to-the-touch aluminum paddles. And carbon fiber racing seats also replace the regular Porsche sport seats. Naturally, these seats slide fore and aft to accommodate drivers of varying heights, but their one-piece design does not permit any adjustment to the seat back angle.

Those shift paddles control the action of the seven-speed dual-clutch Porsche Doppelkupplung (PDK) transmission used in both cars. Porsche pioneered development of dual-clutch transmission technology, and its mastery of the design is evident here, as the transmission works intuitively in automatic mode and clicks off seamless shifts with no evident interruption in power delivery when the driver prefers to pull the shift paddles manually.

It is equally proficient on downshifts, cascading down through the gears to help slow the car under heavy braking into Road America’s Canada Corner. I’ve never known the reason for that turn’s name, but I’ve always imagined it as a warning: Mess up this corner and your car will land in Canada.

Neither 911 came close to that fate, as the brakes, steering, throttle, and transmission conspired to hustle both the GT2 and GT3 through the Canada Corner with confidence and abundant speed.

They only look the same

But as similar as the cars seem to be, and as many components as they share, they are completely different to drive.

The GT2 RS is propelled by a twin-turbocharged 700-horsepower, 553 pound-feet, 3.8-liter version of Porsche’s signature flat six-cylinder engine. Maybe the neatest power-boosting feature is a 1.3-gallon tank of distilled water that sprays cooling mist onto its twin intercoolers when the intake temperature tops 122 degrees F, revs exceed 3,000 rpm, and the driver applies more than 90 percent throttle. This yields a power-enhancing 68-degree reduction in the temperature of air going into the engine. There’s a warning indicator when the total-loss reservoir is running low, letting drivers know when to pop the front trunk lid and top off the water in the tank.

For my laps in the GT2 RS, I was following pro racer David Donohue, who was piloting a 911 Turbo S to show the way and keep an eye on me. The 911 Turbo S is a 540-horsepower, 198-mph beast and it was being driven by a top sports car driver.

Nevertheless, there was no moment following him when I couldn’t command the GT2 RS to simply travel through hyperspace from wherever it was on the track to the Turbo’s rear bumper by simply flexing my right ankle. Its speed is absolutely astonishing.

There’s a ‘shriek’

The GT3 RS is a different beast. It is powered by a naturally-aspirated 520-horsepower, 346 pound-feet 4.0-liter flat six-cylinder. The engine spins to an impressive 9,000 rpm, which creates an otherworldly howl through the intake system, unimpeded by the obstruction of spinning turbines as in the GT2. This shriek provides a soundtrack that seems truly appropriate for the GT3 RS’s thrills.

However, where the GT2’s output seems incredible, the GT3’s seems ample. At no time does the GT3 RS feel slow, not even in direct comparison to the GT2 RS. It simply lacks the ability to warp space and pop out of a wormhole at the end of the front straight the way the GT2 RS does.

For that drive I was following retired sports car great and Le Mans-winner Hurley Haywood in an identical car. The only difference was that my GT3 RS, like the GT2 RS I drove, was fitted with the newest, highest-performance Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tires, instead of the previously available non-R Pilot Sport Cup 2s, which were on Haywood’s car.

These tires turned the already precise GT3 RS into an otherworldly cornering machine. In heavily-loaded turns like the Canada Corner, my GT3 RS unerringly tracked the scent of the car ahead. Meanwhile, the championship-winning driver ahead was fighting to balance his car’s slide as the last-generation tires simply couldn’t match Michelin’s newest rubber for grip and stability.

It was an amazing display, and one that underscored the GT3 RS’s handling prowess, which feels more agile than that of the GT2 RS, even on the same tires. The less-powerful car seems to turn in to corners more crisply and hold its line more accurately than the one that can summon crazy amount of speed on the next straight.

Forced to choose, I find myself preferring the precision of the GT3 RS over the stupendous speed of the GT2 RS. But in reality, it’s a question that has no wrong answer—as long as you’re cool with spending over $200,000.

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RM Sotheby’s auctioneers tout James Bond’s 1965 Aston Martin DB5 as the “world’s most famous car,” and it is hard to argue the point. Untold millions of Bond movie fans have fantasized about driving this cool Shadow Grey British sports car outfitted with all the hardware needed to fend off various baddies who have the temerity to take on 007 on the road.

More than 20 years after its debut, the arcade game Spy Hunter offered to put players in Bond’s driver’s seat, deploying the oil slicks, smoke screens, machine guns and tire-cutters as needed, although the game’s developers never concluded the necessary licensing agreement to put the spy’s name on the cabinet.

But, if you have a supervillain-worthy stash of cash, you can get the real thing, complete with all its original top-secret hardware restored and functional.

When James Bond’s signature Aston Martin DB5 debuted in 1964’s Goldfinger, filmmakers had to build cars that really featured the outlandish technology concocted by MI6 imagineer Q to aid 007 in his missions. Special effects artists didn’t have the digital effects that make modern movies so fast and furious.

For Bond’s Aston Martin, the special effects genius who later wowed audiences with his work on the original Star Wars created an amazing arsenal of weaponry for the super spy. It includes the bumper rams, machine guns, spinning tire slashers, a raised bulletproof rear screen, in-dash radar tracking scope, oil slick, tire spike, and smoke screen dispensers.

For shooting the original film, the studio built two cars, one outfitted with all the gadgets that was used for interior and close-up shots, and a lightweight car without the equipment that was used for the all the dynamic scenes.

When Thunderball, the serial’s next installment, followed in 1965, Aston Martin itself built two more Bond DB5s that were sent to America to promote the film. This, one of those two promotional cars that were built to exacting specifications by Aston Martin itself, is now heading to auction at the RM Sotheby’s sale at Monterey Car Week August 15-17.

Following a 35-year stint as the centerpiece exhibit in a museum, this Bond-mobile, and all of its equipment, was restored by Roos Engineering in Switzerland, one of 13 Aston-certified Heritage Specialists in the world. The work took four years, resulting in this better-than-new machine that will leave its new owner prepared to take on SPECTRE, or whatever new villains might arise.

While all of the movie-prop add-ons are said to work, “work” is probably a debatable description. The ejection seat doesn’t seem likely to do more that appear to work, and the ‘60s vintage in-dash radar navigation system, which only appears to show Britain, must only light up, because it has no actual navigational data.

Regardless, historian Stephen Archer, who rode in one of the cars in 1965, observed, “The DB5 is a special Aston, but this one has an aura all of its own. Just to be in its presence is exciting. The standard of Roos’ restoration is extremely impressive.”

The silver car also left lasting memories for Bond actor Sean Connery, who recently added a DB5 to his garage. “These DB5s are amazing. I remember the Furka Pass tire shredding, as well as the promotional events with these cars—they have become increasingly iconic since Goldfinger and Thunderball.”

Classic car insurance company Hagerty values a top-condition non-Bond DB5 at $1.5 million, so expect the auction to start there and go up.

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When Ferrari’s hybrid-electric LaFerrari debuted in 2013, the idea of a hybrid Ferrari, even one with 950 horsepower, seemed antithetical to the idea of the snorting prancing horse from Maranello.

The necessity of electric assistance has since become accepted, both to achieve higher performance and to permit vehicles to operate in European cities that restrict cars powered by combustion

Still, the announcement of the Ferrari SF90 (named for the 90th anniversary of the foundation of Scuderia Ferrari, Enzo’s racing team that predated his car-making company) comes as a bit of a shock: 986 total horsepower from an all-wheel drive hybrid-electric super sports car.

The LaFerrari, you might recall, was a V12-powered, limited-production flagship model. The SF90 is the successor to today’s 488GTB, the V8-powered entry-level sports car in Ferrari’s line.

While the LaFerrari’s sticker price was about $1.4 million, and the last car built, which was auctioned for charity, sold for $7 million, this faster entry-level machine should be available to regular Ferrari customers for a price approximating the $345,000 of the Ferrari Pista we tested recently.

The SF90 uses a twin-turbocharged V8 engine that is based on the one in the 710 horsepower Pista, but tuned for even more power, at 769 horsepower.. The SF90 not only has a more power combustion engine, but it has a trio of electric motors whose contribution brings the total system power to 986 horsepower.

One of the electric motors is connected to the combustion engine and sends its power through the SF90’s 8-speed dual-clutch transmission to the rear wheels in traditional Ferrari fashion. Each of the other two electric motors connects to the SF90’s front wheels, providing another route to get power to the pavement.

These contribute to 0-62 mph acceleration of a scant 2.5 seconds and to a top speed of 211 mph. Switched to electric mode for city driving, range is 15 miles using just the two electric motors powering the front wheels, making the SF90, at times, a front-drive Ferrari EV. What could be more responsible?

While the LaFerrari featured an all-carbon fiber chassis and the Pista’s is made of aluminum, the SF90 is built using an appropriately hybrid combination of both materials. The result is a structure that is 20 percent more resistant to bending forces and 40 percent more resistant to twisting without any increase in the weight of the chassis.

Ferrari achieved this by employing a carbon fiber rear bulkhead between the cockpit and the engine bay and substituting hollow aluminum castings for the previous ribbed castings.

Titanium components and changes in the exhaust system both help minimize weight too, but the addition of the 595-lb. hybrid drive system still pushes the SF90’s weight to 3,461 lbs.

While previous Ferraris have used the magnetorheological active shock absorber technology first pioneered for the Corvette and Cadillac models twenty years ago, the SF90 sports Multimatic’s Dynamic Suspensions Spool Valve (DSSV) technology that first appeared on the Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 before proliferating to cars like the Aston Martin One-77, Mercedes-AMG GT, Ford GT, Camaro ZL1 1LE, and Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 off-road truck.

In addition to the steering wheel-mounted control knob that Ferrari calls the Manettino, which controls settings for the Multimatic shocks, along with traction control, stability control and transmission shift characteristics, the SF90 adds a second such knob.

This is dubbed the eManettino, because it controls the SF90’s electric drive system, with four positions to select ‘eDrive’ for electric-only driving, ‘Hybrid’ for everyday driving, ‘Performance’ to emphasize speed over efficiency and ‘Qualify’ to maximize the available electric power.

As we’ve seen with the hybrid-electric all-wheel drive Acura NSX, the SF90 uses torque vectoring to all four wheels to help optimize the car’s handling in turns and electric brake-by-wire to maximize regeneration under braking. Early brake-by-wire systems were deficient in their response to pedal pressure and in the feedback they provided drivers, but Acura’s system in the NSX feels very confidence inspiring.

The only potential issue is that the feeling is entirely synthetic, so a car could convince the driver all is well with the brakes even when they have faded from excess heat build up from hard track driving. That seems unlikely, however, as Ferrari has collaborated with Brembo to develop brake calipers that incorporate cooling ducts meant to help manage brake temperatures.

The SF90’s 860 pounds of aerodynamic downforce presses the car to the road at 155 mph, which is perfect for hard laps at the track. The object, when designing the SF90’s body, was to minimize drag and maximize downforce while providing for the cooling necessary from a nearly-1000-horsepower drivetrain. This is in contrast to applying various additional aids to steer the air.

However, the SF90 has one active aerodynamic add-on it calls the ‘shut-off Gurney.’ It takes part of its name for the vertical lip applied to the trailing edge of wings that was innovated by the pioneering driver/engineer Dan Gurney, and the fact that it activates when the driver is braking, or ‘shutting off.’

This moveable flap deploys to uncover the powerful upper wing element at the rear of the car in fast corners, abrupt changes of direction or when braking, and Ferrari says it has applied for a patent on the design.

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Video simulation of racing has gone from an amusing, if not terribly faithful representation in games, to a genuinely valuable tool to an absolutely mandatory necessity as the technology has steadily improved.

The latest example of this progression was the recent test by ex-Formula 1 race driver Stoffel Vandoorne on the AOTech simulator near Paris in preparation for the upcoming 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance sports car race in June.

In the past, a team might have put a driver into a simulator to familiarize them better with the track in advance, but now the Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO) that runs the Le Mans race actually requires simulator time for new drivers before allowing them to run—even for drivers who were recently piloting Formula 1 cars.

While Vandoorne will likely spend some more time practicing on a virtual version of the track before the June race, to be allowed to participate he had six required aspects to complete: familiarization with the circuit, coping with changing weather conditions, driving in the dark, managing traffic day and night, memorizing the positions of the track marshals and a slow zone test.

“It was a good day, my first experience of Le Mans on this AOTech simulator,” Vandoone observed afterward. “I don’t know the circuit, so it was useful to see how to approach the turns, and how to manage traffic and the slow zones.”

The AOTech simulator can duplicate the experience of driving a range of race cars, including the Le Mans LMP1, LMP2 and LMP3 cars, plus formula cars like Formula V8 3.5, Formula E, Formula 4, GP2 and GP3.

The company points to the continuous development of its car and track models as contributing to the fidelity of its simulation. Red Bull Formula 1 driver supports this, saying, “The fact that AOTech engineers are real track engineers knowing the real tracks and the real cars is an important added value.”

Indianapolis 500 pole-winner Simon Pagenaud did countless hours of development work on the Honda Performance Development IndyCar simulator located in suburban Indianapolis so that Honda’s IndyCar customer teams could develop their cars in the virtual world.

“The resistance on the power steering is really close to the IndyCar, so that’s really impressive and we are getting really close to real life,” Pagenaud explained during his 2014 development effort.

Driving that simulator later that year, I found it to be impressively immersive, with realistic feedback from the steering wheel when turning and especially when driving over rumble strips and curbing at the track edge.

A tilting platform where the driver sits inside the shell of a race car back does a satisfactory job of simulating acceleartion, but braking still feels mostly like the platform is just tipping forward, as it is.

Discrepancies between platform motions and the images displayed on a simulator’s wrap around screen are the source of motion sickness problems in simulators, but even a few years ago, Honda’s system seemed to have that problem beaten.

The 2018 Le Mans-winning Toyota sports car team operates its own simulator at its German headquarters. Toyota describes its simulator as having a latency of 40 milliseconds for the video display and 50 milliseconds for the platform.

The 220-degree wraparound video image is a combination of five projectors of 1,400 x 1,050 dpi resolution that refresh at 100 HZs. The platform can move two feet vertically, sideways and fore-aft, and can yaw 38 degrees, roll 27 degrees and pitch 27 degrees.

The company states that “The accuracy of every track is assured thanks to an exhaustive development process featuring driver input and focusing on every detail, from the curb angles and track surfaces to background scenery and other visible features.”

Its system sits on a six-degrees of freedom electric motion platform that even replicates the effect of aerodynamic or mechanical changes, as well as tire wear and weather.

Toyota’s simulator employs laser-mapping technology to replicate 16 different tracks with what the company describes as “an unprecedented degree of accuracy.”

Maybe those of us who haven’t been fortunate enough to get to take a Formula 1 car for a spin can adjust our goals to targeting a turn in one of these virtual representations. Certainly crashing will be cheaper and safer.

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The Indianapolis 500 is dubbed “The Greatest Spectacle In Racing,” and for good cause. The event is held every Memorial Day weekend on the mammoth 2.5-mile oval track known as The Brickyard for the 3.2 million bricks originally used to pave its racing surface in 1909.

300,000 fans are expected to pack the grandstand and the sometimes-rowdy infield on Sunday to see 33 of the world’s fastest cars rocket around the ancient cathedral of speed for the 103rd running of the Indy 500, which started in 1911 and missed a few years due to World War II.

229.992 miles per hour

The cars really are fast. 2019 pole-sitter Simon Pageneaud averaged 229.992 miles per hour over the ten miles of his four-lap qualifying run, indicating that his car’s top speed on the straights was well over 230 mph. At those speeds, the 50-foot-wide straights look narrow as Diagon Alley.

The cars accelerate to 100 mph in about 3.0 seconds, which makes them 4 seconds quicker than that awesome Ferrari Pista we drove recently. For most production cars, getting from 0-60 in three seconds is an impressive feat.

700 Horsepower

Chevrolet and Honda are the two current suppliers of racing engines for the Indycar series. Their powerplants produce between 550 and 700 horsepower, depending on the track type.

They are 2.2-liter twin-turbocharged, direct-injected V6 engines that run at 12,000 rpm during the race. While Indycars once burned pure, clear-burning methanol fuel, today’s cars burn E85 ethanol/gasoline mix that provides the high-octane power benefits of alcohol fuel, but one that burns with a visible flame so that fire are easier to spot and extinguish.

5,000 pounds of downforce

All drivers pilot an IR-12 race car provided by the Italian racing specialist Dallara. The car’s bodywork was revised by British designer Chris Beatty in 2018 to give the car the stylish lines fans demand along. The body provides aerodynamic characteristics aimed at improving the cars’ ability to race in close quarters. Features like wings, undertray and diffuser can create 5,000 lbs. of traction-enhancing downforce at 220 mph.

3-inches of titanium

The 2019 Dallara IR-12 includes a new detail called Advanced Frontal Protection ahead of the cockpit. Where Formula 1 has introduced the Halo device to protect drivers from being hit in the head by flying debris of the sort that killed Indycar racer Justin Wilson in 2015, Indycar has introduced a three-inch-high titanium blade directly ahead of the driver that is intended to deflect incoming debris from the driver’s helmet.

The AFP, which has been in testing for months, makes its competition debut in the Indy 500.

The cars also feature the Suspension Wheel/Wing Energy Management System, which is a long way to say “tethers,” which are meant to restrain parts that might fly off in a crash. The Zylon tethers bolt the car’s suspension, wings and nosecone to the car so they don’t fly away following an impact.

Who’s On first?

Or in this case, who’s in first? Tracking car’s relative positions can be challenging during a race, so Indycar has introduced a digital display for the side of cars’ roll hoops that indicate the car’s position, when the driver has activated “push to pass” mode for a brief power boost and, during pit stops, a countdown clock indicating how quickly the crew has serviced the car.

Indycar attempted to employ a similar system last year, but discontinued it because of unsatisfactory performance. This year’s system comes from MoTec, a respected racing data computer company.

6,000 tires

Exclusive IndyCar tire provider Firestone supplies more than 6,000 Firehawk racing tires to teams for practice, qualifying and the race at Indianapolis. That’s 36 sets of four tires for each car participating.

The tires are designed so that the right-side tires are about 0.3 inches larger in diameter to help push the car to the left in the turns. The 2019-specification tires see a new construction and rubber compound for the heavily loaded right-side tires, while the left-side tires feature a new compound only.

Seven previous champs

There are seven previous Indy 500 champions in this year’s race; Helio Castroneves won three times (2001, 2002, and 2009), while Scott Dixon (2008), Tony Kanaan (2013), Ryan Hunter-Reay (2014), Alexander Rossi (2016), Takuma Sato (2017) and Will Power (2018) each won the race once.

No driver enters the 500 with more momentum than the others, as there have been five different winners in the five races held so far this season.

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“What can you even do with that?”

That was the question, asked by a local police officer who had motioned for me to lower the window of a supercar I was driving not long ago. Indeed, where can a car nut properly exercise thoroughbred machinery that is built to go 200 mph?

The answer is, “Where there are no police officers handing out speeding tickets; the race track.” Driving on a track can be a daunting experience for drivers whose speed background is limited to beating a red light. And it can also be a tough place for production street cars, even pretty red ones from Maranello.

That’s because street tires and brakes wilt under the relentless strain of lapping a track. Shock absorbers get hot and lose effectiveness too, leaving the car free to bounce around more than it should, with the total effect being a car that is challenging to control.

Ferrari aims to address these quandaries with the Pista, a track-centric version of the company’s blazing quick 488 GTB and with Corso Pilota, the company’s $10,000, two-day program with professional coaching and data analysis to help Ferrari owners enjoy their cars.

Divers can choose the 488 GTB or the 812 Superfast, but the Pista is the most prepared for the track. Corso Pilota instructors’ success in developing you into the lean, mean, driving machine you imagine yourself to be probably depends a bit on your aptitude and your responsiveness to instruction. The car, however, remains a constant.

The Pista’s suitability as a track weapon is unquestioned, starting from the solid foundation of the 488 GTB.

Boost engaged

The 488 is Ferrari’s first production mid-engine sports car to use turbocharging to boost power. The 288 GTO of the 1980s also featured forced induction, but that was a limited production model based on Magnum P.I.’s famous 308 GTS.

To start, the Pista’s version of the 3.9-liter twin-turbocharged V8 engine from the 488 is pumped up to 710 horsepower, making it the most powerful Ferrari V8 ever. The 49-horsepower increase in power compared to the 488 represents the biggest bump for Ferrari’s track variant yet.

Official performance numbers are 2.85 second 0-62 mph (100 kph) acceleration and a top speed higher than 211 mph.

One source of the Pista’s added power is enlarged turbochargers that can spin faster than those on the 488 because engineers installed sensors that directly measure their rpm. Normally, carmakers estimate turbos’ speed, so they leave a cushy safety margin rather than spinning them right up to their maximum to avoid accidentally going over. By sensing their speed directly, Ferrari can spin the Pista’s turbos right up to their limit, extracting maximum possible boost.

Of course, the rest of the engine also has to be able to withstand the resulting stress of the higher boost, so those are racing-grade titanium connecting rods in there now, and the crankshaft and flywheel are lighter. Ferrari also shaved mass from the powertrain by installing a carbon fiber intake plenum and using Inconel alloy for the exhaust.

Can’t hardly weight

Inconel doesn’t save weight by being very light, like say, titanium. Instead, its advantage is extreme strength and heat tolerance, which permit it to be used in paper-thin thicknesses that save weight.

The thinness is also key to the Pista’s mission of preserving Ferrari’s signature exhaust wail. Ferraris have traditionally been naturally aspirated, which meant there were no spinning turbocharger vanes clogging the exhaust system to impede the aural flow from the fire inside the engine.

Using very thin Inconel in the exhaust helps the Pista project what voice its turbocharged engine does have, giving it a more invigorating sound that is 8 decibels louder than the 488, even if it still falls short of the sonic perfection of its 458 Speciale predecessor.

The sum of these many exotic parts is an as-tested price of $345,300, thanks to a pile of lightweight carbon fiber options and a disappointing $15,000 charge for the Pista’s cool center stripes.

Inner workings

Approaching the Pista and opening the driver’s door, there’s none of the gimmickry of gull wing or scissor doors, but the heavily bolstered, alcantara-wrapped seats are the norm for helping occupants stay in place inside super sports cars. I appreciate the adjustable seat back angle of the Pista’s carbon fiber seats, rather than the one-piece fixed-back seats of Porsche’s track models, the 911 GT3 RS and GT2 RS, which are uncomfortably upright.

The thick-rimmed steering wheel frames the large circular analog tachometer whose white face shows the Pista engine’s 8,000 rpm redline. The wheel is backed by left and right shift paddles protruding from the steering column.

The Pista’s paddles are a warm-to-the-fingertips carbon fiber in place of the cool metallic magnesium paddles of the 488. The are fixed in place, so the driver can easily find the upshift paddle while unwinding the wheel when accelerating out of corners, in contrast to the more common steering wheel-mounted shift paddles.

A row of LED shift lights across the top of the wheel provides notice when it is time to squeeze the right paddle for a redline upshift. Ferrari’s manettino drive mode selector mounts on the face of the steering wheel, just like the proliferation of inscrutable knobs and buttons on the steering wheels of the company’s Formula 1 racecars.

Invisible assistance

The Pista’s manettino positions are Wet, Sport, Race, CT Off (traction control) and ESC Off (stability control). South Florida weather granted us the opportunity to try the wet setting on a slalom course, and then compare that to the sliding that becomes increasingly possible with the Sport and Race settings thanks to the less-strict limits applied by the traction and stability control computers.

Out on the race track after things had dried out, I went through the same progression from Sport, to Race and then CT Off. “ESC Off” is a good way to crash someone else’s expensive machine, so that position went untested.

In Sport mode, and to a lesser degree in Race, the stability control system automatically modulates throttle input to keep the car pointed straight, while in CT Off, the driver must tread lightly on the accelerator pedal and make occasional snap steering corrections to keep the Pista in line. This has the advantage of letting you drive faster, as the electronic systems maintain a bit of a margin as they reign in the Pista’s horses.

Meanwhile, even in CT Off mode, the Ferrari Dynamic Enhancer works invisibly to assist the driver by analyzing the car’s situation and gently squeezing a brake caliper when appropriate to stabilize the car.

Rocketing around Homestead Miami Speedway’s “roval,” a high-speed oval track combined with an infield road course, the Pista demonstrates the precise steering and powerful brake capability necessary for a track car. Through the twisty infield turns, the Pista has the control and feedback to let the driver adeptly balance braking and turning when trail braking toward the apex, and then balancing throttle and steering as the car accelerates out of turns.

The Pista employs subtle aerodynamic aids rather than garish wings and such, yet it achieves a 20 percent improvement in stability-enhancing downforce at speed. This added high-speed stability boosts the driver’s confidence when making turns such as the very fast left-handers diving off of Homestead’s oval track and into the infield road course portions.

That’s because it feels like the hand of God pressing the car to the pavement to keep it from sliding unnervingly through these high-speed sections where the stakes of making a mistake are the highest. Imagine having a Mario Kart option that is less prone to falling off the cliff on Rainbow Road than the regular karts.

The Pista’s springs are also 10 percent stiffer than the road-friendly 488’s to resist the pressure of this downforce, and they help (along with the car’s recalibrated magnetically adjustable shock absorbers) maintain an even keel when braking and turning.

Track day

For our experience testing the Pista at Homestead Miami Speedway, Corsa Pilota instructor Todd Snyder rode along in the right seat, as seen in the in-car video above. That video also provides a data overlay that ostensibly shows the car’s performance, but which really shows the driver’s performance exploiting the Pista’s capabilities.

Those capabilities are extreme. The Pista follows in the smoking wheel tracks of the 360 Challenge Stradale, the 430 Scuderia and the 458 Speciale, each a successive generation of hot rod track models from the Prancing Horse. Sixty percent of today’s Pista buyers already participate in track events, and they’ll surely be happier doing that now in a car that is optimized for the purpose.

The Corsa Pilota program provides helmets for drivers and onboard video with an overlay of the car’s performance, which makes for a perfect training tool between track sessions. And the video file on the SD card is a fun souvenir for drivers to take home.

The post Inside the 2019 Ferrari Pista, a supercar built for the racetrack appeared first on Popular Science.

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Automakers are less likely to wait to announce dazzling new products at glitzy, expensive auto shows these days—meaning that events like the New York International Auto Show are shrinking in significance.

But still, that hasn’t stopped carmakers from bringing us exciting new concept cars, important new production models, and cool bits of technology that stand out from otherwise unremarkable new models this year.

Our favorites from the New York auto show, currently ongoing at the Javits Center in Manhattan, include these noteworthy new vehicles.

Kia HabaNiro concept

Kia’s spicy concept car’s name is a combination of the habanero pepper and the company’s Niro EV (thus, the “HabaNiro”), and designers aimed to live up to expectations with a bright red cabin finish. (Design trends are leaning toward more color inside cars.) Further, it eschewed the lavish application of leather, using boucle fabric instead to cultivate a cushy impression.

More importantly, that cabin is stuffed with technology— like a full windshield-width Head-Up Display that can be used to show movies during long drives when the car’s autonomous driving system is engaged.

Kia describes the HabaNiro as an all-electric, all-wheel drive vehicle with a 300-mile driving range.

Volkswagen I.D. Buggy

Volkswagen – Autosalon Genf 2019

VW’s modern electrified take on the classic Meyers Manx dune buggy, which made its global debut in Geneva, arrived in U.S for the New York show. It’s called the I.D. Buggy.

Fittingly, VW recruited Bruce Meyers, the Manx’s creator, to attend the show and oversee the Fern Green descendant of his classic beach machine. The I.D. Buggy is built on the same modular electric car platform that will power VW’s upcoming generation of EVs, just as the Beetle’s platform rolled beneath the classic VW bus, pickup truck, Thing off-roader, Squareback, and other models.

VW says the I.D. Buggy is good for a top speed of 99 mph and accelerates to 62 mph in 7.2 seconds, making it dramatically faster than the original version, in addition to being quieter and cleaner.

Driving range is 155 miles, which seems kind of far for just a drive on the beach, so we suspect that the 62 kilowatt-hour battery pack will be more than sufficient.

Genesis Mint concept

The diminutive Genesis two-seat city car concept’s green hue wasn’t exactly mint green, but the tiny car looks small enough to be a breath freshener.

Also fresh is the thinking behind its bench seat, though alas, there’s no provision for three-abreast seating as there are only seatbelts for the two outboard positions.

Another throwback design aspect is the use of six discrete small displays that each shows a single parameter in the fashion of traditional mechanical gauges. In a steampunk touch, they are trimmed in copper bezels.

In place of a dash-mounted instrument display ahead of the driver, the Mint embeds its panel into the center of its oblong steering wheel in the manner of race cars.

Genesis designers say the Mint will employ a battery pack with capacity for a 200-mile driving range and it will support 350-kilowatt direct current fast charging for quick refueling.

2020 Lincoln Corsair

Lincoln completed the remake of its product line with its return to the use of English words as names, instead of the alpha-numerics favored by European prestige brands. The Corsair seeks to bring traditional American comfort to the compact crossover segment, with no concessions to either off-road pretensions or would-be road racing capabilities for circulating the Nurburgring.

Instead, the Corsair includes conveniences like the ability to use a smartphone as a key, unlocking the car and starting the engine to drive. It further features Ford’s key panel for entry in case the phone battery is dead and an on-screen code for starting the car.

One of the scene-setting aids for keeping Corsair occupants relaxed is the replacement of conventional alert beeps, buzzers and chimes with an array of symphonic chimes that are brief musical vignettes created and recorded by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

2020 Hyundai Sonata

Speaking of musical themes, Hyundai’s Sonata sedan debuted at New York with an array of innovations. Like the Corsair, the Sonata offers the ability for customers to use their phone as the car’s key, and it does so at the lower price of a mainstream brand.

The Sonata’s signature feature is the chrome strips that run from the side mirrors to the corners of the car’s headlights. The end of the strips, near the headlights, is laser-cut with tiny holes, and LED daytime running lights behind the chrome strips cause the ends to light up when the car is running. They appear as conventional chrome trim the rest of the time.

In an illustration of the law of diminishing returns, as applied to shrinking the displacement of automotive engines in pursuit of fuel efficiency, the Sonata’s standard 180-horsepower 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine is expected to score 31 mpg on the EPA’s combined driving cycle, while the optional 191-horsepower 2.5-liter four cylinder engine is projected to score 33 mpg in combined driving.

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Motorcycle weather is back, so pick your bike, get your license, and brush up on these common motorcycle terms.

Air-Cooled: Engines that transfer their excess heat directly to the air via cooling fins. You also see these on lawnmower engines.

Ape Hangers: Tall handlebars that require the rider to reach up, like a monkey hanging from a branch. Commonly used on Choppers.

Bikini Fairing: Small plastic wind deflector surrounding the headlight, usually with a small clear windshield on top. Commonly used on Café Racers.

Beanie Helmet: Minimal half-shell style helmet that sits on the head like a beanie. Popular with Cruiser and Chopper riders.

Belt Drive: A rubber belt that transfers power from the transmission’s output shaft to the rear wheel. Commonly used by Harley-Davidson, they are quiet and require no lubrication, but they are wider than a chain.

Bobber: A custom motorcycle with the rear fender “bobbed” off and usually with no passenger seat. They exhibit a minimalist design aesthetic.

Boxer: An engine with horizontally opposed cylinders, typically a traditional BMW, which has one cylinder sticking out from each side of the motorcycle.

Café Racer: Sporty motorcycles with low handlebars and other race-inspired modifications. Named for the British enthusiasts who were said to race their bikes from one café to the next.

Caliper: The brake component that houses sliding pistons which squeeze brake pads against the spinning brake rotors to stop the motorcycle.

Center Stand: A large stand mounted beneath the motorcycle’s frame that can swing out to lift the rear wheel off the ground, leaving the motorcycle level when parked. BMW riders with Boxer engines usually prefer these to the side-leaning side stands, because it prevents oil from running into the engine’s cylinder head on the downhill side while parked. It is helpful for when adjusting or lubricating the chain on chain-drive motorcycles.

Chain Drive: A simple chain connecting a small sprocket on the transmission’s output shaft to a larger sprocket mounted to the rear wheel hub to transfer power. It is similar to a bicycle’s drive chain.

Chopper: A motorcycle that has been modified with extended forks and has the steering head angle flattened to push the front wheel out far ahead of the rest of the bike. Choppers were a fad in the 1970s that was revived circa 2000 on the popularity of reality bike-building television shows like American Chopper and Monster Garage.

Clip Ons: Short individual handlebars for each side of the motorcycle that bolt directly to the fork tubes. Typically used on race bikes and racing-style sport bikes.

Cruiser: A motorcycle with a laid-back riding position created by tall handlebars, footpegs that mounted toward the front on the bike and usually a low seat.

Counter Steer: Pushing away on the handlebar that is on the side the rider wants the motorcycle to turn. Motorcycles don’t steer like cars at speeds above a couple miles per hour. Instead, the rider steers the front wheel away from the intended direction to initiate the turn by causing the bike to lean in the direction of the turn.

Drag Bars: Short, straight handlebars of the sort that are commonly used by drag racing motorcycles. Very similar in appearance to mountain bike handlebars.

Dual-Purpose: An off-road motorcycle that is also road-legal thanks to lights, horn, license plate and road-legal tires.

Dual Shocks: Traditional motorcycle configuration with one shock absorber and spring assembly mounted on each side of the frame to support the bike’s weight and control the motion of the rear suspension’s swing arm.

Faceshield: The clear protective shield on the front of a helmet that protects the rider from bug, gravel and other road debris.

Fairing: The plastic bodywork that protects the rider from the wind, and on sport or racing motorcycles, provides aerodynamic streamlining for higher speeds.

Footpeg: The short pegs protruding from each side of the frame for the rider and passenger to rest their feet.

Fork: The sliding telescopic tubes containing springs and hydraulic dampers that mount the front wheel to the motorcycle’s frame and provide suspension.

Full Face Helmet: A helmet with a chin bar and faceshield providing increased crash and weather protection.

Handgrip: The rubber grip on the ends of the handlebars.

Hardtail: A motorcycle that mounts the rear wheel directly to the frame with no sprung suspension. It is like most bicycles.

Helmet Hair: Matted hair that results from wearing a helmet.

High Side: When a sliding motorcycle regains traction it can catapult the rider off the opposite direction it was leaning.

Inline Four: An engine with four cylinders in a line, a layout that made its high-volume production debut with the 1969 Honda CB750 and quickly became ubiquitous (See UJM).

Kickstarter: No, this isn’t for raising money online. This is a flip-out lever from the transmission that lets the rider manually spin the engine to start it. It should really be called a jump starter, because the motion is one where the rider jumps up to bring weight back down onto the kickstarter, rather than actually using leg muscles to try to turn the engine.

Lane Splitting: Riding between lanes of stopped or slow-moving cars in places like California where this is the legal way to escape soul-crushing traffic delays.

Low Side: When a sliding motorcycle loses all traction and simply falls down in the direction it is leaning.

Master Cylinder: The hydraulic cylinders connected to the brake and clutch levers that send pressure to the brake calipers or clutch slave cylinder to actuate them.

Master Link: The removable link in the drive chain that permits the chain to be removed for service or replacement.

Open Face Helmet: A full-coverage helmet that lacks a chin bar and may or may not have a faceshield attached.

Overhead Cam: A camshaft mounted over the engine’s cylinder head that can press the valves open directly rather than indirectly using a pushrod. There is less reciprocating mass in an overhead cam valvetrain, so it can operate at higher engine speeds, permitting higher peak power in high-performance engines.

Parallel Twin: A twin-cylinder engine with the cylinders paired side-by-side. This is less expensive and more compact than a V-twin arrangement, but they aren’t balanced as well and are prone to shaking.

Pipe: Short for exhaust pipe, especially an aftermarket exhaust system added for higher performance.

Pushrod Engine: An engine whose camshaft mounts low in the engine. It activates the valves in the head by means of pushrods. These engines can be less expensive and more compact that overhead cam engines, at the expense of peak horsepower.

Rat Bike: A battered-looking motorcycle that wears its heavy use on its sleeve. Sometimes these are curated for effect, other times just the natural result of daily riding on a budget.

Rotor: The spinning brake disc that the brake caliper clamps to stop the bike.

Scrambler: An off-road-inspired motorcycle that is usually ridden on-road. These have a high-mounted exhaust and muffler and knobby tires, though they are usually for effect rather than practicality in most riders’ usage.

Shaft Drive: Some motorcycles, especially BMWs and long-distance touring bikes employ shaft drive in place of a chain or belt because of their durability. A down side is the “shaft effect” which causes the rear suspension to raise the bike when the throttle is opened and causes it to crouch lower when the throttle is closed. This can be offset by more complex rear suspension designs like BMW’s Paralever.

Side Stand: A bicycle-style kickstand that the motorcycle can lean against when parked.

Single Shock: A single rear spring and shock absorber assembly in place of the traditional dual-spring setup. It can have a longer suspension travel and benefits from the possibility of a rising-rate linkage that makes the shock dampening more effective.

Slip Ons: Higher-performance aftermarket mufflers that slip on to the factory exhaust header rather than replacing the entire exhaust system. This is usually more cost effective than a complete system, but it doesn’t maximize the potential weigh savings or power gains of a complete system.

Sport Bike: A race-inspired street-legal motorcycle, usually indicated by aerodynamic plastic fairings and windshield. These bikes have more powerful engines, better brakes and better steering than other styles, often with the compromise of a less-comfortable forward-leaning riding position that puts weight on the rider’s wrists.

Standard: A traditionally styled motorcycle with a comfortable flat seat, sensible handlebars that the rider can reach easily and footpegs directly beneath the rider to let the legs support some weight. These don’t follow any of the styling fads that come and go.

Steering Head: The pivot at the front of the frame where the fork attaches. Its angle determines the bike’s steering characteristics.

Stoppie: A hard application of the front brake that a skilled rider can employ to balance the bike on its front wheel.

Streetfighter: A sport bike with little or no bodywork. These evolved from conventional sportbikes whose riders had inflicted costly bodywork damage to otherwise rideable machines. Their solution was to put them back into service minus the damaged plastic, spawning a new design trend.

Swingarm: The moveable rear suspension component that mounts the rear wheel. Its movement is controlled by the spring and shock absorber(s).

Swingarm Stand: A separate stand for lifting a motorcycle’s rear wheel by a lever that is not mounted on the bike, but is kept in the shop. Also called a Paddock Stand, for its use on race bikes in the track paddock area.

Target Fixation: Riders’ inclination to focus on an obstacle and ride into it rather than avoiding it.

Touring Bike: Large, heavy, expensive motorcycles that are built for long-distance travel. They include obvious components like cushy seats, large-capacity fuel tanks, abundant wind protection and built-in luggage. Less-obvious details often include things like radios or reverse gear for backing these heavy machines out of parking spaces.

Twist Grip: The right handgrip controls engine speed by twisting it.

UJM (Universal Japanese Motorcycle): When the inline-four-cylinder standard motorcycle from Japan, cast in the mold of the Honda CB750, became commonplace in the 1970s, they were referred to as Universal Japanese Motorcycles. They were considered uncool at the time.

Unitized Transmission: When the motorcycle’s engine and transmission are built together, using shared oil. This is smaller and lighter than separate units, as used on larger-displacement Harley-Davidson models.

V-Twin: A twin-cylinder engine with the cylinders arranged at a v-shaped angle. This is most typical for Harley-Davidson, but other manufacturers like Ducati and Moto Guzzi have also built their reputations on V-twin motorcycles.

V-Four: When a four-cylinder engine pairs its cylinders in two banks at a v-shaped angle from one another.

Water-Cooled: High-performance motorcycles can’t shed heat efficiently enough for traditional air cooling, so they began uses automotive-style radiators to cool their engines with liquid. Since then, noise and emissions limits have driven other motorcycle types to embrace water cooling too despite the cost, complexity and styling challenges.

Wheelie: When a skilled motorcyclist accelerates abruptly enough to raise the bike’s front wheel off the ground and then ride with it balanced there.

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Driving an electric car like a Tesla Model S or a Jaguar I-Pace isn’t that different from a comparable modern internal combustion-powered car. Contemporary gas cars have a push-button start and an automatic transmission: press the button, select Drive, step on the gas and cruise away. The electrics whoosh a bit more quietly, but luxury gasoline cars are also pretty nearly silent.

Electric motorcycles, though, are very different from their four-wheeled counterparts. The sounds of thundering V-twins from Milwaukee and screaming inline four-cylinders from Japan rise and fall as the rider works through the gears, and bikes with loud aftermarket exhaust pipes let bystanders know you’re there. Battery-powered bikes like the Zero SR, on the other hand, will never be mistaken for gas motorcycles, either from the saddle or from the sidewalk. We wondered, if they aren’t like that, what are they like?

San Francisco’s Zero Motorcycles was happy to illuminate the subject by loaning us an SR for a couple weeks. Would the instantaneous 116 foot-pounds of torque from the electric motor prove to be unmanageable on take-off? For comparison, the fire-breathing BMW S1000RR peaks at 83 foot-pounds, and that’s at high RPM. Would the SR simply overpower the grip of the Pirelli Diablo Rosso II rear tire? Would we forever feel in danger of running out of juice?

It turned out that these concerns were mostly unfounded. The right twist grip meters power from the SR’s 70-horsepower electric motor in a linear, controllable way, so acceleration is smooth and calm—even though it is extremely quick.

Beginners will surely find electric bikes easier because there’s no need to shift, and thus no need to simultaneously slip the clutch using the left hand lever on the handlebars while twisting the right grip. Once rolling, the urge is to prepare to nudge the shifter up a gear with the left toe. But there is no shifter and there are no gears, just as there’s no clutch lever. The electric motor’s whine just increases in pitch as speed rises.

And here is where the SR differs from other machines. Electric cars accelerate hard from a stop, but their 50-70 mph passing acceleration tends to be less impressive. And conventional motorcycles can accelerate hard through those passing speeds, but you’ll need to click off a few downshifts to bring the revs up in preparation, or it will be sluggish.

With the SR, arm-stretching acceleration from 50 mph is only a twist of the wrist away, as the bike pulls so hard the rider will be left hanging onto the handlebars to avoid slipping off the back. And it does this without the commotion of a gas bike’s high-revving maneuvers, which makes it seem almost hard to believe.

Roll off the throttle and twist it open again; yep, same thing. It offers simply startling acceleration, even when the bike is already rolling along at highway speed. Amazing.

On releasing the twist grip (it isn’t called a “throttle” because it isn’t constricting the airflow into an engine), the SR doesn’t slow like a combustion bike does due to its engine-braking effect. It more just coasts, which takes a little getting used to for riders who use a combination of engine braking and friction brakes for negotiating the ebb and flow of traffic.

Given the choice, I’d like to see the strength of electric regeneration be rider-selectable so that they can have engine braking if they want it or can coast if that’s what they prefer.

The SR has an upright riding position astride a spacious, flat seat. The footpegs are directly beneath the rider and the wide, flat handlebar demands only a slight lean forward to reach. At highway speed, the wind noise is loud enough that the silence of the drivetrain disappears. At this speed, the SR is nearly indistinguishable from other bikes.

Braking is strong and progressive, with none of the unexpectedly aggressive grip demonstrated by the Ducati Monster’s brakes. The Ducati is a similarly styled and positioned premium bike that seems the most direct comparison among conventional machines. Stopping serves as a reminder that, nope, there’s still no clutch lever to squeeze to prevent stalling a combustion engine when the bike is at rest.

Zero says to expect about 120 miles of riding range for the standard 14.4 kilowatt-hour battery equipped model, like my $16,495 test bike. For $19,390, there’s an available 18 kWh battery that is rated for 150 miles in combined city and highway riding.

I got more like 90-110 miles in my use. Maybe it was those “I can’t believe it” cycles of slowing down just to speed up again. This sort of riding range is in keeping with what’s needed for most casual recreational riders and it will surely cover the everyday commute to work and back.

But going farther is a problem, because it will take at least an hour to recharge on a high-powered 240-volt commercial charger, and that’s a long time for a bathroom break during a ride. The built-in 120-volt charger will plug into the wall at home, but needs 10 hours for a full charge on the standard model and 12 hours for the big battery version.

Electric vehicles tend to be heavier than gas vehicles because of their battery mass, but the SR’s curb weight of 414 pounds is in line with similar bikes like the Monster and it carries that weight down low, which makes it feel lighter.

The SR isn’t the only game in town: Harley-Davidson has officially announced its long-anticipated LiveWire electric bike. But that one starts at an eye-opening $25,000 (and we thought the SR was spendy!), so it remains to be seen what the market is for those. The Zero’s price tag isn’t far off that of premium models from Ducati, BMW and Triumph, so it seems to be closer to the sweet spot of the market.

With the summer sun beckoning, the Zero SR is the truest plug-n-play motorcycle yet and it hints at an electrified motorcycling future that will still be fun. Just a little quieter.

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Formula 1 race cars are ground-bound carbon fiber fighter planes. They place tremendous stresses on their drivers as they tear around road racing tracks and temporary street circuits during the course of their annual championship season’s tour of the world.

The cars can top 200 mph in some spots on the track and tax drivers circulatory systems with 6g of cornering force in the high-speed turns when the bodywork is generating maximum grip-enhancing aerodynamic downforce.

As with the pilots in airborne fighter planes, Formula 1 drivers still have to control their vehicle while enduring these stresses, and because they are racing, they need to continuously make adjustments to keep the car running optimally.

Formula 1 teams monitor the cars’ systems remotely and could make adjustments for the driver from computers in the pit lane. But such two-way control of cars is banned, so the drivers have to tweak the myriad systems manually, while in the midst of a battle with one another.

How does a modern @F1 steering wheel work? Let us explain… ? pic.twitter.com/yxK1yvfqVf

— Mercedes-AMG F1 (@MercedesAMGF1) March 15, 2019

On the eve of Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport team released some details on its car’s steering wheel for the 2019 season, pointing out the functions of the multitude of buttons and switches.

Formula 1 cars’ steering wheels are removable. They release from the steering column by squeezing a collar at their base to make it easier for drivers to get into and out of their cramped cockpits.

The wheels, like nearly everything else on the car, are made of carbon fiber to save weight and are stuffed with electronics. “A modern Formula 1 car is a pretty complex bit of machinery,” noted Evan Short, team leader, trackside electronic systems for Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport team in the video posted to the team’s Twitter.

“We ask the drivers to operate in two modes,” he continued. “We want the intuitive creatures who interact with the car the way they might have done with a go-kart when they were kids. We also want them to understand the complex bit of electronics and systems that it takes an engineer to understand.”

How busy are the drivers? “If I look at a qualifying lap from last year, they are making something like 50 gearshifts over the course of a qualifying lap, they are steering through 17 corners, they are making seven or eight changes of rotary switches over the course of the lap and of course they are feeding back the information they are seeing on the dash to us as well,” said Short.

Those wheels are built tough to withstand their harsh operating environment. “The wheel is designed around switches which are quite robust that are used in aircraft as well,” Short Explained.

“Robust against accidental actions under vibration; you imagine of course the driver using that wheel under a high-vibration environment while wearing gloves. They are designed around first-order retrievability. That’s the idea that the driver can get to anything he needs while keeping his hands on the wheel and reaching with his thumbs.”

It is hard enough to navigate through multiple menu layers in our street cars’ infotainment systems while commuting without trying to do that during a race. The team builds three steering wheels for each of the two drivers; a primary wheel, a back-up in case of a problem with the primary and an experimental wheel for testing new features the team might plan to add to the car later in the season.

Looking at the switches that are on the Mercedes-AMG wheel (which is typical of others’ though each team has its own unique design and switch placement), one of the most important is the “Strat” dial, which refers to the engine management strategy employed.

The team can ask the driver to change that, adjusting the engine’s stress, power output, fuel consumption and electric energy recovery as needed to improve the chances for a win or to help prolong the engine’s life for future races.

“My favorite is the [expletive deleted] mode,” exclaimed driver Valtteri Bottas, referring to the crew’s colloquial name for the most powerful setting. “That means all the power from the engine,” he said. “Depending on the situation we have many different modes. Either defending against another car, attacking, or saving the engine when we can, or having a bit more deployment from the [Motor Generator Unit-Kinetic, the hybrid-electric booster motor] if needed,” he added.

There are three dials that control the differential that doles out power to the rear wheels. It has distinctly different characteristics for corner entry, mid-corner and corner exit, and so each portion has its own switch.

“This is for the ‘Diff Entry,’” Bottas pointed out. “Over here we have the diff for the mid-corner. So when the car is going around the corner, in the middle of the corner, it changes how car balances quite quickly. You can either gain understeer or oversteer adjusting this.”

Remember, the driver makes these changes to address specific corners, and then changes it again for upcoming parts of the track. Every lap.

“If I press ‘Talk’ I can talk to the guys. Have a chat. If I press it again then the line is cut.”

There is a speed limiter button that automatically holds the car at the maximum allowable speed in the pit lane, even when the gas pedal is floored to avoid penalties for accidentally speeding past the crews servicing other drivers’ cars during the race. That’s typically 50 mph or 37 mph depending on the track.

And the big green ‘N’ button has two purposes on the Mercedes-AMG, both shifting the car into Neutral and shifting into Reverse. “We select Neutral when we stop the car, after the session or after the race. If we hold it for long, we get a Reverse gear.”

Other teams have a dedicated ‘R’ button for selecting Reverse, but Bottas has a good explanation for why that function hasn’t earned its own place on the Mercedes-AMG steering wheel. “I think I’ve never used it with the car!” he said. “But you never know. In Monaco or somewhere, you might get stuck and Reverse might be the only way to save you.

The system seems ridiculous to operate under racing conditions, but Bottas insists it isn’t too bad. “It might look complex, but, with practice, I know it by heart,” he concluded.

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The warm rays of spring sun trigger almost irresistible thoughts of motorcycling following a cold winter. For bikers who live in colder climates, that means bringing motorcycles out of hibernation, maybe for a trip to Daytona Bike Week.

For want-to-be motorcyclists, that means visits to their nearby dealers to throw a leg over the sexiest rides in the showroom. Love can be impetuous and impatient, so we’re here to try to provide a bit of guidance aimed at maximizing your fun and minimizing the risk that worries your mom.

Get everything you need before the bike You can’t ride a motorcycle without the necessary skills, legal permission, safety gear and frame of mind. (If you want to skip straight to the bike recommendations, you can click here).

That means enrolling in a Motorcycle Safety Foundation Basic RiderCourse, where they will provide you the motorcycle and teach you how to operate it properly. They’ll also prep you for your visit to the DMV to get your motorcycle endorsement on your driver’s license so you can ride legally.

The MSF will loan you a helmet for the school, but you’ll probably want some other protective gear to protect the parts of your body you don’t want scraping against the pavement. Here’s a short list of the items you may want:

• A proper motorcycle jacket made from thick leather or ballistic nylon and backed by protective armor in the shoulders, elbows and spine.

• Armored gloves to protect your hands

• Boots that are high enough to protect your ankles and don’t have laces that can whip around the footpegs as you drive.

Helmets are slightly more complicated and exist in an unusual area where paying more doesn’t correlate to increased safety. Any full-face helmet (you don’t want to break your face like Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Rothlisberger did, do you?) with Department of Transportation certification will provide sufficient protection in a crash. This emphatically does not apply to the fake beanie helmets or cheap internet specials, which lack DOT certification and will not protect you in a crash.

More expensive lids have a nicer finish, better comfort features and are typically quieter because they block wind noise more effectively. Studies have shown that exposure to 20 minutes a day of motorcycling wind noise can inflict hearing damage.

With the accessories out of the way, it’s time to pick a bike.

New Versus Used

Beginning riders are often a bit intimidated by the thought of mechanical problems with a machine they may not yet know well. New motorcycles are almost certain to start and run without any trouble for many years, so long as you don’t crash them and provide basic maintenance on schedule. Plus, you get to pick your color and accessories.

The tradeoff, of course, is that new motorcycles are expensive, and come with even more costs when you factor in maintenance and insurance.

Used bikes can save you some cash and you have options about where to find them. Dealers typically have used bikes they will sell you complete with a warranty. Of course, there is also nearly infinite selection available online from sites like eBay Motors and Craigslist. For bikes bought from private sellers, the obvious factors are important. Avoid buying a bike that has visible crash damage. Buy a bike with as few miles as possible. Look for bikes whose owners have verifiable service histories. Those documents allow you to call the shop that has serviced the bike and an relevant information about its condition.

If everything appears to check out, have an experienced motorcycle technician inspect the bike before finalizing the purchase. Consider the cost of any needed repairs, such as replacing worn tires, when contemplating a purchase.

Obviously, the bike should start and run properly. Modern fuel injected bikes are more tolerant of sitting idle, but older carbureted bikes tend to suffer clogged idle jets when they sit. This is simple to fix, but sellers will use this as cover for more expensive problems when a prospective purchase runs poorly. Let someone else figure it out and move on.

Pick a style

Motorcycles vary dramatically in style and construction, from high-clearance off-road-capable dual-purpose machines, to forward-leaning sport bikes that look ready for the race track, to kicked-back cruisers for relaxing rides. There are also monster touring bikes, half-ton giants outfitted with massive windshields and luggage, but these are suitable for veteran riders bent on starting a ride at one ocean and finishing at the other.

Dual-purpose bikes like the Honda CRF230M or Yamaha XT250 are typically simple, durable machines with high ground clearance and soft suspension that can make them as suitable for the urban jungle as for the real kind. They provide a tall field of view over traffic, usually have commuter-friendly comfortable seats and they can soak up potholes without seeming to notice them. Other examples include the Husqvarna FE 350S and the BMW F850GS.

Scramblers, like the Ducati Scrambler and the Triumph Street Scrambler, are a fashionable variant that take their styling cues from the past and apply them to modern hardware. The BMW R nineT is another good example. Like, dual-purpose bikes, scramblers are narrow and light, which makes them good for navigating through traffic and for hopping up onto curbs to get into the places where many cities tolerate motorcycles parking to leave more regular spaces for the cars.

Sport bikes like the Honda CBR300R, Kawasaki Ninja 300, and Yamaha YZF-R3 are race-inspired machines with low handlebars that dictate a forward-leaning riding position that can feel unnatural to beginners. Contemporary sport bikes have plastic aerodynamic bodywork for high-speed riding that is expensive to replace in the event of even low-speed tip-overs that are common among new riders.

A better alternative is the classic-styled café racer, like the Suzuki SV650, Ducati Monster 696, which have some of the same nimble handling and sporty style of modern sport bikes, but in throwback style with little or no body work.

Cruisers like the Honda Rebel 300, Harley-Davidson Street 500, and Yamaha V-Star 250 take their styling from classic Harleys, even though nearly every manufacturer offers one. These bikes’ raked out front forks lend the necessary style, but the geometry of leaning the fork back at such an angle can create awkward low-speed handling that can unnerve learning riders.

However, a low seat is another hallmark of cruiser style, which makes these bikes appealing to beginners, especially shorter ones, because it is easy to put your feet down to catch the bike if it starts to fall over at parking lot speeds. Their low-slung position comes at the cost of suspension travel, so cruisers aren’t good for riding on bad pavement. They better for riding smooth boulevards on a Saturday night. Other cruiser models to consider include the Kawasaki Vulcan 500 LTD, Indian Scout Sixty.

Another category of bike that is often overlooked is the so-called “standard.” Bikes like the Triumph Bonneville, Yamaha SR400, Suzuki TU250X eschew fashion in favor of function, so they don’t fall easily into any group. They tend to have a comfortable upright riding position, flat, cushioned seats, and reasonable suspension travel, so they do everything pretty well. These jack-of-all-trades rides may be the least trendy but most sensible choice of all.

Regardless of your choice, be careful and have fun riding this season.

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The Geneva International Motor Show is an annual gathering of the latest and most expensive exotic cars on the planet. This year’s edition saw a bumper crop of glittering dream cars, including the most expensive new car ever offered for sale.

“Geneva is, for us, the most important event every year,” explained Christian von Koenigsegg, CEO of the eponymous boutique supercar builder in the film APEX: The Story of the Hypercar. “It is the most international, most prestigious car show on the planet from my perspective.”

This year’s show demonstrated why, as Koenigsegg and its peers rolled out still more shocking technology, slinky sheet metal, and astounding performance claims in a new crop of amazing cars.

Participants include traditional prestige brands, upstarts, and new brands from some established players, such as car design legend Giorgetto Giugiaro who debuted a lifted supercar that seems to target the current fascination with off-road-capable “safari” style sports cars.

And there’s electric drive, showcasing performance car possibilities for the post-internal combustion era. Not that the internal combustion engine will go soon, or without still more improvements in efficiency and power.

Consider the possibilities forecast by these eight examples of developing technology from this year’s Geneva show.

Aston Martin AM-RB 003 concept

Aston Martin aims to take on the benchmark Ferrari 488 (or its successor model) with a mid-engine turbo hybrid V6 sports car. This concept showcases Aston’s Red Bull Formula 1 connection, with aggressive aerodynamics that include FlexFoil movable rear wing that continuously adapts to the situation. Production of the final version of this car will be limited to 500 cars, the company stated.

Aston Martin Vanquish Vision Concept

Aston Martin previewed the 2022 Vanquish with a concept car that shows this previously front-engine model will migrate to a rear mid-engine layout. It will be powered by a version of the same V6 engine that will debut in the AM-RB 003 production car. But unlike the all-carbon fiber AM-RB 003, the Vanquish Vision Concept is built on an aluminum chassis in the manner of the company’s current models. As a grand touring model, the Vanquish won’t place the demands on its chassis that the AM-RB 003 sports car will, potentially permitting a less-costly construction material.

Automobili Pininfarina Battista

Automobili Pininfarina, the car-building corporate cousin of the famed Pininfarina design studio, plans to sell the 1,900-horsepower battery-electric Battista as soon as next year. The company plans to build just 150 of the cars, which it claims will launch to 60 mph in 1.8 seconds. The Battista’s 120 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack promises a 280-mile driving range.

Bugatti La Voiture Noire

At $12.5 million, the sleek, black La Voiture Noire (“The Black Car,” in English) is a custom-bodied version of the company’s Chiron, a 1,500-horsepower W12-powered beast. This is a one-off custom meant to evoke the Bugatti Type 57 SC Atlantic of 1934-1940. Bugatti exhibited a styling model of the planned car, which is already sold to a current Bugatti customer.

Ferrari F8 Tributo

Ferrari refined the styling of the current 488 GTB and boosted the power of its twin-turbocharged V8 engine to 710 horsepower by bolting in a version of the engine used in the track-focused 488 Pista. The engine revs to 8,000 rpm before hitting a limiter. The F8 isn’t just more beautiful to the eye than the 488, it is more beautiful to the air too, as the body generates 10 percent more downforce with no increase in drag.

GFG Style Kangaroo concept

Styling giant Giorgetto Giugiaro and his son Fabrizio have joined forces to start GFG Style, which debuted the exciting Kangaroo concept car. It is a 483-horsepower battery electric vehicle with a claimed 155-mile driving range from a 90 kilowatt-hour battery pack. The Kangaroo rolls on 22-inch wheels and can rise from 5.5 inches of ground clearance in race trim to 10.2 inches in off-road mode.

Koenigsegg Jesko

Company founder Christian von Koenigsegg is paying tribute to his father by applying his name, Jesko, to the company’s next creation. The Koenigsegg Jesko is a purely internal combustion 5.0-liter, 1,280-horsepower (1,600 horsepower burning E85 biofuel) twin-turbocharged V8-powered machine that employs a new nine-speed, six-clutch gearbox that the company designed and will manufacture in house.

Volkswagen ID. Buggy concept

While the other machines here might be supercars, VW brought a concept that has super powers. Specifically, the ID. Buggy transports us to the 1960s, thanks to styling that borrows from the Meyers Manx dune buggy of 1964 and to the future with an all-electric 201-horsepower drivetrain with a 155-mile driving range. VW executives hinted that the Buggy could go into production in as little as two years and that it could be sold in the U.S. Fingers crossed!

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Traffic lights are one of the biggest frustrations of commuting, as drivers stress over whether the upcoming traffic light will turn red before they reach the intersection or watching time slip away at a seemingly endless red light.

Audi can’t help you avoid red lights entirely, but its Traffic Light Information system, which is available on all of Audi’s models except A3 and TT, can tell you what to expect from traffic signals. The technology is currently working in 13 metropolitan areas with more than 4,600 intersections, and those numbers are growing.

Audi piloted this program on a few models with the city of Las Vegas back in 2016, but it has been adding cities and models ever since, until now it is gaining critical mass. And Audi is now adding features to the TLI, so now it can also tell drivers when a green light is going to turn red.

It works like this: As you’re driving along toward an intersection the car communicates with a light that’s equipped with the technology. If that light is red—or is going to be when you get there—a traffic signal icon appears either on the car’s head-up display, dashboard display, or both. As you’re waiting, a countdown will let you know how long you have before it turns green.

To save you having to calculate on the fly, the system will also tell you what speed to maintain to avoid stopping at upcoming lights. The Green Light Optimized Speed Advisory uses traffic signal information and the vehicle position to calculate a speed recommendation allowing drivers to reach traffic lights while they are green. Stopping distance, the speed limit, and the signal timing plans are all considered in determining the speed recommendation displayed to the driver.

Audi gets the information wirelessly from traffic signals that have been upgraded to support vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. These lights send their status to the municipalities that operate them and those local governments relay the information to Audi’s technical partner, Traffic Technology Services.

TTS provides that information to Audi, which forwards it to its cars using their built-in 4G LTE cellular connections. The car puts a countdown on the display for the driver. As you might expect, there is some lag in the system and some amount of educated guesswork going on, so you’ll notice the occasional correcting stutter in the countdown as the numbers count toward zero.

You’ll also notice that the display disappears with three seconds to go, prompting the driver to focus on the road and not the display. It is like the verbal countdown to live television that goes silent at the count of three for Wayne and Garth in Wayne’s World.

Future upgrades to the TLI could include connecting the car’s automatic engine stop/start system, so the car could turn off and then automatically restart at go-time. Navigation systems could also use the data to help plan time-saving routes before you even get on the road.

Only some of the traffic signals in the supported markets are wired for service, but the connections are growing quickly, reports Balaji Yelchuru, Senior Strategist for Audi Connected Data. Some cities, like Portland and Phoenix, have increased their connected intersections rapidly, while Dallas has been nearly static, he said.

Traffic signals typically last for 25 years, and municipal governments are not typically anxious to spend money replacing functional equipment sooner than necessary, Yelchuru explained. So far, Audi is the only carmaker with a traffic light information system, so “it is a bit of a chicken and egg problem,” he said. “But as more manufacturers add the technology, cities should have more incentive to install smart traffic signals.”

In the meanwhile, Audi drivers can appreciate slightly more relaxing commutes as they enjoy a bit more information about what the traffic lights along their route are doing and when they’re going to do it. Just remember, don’t say the last three seconds of the countdown out loud.

Here’s a list of the cities in which it currently works: Dallas (Flower Mound & Frisco), Denver (Lakewood), Gainesville, Houston (Sugar Land), Kansas City (Olathe), Las Vegas, Los Angeles (Arcadia), New York (White Plains), Orlando (Seminole County), Phoenix (Phoenix, Mesa), Portland (Portland, ODOT), San Francisco (Palo Alto & Walnut Creek) and Washington D.C (D.C, Northern Virginia)

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Engineers have tried and failed for decades to build motorcycles with automatic transmissions. Honda finally gets it right with the new DN-01 “sports cruiser” bike. Conventional automatic transmissions, like those in cars, lag when you hit the throttle and can throw a bike off balance during turns. Honda’s HFT (for Human Friendly Transmission) responds to the throttle instantly by using hydraulic pumps instead of standard gears.

The HFT offers a range of gear ratios similar to a conventional six-speed manual, and it has about the same weight and dimensions. The motorcycle goes on sale in Japan this year, though a price has not been set. Honda hasn’t yet decided if America’s weekend rebels will get their own auto-shifting bike.

Launch the gallery to see how Honda’s truly fluid transmission works.

Honda DN-01 Transmission

Honda DN-01 Transmission (step one)

Honda DN-01 Transmission (step two)

Honda DN-01 Transmission (step three)

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How it Works

_How do you prevent insurgents from shooting down choppers? How do you keep a cast from itching? How do you reinvent the brick? You sketch. And then you work: nights, weekends-for years, if you have to. You blow all your money, then beg for more. You build prototypes, and when they fail, you build more. Why? Because inventing is about solving problems, and not stopping until your solution becomes real.

We’re currently rolling out the winners of the 2007 PopSci Invention Awards. We’ll be doling out a new innovation each day, so keep checking back for more of what the world’s brightest inventors are currently cooking up. And if you just can’t wait, pick up a copy of the June issue that just hit the stands.-Eds._

Name: Steam-o-Lene Engine**

****Inventor:** Bruce Crower**

Cost to Develop:** $1,000

Time: 1.5 years

Prototype | | | | |
Product

Bruce Crower’s Southern California auto-racing parts shop is a temple for racecar mechanics. Here’s the flat eight-cylinder Indycar engine that won him the 1977 Louis Schwitzer Award for racecar design. There’s the Mercedes five-cylinder engine he converted into a squealing supercharged two-stroke, just “to see what it would sound like,” says the now half-deaf 77-year-old self-taught engineer.

Crower has spent a lifetime eking more power out of every drop of fuel to make cars go faster. Now he’s using the same approach to make them go farther, with a radical six-stroke engine that tops off the familiar four-stroke internal-combustion process with two extra strokes of old-fashioned steam power.

A typical engine wastes three quarters of its energy as heat. Crower’s prototype, the single-cylinder diesel eight-horsepower Steam-o-Lene engine, uses that heat to make steam and recapture some of the lost energy. It runs like a conventional four-stroke combustion engine through each of the typical up-and-down movements of the piston (intake, compression, power or combustion, exhaust). But just as the engine finishes its fourth stroke, water squirts into the cylinder, hitting surfaces as hot as 1,500

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That moment’s hesitation, in which I evaluated my options like a rookie quarterback checking off receivers in the face of an oncoming pass rush, got me killed. But it’s far better to make such a mistake at the hands of an instructor wielding a faux Glock than in an environment where attackers employ very real AK-47s. That’s why almost every U.S. government agency and military branch — including the FBI, CIA, U.S. Marshals, Department of Defense and Marines — as well as foreign governments and private companies, send their drivers to Bill Scott Racing’s anti-terrorist driving school in Summit Point, West
Virginia, before stationing them abroad. Here, the automobile becomes both a weapon and a lifeline, and for the next two days, my classmates from the U.S. Army and the Hong Kong Police Department and I will learn how to put it to use against terrorist attacks ranging from carjackings to all-out assassination attempts.

Scott, a former champion Formula Vee racer, began offering antiterrorist driving classes in 1976 after noticing a serious flaw in the way the U.S. government protected its people abroad. “They were doing a great job at protecting an ambassador in a cavalcade of cars and cops,” he says. “But not with the attache or the guy who was out there by himself.” So Scott studied the history of auto-related terrorist attacks and designed a curriculum to arm the individual with the skills to survive one, skills like surveillance detection, fender-to-fender road combat, and executing 180-degree turns, as well as weapons training, shooting on the move (one of the most difficult skills to master), and how to use a car for protection.

“A high degree of emphasis is placed on avoiding the X,” says Scott, referring to the physical location where an attacker wants to corner you. If you can do that, “you’ve taken a huge element of surprise away from the terrorist, and exploited one of his weaknesses.”
Key to the training are the simulated environments created in the school’s 472-acre facility, which encompasses two road-racing courses (a third will be added this spring), three shooting ranges, an explosives range and several close-quarter combat rooms. The three-lane asphalt tracks contain features such as grass, gravel and dirt shoulders, hills, blind curves, wooded areas, and paddocks with simulated intersections — everything Scott needs in order to replicate an urban attack or rural ambush. “I can’t reproduce desert,” he jokes, giving a sideways nod to the snowdrifts lining the course. “But short of that, we’re able to tailor the driving environment to what the student is likely to encounter.”

Perhaps the trickiest maneuver Scott teaches is how to drive from the passenger’s seat. Once again I find myself facing a roadblock, only this time I’m riding shotgun when the driver is shot dead. Not wanting to share his fate, I slide to the center of the car, slam the brakes with my left foot, throw the car into reverse, and hit the gas. When the speedometer reaches 40 mph, I stand on the brakes and spin the wheel. I shift back into drive mid-turn and floor the accelerator pedal when the car spins a full 180 degrees. From there, the roadblock fades in my rearview mirror.

Scott and his team of 24 instructors — all of them former racecar drivers and military personnel — also emphasize more aggressive skills, like how to spin another car. Forget all the Hollywood nonsense about ramming the back of a car, or slamming against it from the side — all that does is bend sheet metal. Instead, give the target vehicle a hard nudge between its rear wheelwell and back bumper. Alternately, if you find yourself the target of such an attack, protect that flank as if your life depended on it, because it just might. Speed up and swerve, so your attacker can only hit you in the back bumper, or slow down so he comes fully alongside.

Such techniques are particularly well suited to the kind of opportunistic attacks that occur daily in Iraq and Afghanistan. “You get ambushed or sniped from a medium or short distance,” says Mike, a fellow student and U.S. Army captain who will head a team patrolling the countryside in
Afghanistan. Making a quick escape is critical to survival, because such impromptu attackers aren’t likely to have contingency plans for pursuit — they just want a shot at the first Americans who come along.

Fittingly, the final segment of the class concentrates on how to leave your attackers in the dust, which for Scott translates into high-speed driving techniques like entering a corner at 70 mph and cutting through it such that you lose a bare minimum of speed. These lessons aren’t unique to Scott’s curriculum; you can learn the same skills at any high-performance driving school. But taught against the backdrop of international terrorism, which amounted to 199 attacks in 2002 alone (77 of them pointedly anti-American), these skills take on a whole new dimension. “Without training, your chances of escaping a terrorist ambush without being injured or kidnapped are about 1 in 10,” says Scott. “With training, your chances are 6 in 10 of coming out safely.”

ADVENTURE GUIDE: SPY VS. SPY

You Don’t Have to be a secret agent or a Navy Seal to learn anti-terrorism tactics like spotting a “tail,” evading an auto-borne ambush, or engaging an enemy in close- quarter combat — you just need a decent bankroll. Here’s where to start.

Anti-Terrorist Driving

Bill Scott Racing, Summit Point, West Virginia

Scott’s two-day anti-terrorist driving school teaches you how to evade just about any kind of auto-based attack with skills like surveillance detection and 180-degree spins. $1,400

Covert Ops training

Incredible Adventures, Tucson, Arizona

Upon arriving at the Tucson airport, you’ll be whisked away to a secret training camp where you’ll learn evasive driving maneuvers, combat pistol techniques and espionage tactics. The three-day course costs $3,800.

Espionage Gameplay

Counter-Strike, Ritual Entertainment

Play either terrorist or counterterrorist in scenarios ranging from hostage rescues to assassination attempts. This popular PC title will be available for Xbox in November. $50

Illustration by John MacNeill

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by Courtesy of BMW

There’s a cheat code in the software running the BMW M3’s sequential manual gearbox (SMG): Press the right buttons in the right order and the car will launch you from a stop after revving the engine to 5,000 rpm. But don’t look for a how-to in the owners’ manual–this feature is undocumented, an inside joke of sorts.

To our knowledge, it’s also the first automotive “Easter egg,” though–with increased reliance on computers–it would seem just a matter of time before they become standard fare, much like the hidden features in PC games and DVD movies. In the M3’s case, there’s also good reason for it: The SMG transmission is completely electronic, so you can’t rev the engine and drop the clutch for tire-smoking acceleration–something the owner of a performance sedan just might want to do occasionally.

But there is a catch. In Europe, where the feature isn’t so hush-hush, doing more than 15 launches voids the car’s warranty. Federal laws prohibit such stipulations here, so BMW has turned down the wick. U.S.-spec cars are programmed to wind to only 2,500 rpm–and our test car topped off at 1,800. That’s why you have to ask your dealer to install the European software. Most will happily oblige.

For lucky drivers of this hot car, here’s how: Switch off the stability system and select shift program six. Switch the engine to sport mode. With the hand shifter in drive, hold it in the downshift position and press the gas pedal. The engine will rev to the preprogrammed rpm and hold. Now release the shifter. The car will launch forward violently and the engine’s revs will climb quickly, so be prepared to upshift.

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auto0602wagons_A.jpg

If you haven’t noticed, station wagons are back. Actually, they’re more than back-they’re hot. It’s a no-brainer: You’re sick of low-mileage SUVs but used to all the square footage. You want something in between. You want a station wagon.

The four vehicles you see here, roomy takes on performance sedans, are just the beginning. A host of wagon concepts began making the auto show rounds this year as PR machines began churning out image-friendly monikers like “crossover vehicle” and “urban SUV.” We’d flatly refuse to give in to the hype, but for one thing: There’s barely a shred of old-wagon DNA in this group of so-called sport wagons.

To test the promised mix of utility and handling, we gathered the Audi A4 Avant Quattro, BMW 325ix, Lexus IS300 SportCross, and Mercedes C320 Sport Wagon. All but the BMW were new for 2002, but even the Bimmer received new features and styling tweaks. We packed the cars with occupants from across the spectrum: a 6-foot 7-inch man, pregnant woman, 6-year-old in a booster seat, 8-month-old in an infant car seat. We then carried this group across the country roads and rolling highways of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, mimicking a family day trip.

The BMW is the least expensive and least powerful, but it impressed our testers uniformly. The car embodies the precise handling and smooth power for which BMW is known, wrapping those features in a wagon body that offered the roomiest backseat and the second-largest cargo space in our test. Rectangular rear window frames don’t look particularly sleek, but aid loading and unloading.

The light-on-its-feet Lexus is the easiest to toss into corners. Kudos also for taking a chance on chronograph-styled instruments, which our testers loved or hated but definitely noticed. To run with this crowd, though, the Lexus does need some upgrades, as exemplified by the low-rent prop rod that holds up the hood, and the stadium-soft seats.

The Audi proved a love-it or hate-it proposition. Half liked it as much as the BMW, while the other half rated it last. The all-new A4 design significantly improves on its predecessor’s ergonomic shortcomings, but our tall man couldn’t get comfortable because of the center console.

Audi did miss some opportunities with its redesign when it failed to install rear windows that open completely, or grab-style door handles.

Finally, the Mercedes is the most luxurious of the group, and its ride and handling reflect this achievement. It’s big and comfy, but the other cars’ engines are in another league in terms of smoothness, and the automatic transmission is easily confused during sporty driving. But only the C320 has the three-pointed star on the hood, and that’s a serious consideration for many buyers.

The verdict: Manufacturers are on target with the sporting side of the equation, but fall a little short delivering old-wagon practical value. All are excellent cars, so there are no losers. We found fewer compromises in the BMW, and its lowest-price position sealed the deal.

REAR-SEAT IMPRESSIONS

The New Father
Sporty wagons for young families? Please. None of these vehicles has much more room than their sedan counterpart. If I had 40K to spend, I might buy a BMW. But not a BMW wagon.-Brian J. Fortner

The Expectant Mom
My job was to rate the best car for a budding family. My pick: the Mercedes, because it felt the most wagon-esque. But who wants to clean vomit off plush leather seats?-Robin M. LaSalle

The Single Guy
My colleagues are missing the point. These cars aren’t really for them. They’re not even purebred wagons. They’re hatchbacks. Really fast hatchbacks that can hold a couple of mountain bikes. What’s not to like?
–Michael Moyer

TECHNOLOGY QUOTIENT

Audi A4 Avant Quattro

Engine & drivetrain: 12

Suspension: 12

Safety: 15

Electronics: 15

Materials: 12

Total: 66

BMW 325ix

Engine & drivetrain: 13

Suspension: 12

Safety: 15

Electronics: 12

Materials: 12

Total: 64

Lexus IS300 SportCross

Engine & drivetrain: 13

Suspension: 12

Safety: 14

Electronics: 15

Materials: 12

Total: 66

Mercedes C320

Engine & drivetrain: 11

Suspension: 12

Safety: 15

Electronics: 14

Materials: 12

Total: 64

NOTE: 50 points out of 100 is the baseline score for the expected technology in this vehicle class.

BY THE NUMBERS

Audi A4 Avant Quattro
As-tested price: $40,530

Engine: 220-hp dohc V6

0-60mph: 7.8 seconds

EPA fuel economy (ciy/ highway): 17 city/ 25 highway

EPA emissions rating*: 7

Cargo room (in diaper bags): 40.0

PopSci Power Rating**: 16.91

BMW 325ix
As-tested price: $36,140

Engine: 184-hp dohc inline 6

0-60mph: 9.0 seconds

EPA fuel economy (ciy/ highway): 18 city/ 25 highway

EPA emissions rating*: 6

Cargo room (in diaper bags): 39.0

PopSci Power Rating**: 20.73

Lexus IS300 SportCross

As-tested price: $38,474

Engine: 215-hp dohc inline 6

0-60mph: 7.4 seconds

EPA fuel economy (ciy/ highway): 18 city/ 25 highway

EPA emissions rating*: 6

Cargo room (in diaper bags): 31.0

PopSci Power Rating**: 15.64

Mercedes C320

As-tested price: $44,860

Engine: 215-hp sohc V6

0-60mph: 7.0 seconds

EPA fuel economy (ciy/ highway): 19 city/ 25 highway

EPA emissions rating*: 6

Cargo room (in diaper bags): 36.0

PopSci Power Rating**: 15.81

* www.epa.gov/greenvehicles; vehicles scored 1 to 10 (best)
** Weight divided by torque; lower is better

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auto0502mercedes_A.jpg

As I rocket across the desert outside Phoenix at 120 mph, I’m surprised by my test car’s stability. I’m driving the legendary 1955 Mercedes 300SL Gullwing-the car that inspired the real reason for my trip west: to test Mercedes’ new flagship sports car, the SL500 hardtop convertible.

The reputation of the original SL has cast a long shadow over subsequent models. The all-new 302-horsepower SL500 carries the banner high. Like all German cars, the SL’s top speed is electronically limited to 155 mph, far faster than anyone should drive on American highways. Even so, the car gives you the sense that it could handle such velocity, thanks to a smooth 5.0-liter V8 engine, an active suspension that soaks up bumps and ripples, and a new brake-by-wire system that trims 3 percent off the SL’s stopping distance at highway speeds.

More powerful versions are coming as well: The 469-hp SL55 AMG is scheduled for this fall; the V12-powered SL600 will arrive late next year. The 2003 SL500 starts at $85,000.

Technology Quotient: 20 points per category, 100 possible in total

Engine & drivetrain: 13
Suspension: 17
Safety: 17
Electronics: 19
Materials: 15

TOTAL: 81

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But this is no ordinary hybrid engine. Certainly not like the one in the two-seat Honda Insight, which is just powerful enough to get the 1,800-pound vehicle out of the way of overtaking SUVs; nor the one in the super-lightweight Toyota Prius, which powers the diminutive sedan to 60 mph in a hair under 14 seconds. Great technology, to be sure, but for other people. People willing to sacrifice driving pleasure for fuel economy.

But in the Honda Dualnote, engineers have found the killer app for hybrid technology: high performance. It’s a sea change in how they view hybrids, so much so that some are now calling it “electric turbocharging.” It’s a win-win proposition: You get more power and better fuel economy, while manufacturers can use smaller engines to satisfy performance-minded customers and ever-tightening fuel-efficiency standards. And though Honda has no plans to produce the Dualnote, other automakers have a more immediate date with high-performance hybrids. Detroit is leading the charge: Each of the Big Three plans to put a hybrid truck or sport-utility vehicle in dealerships next year.

The highbred hybrid’s roots date to 1998, when Don Panoz’s Le Mans racing team discovered that shoehorning a 195-horsepower electric motor and a 300-volt nickel-metal-hydride battery alongside the gasoline engine would give the team’s car an edge. It successfully competed in a race, but the team didn’t have enough time or money to develop the car as its primary racer. Several Formula One teams, though, got wind of the idea and started pursuing hybrids of their own.

Their plan was to use a car’s alternator-the mini generator in every vehicle that keeps the battery charged-as an electric-assist motor that could contribute small boosts of power. This prompted the Formula One sanctioning body to ban the technology before it ever got to the track. “They had to,” says John Wallace of Ford’s electric-centric Think division. “Teams without it would have had their behinds waxed.”

Not because these cars would be so much faster, just quicker off the line. In fact, electric turbocharging doesn’t increase top speed at all, but significantly shaves 0-to-60 times-a more useful and apparent measure of speed for most drivers. This is because electric motors make maximum power at low speeds but lack oomph at the higher end. Add all-wheel drive, as the Dualnote concept does, and acceleration is even better because power is going to all four wheels. “With the extra torque,” says Hans Glonner, head of hybrid research at BMW, “we can make a 3.0-liter engine feel just like a 6.0-liter engine, without losing any efficiency.”

This size-output disparity is most evident in the Dualnote, the poster child for this new generation of hybrids. Unveiled late last year, the Dualnote has an impressive 400 horsepower under the hood, but only 300 come from its 3.5-liter V6 engine. The rest is thanks to three electric motors: a large one-Honda calls it an “integrated motor assist”-near the mid-mounted engine and two small ones at the front wheels. You’d expect this sports coupe to guzzle gas, but it doesn’t. In fact, at 42 miles per gallon, it’d be one of the most fuel-efficient cars on the road today, in the same range as the beer-can-sized Chevrolet Metro and Toyota Echo.

Instead of a conventional battery pack, as in the Prius and Insight, the Dualnote features a king-size ultracapacitor-that is, a high-performance energy-storage device. “Ultracapacitors charge and discharge more rapidly than batteries,” explains Ben Knight, vice president of technology at Honda. “That not only gives you a more responsive feel, but also much quicker acceleration.” Other high-performance hybrid designs do call for batteries.

When the Dualnote stops, its sophisticated computer control system switches off the gas engine. Hit the accelerator pedal, and the three electric motors kick in first. Both the motors and engine bring the vehicle up to speed, with the former drawing energy from the ultracapacitor and then delivering power to all four wheels. A computer decides how much power goes where, depending on the individual traction of each wheel. All of this happens nearly instantaneously. “This is what people hoped to get with turbocharging, but didn’t because of turbo lag,” says Wallace, referring to the delay that occurs when an engine’s turbocharger builds boost pressure to increase power.

The two electric motors at the front wheels contribute to acceleration, but their main benefit comes during deceleration. Here, the motors spin in reverse, recharging the ultracapacitor-it’s a similar setup to the regenerative braking systems found on the Insight and Prius. The electric motors even recapture energy while turning: Because the inside, faster-moving wheel doesn’t need as much torque as the outside wheel, the saved mechanical energy is converted to electrical energy and used to recharge the ultracapacitor.

The Dualnote’s high-tech internal combustion engine also helps. It’s an all-aluminum double overhead cam V6 that incorporates Honda’s i-Vtec valve-control technology. An internal computer varies valve lift to adjust the amount of fuel entering the cylinders based on engine speed, and it also constantly fine-tunes the camshaft timing to make tremendous power while conserving fuel.

Of course, as a concept, one component to the Dualnote is missing: a price tag. So while bells and whistles (that is, three electric motors) are fine for a one-of-a-kind sports car, real-world high-performance hybrids will be much more humble.

The initial focus will be on gas-guzzling pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles, where automakers can use smaller, more fuel-efficient engines without compromising power. Ford, for example, is planning a hybrid version of its compact Escape SUV for the 2004 model year. With an electric motor, the 2.0-liter four-cylinder 127-horsepower hybrid Escape will match the acceleration of the 3.0-liter 201-hp V6 version currently available-and deliver 40 miles per gallon. “We’re breaking the link between fuel economy and performance,” Wallace says, adding that though a hybrid drivetrain will add about $3,000 to a new vehicle’s cost, this premium will likely be offset with a federal tax credit.

DaimlerChrysler, meanwhile, is developing a V6-powered hybrid of its midsize Durango sport-utility, also for 2004. Most buyers choose a V8 engine, but Dodge says the smaller powerplant-with some help from an electric motor-can outrun the V8 with less to drink. The company also plans a hybrid-electric Jeep Liberty for 2004 that will have a four-cylinder engine but will out-accelerate the current V6 version. Even Honda is considering small SUV hybrids. Acura, its luxury division, recently unveiled the concept RD-X, which squeezes 250 horsepower out of a modest 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine. There are no production plans yet.

Though hybrid technology seems ideal for small and midsize trucks, it gets a little thorny with heavy-duty pickups. According to engineers at General Motors, V6-powered hybrids may be able to out-accelerate V8s, but they can’t out-haul them. That’s because an electric motor would quickly drain its battery when carrying a heavy load, leaving the V6 to shoulder the burden alone. “We plan to offer a hybrid feature to improve fuel economy, as long as it doesn’t degrade performance,” explains Richard Marsh, GM’s program executive for hybrid trucks. “People buy trucks to use them as trucks,” he adds. “There’s not a lot of interest in trucks with small engines.”

Dodge faces the same issue with its hybrid-electric full-size Ram pickup. Engineers there have decided to stick with a V8, supplementing it with an electric motor only for acceleration. The result: more power from a stop, the same towing capacity, and better gas mileage. Like GM with its full-size GMC Sierra and Chevy Silverado, Dodge hopes to put the hybrid Ram in dealerships next year.

If all goes well with these initial vehicles, expect to see more-especially as the industry begins the transition from 12- to 42-volt electrical systems in 2004. Key to 42-volt systems is what’s called an “integrated starter-alternator”-basically the alternator is built into the engine’s flywheel instead of being driven by the fan belt, a design that can deliver 10 times more electrical power than today’s vehicles. Add a storage device, such as an ultracapacitor or battery, and you have a hybrid vehicle.

Such a high-power delivery system will make all kinds of hybrid configurations feasible, not only for the Dualnote but for existing sports cars such as the Chevrolet Corvette and Dodge Viper. The hybrid configuration Dodge is using in the Durango and Ram is similar to the Dualnote’s-an electric motor powers the front wheels, a gas engine the rear wheels. A Viper with this setup would get 10 percent better gas mileage and 20 percent more torque, says Larry Oswald, DaimlerChrysler’s vice president of hybrid engineering. “That would take another second or two off its 0-to-60 time,” he says. In other words, it’d get to 60 mph in less than 3 seconds.

Which proves an old adage wrong, or at least adds an asterisk to it: There is in fact a “replacement for displacement”-and it’s coming to a showroom near you.

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Borax may prove useful in a lot more than laundry detergent. DaimlerChrysler engineers believe a variant of the innocuous white powder provides a safe, compact way to contain hydrogen. The lack of such storage for the notoriously flammable gas has been a key obstacle to the development of fuel-cell-powered cars. Borax’s first performance is in a concept minivan called the Chrysler Town & Country Natrium (Latin for sodium, an element in borax).

A fairly simple chemical process joins borax and hydrogen in a manner that renders the gas nonflammable. When mixed with water in the Natrium’s fuel system, this sodium borohydride powder produces free hydrogen for the fuel cell (see chart). Unlike other alternative fuel systems, such as those using methanol and gasoline, the Natrium produces no pollution and no carbon dioxide.

Better yet, the powder holds more hydrogen than the most densely compressed air tank. The prototype van can drive 300 miles on a tank of fuel-much farther than the typical fuel cell vehicle. The same tank of hydrogen compressed by conventional means would fill most of the van’s cargo area.

The by-products of this process are water and sodium borate-basically the same stuff as in soap. After use, the spent powder goes into a storage tank. DaimlerChrysler envisions gas station pumps that would exchange sodium borohydride for spent sodium borate. Tankers would resupply stations with the hydrogen-carrying powder and return the used stuff to the refinery.

Hydrogen would be added in a chemical plant. And in a pinch, says Tom Moore, vice president of technical affairs, “You could wash your hands with the residue.”

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