Electric fan car shatters the Goodwood hill climb record
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
Or even just getting it from tyres to ground. Traction control exists to avoid the car just spinning its wheels in place as it’s completely lost grip.
At high speed downforce can do the job, but at low speeds not so much.
Not very, unless the car suddenly gets a patch of grip and launches you into a tree.
> to hit the gas just to immediately see all four wheels start spitting smoke as they spin in place and start abrasively cutting through the asphalt?
You'd have to wear down the entire tyre first, which isn't going to happen unless you're already at the thread (though supercar tyres do wear down very quickly).
Tyre rubber is much, much softer than asphalt, and for good grip you want pretty soft rubber. By the accounts I've seen, even cold F1 tyres feel sticky. And drag tyres outright crinkle on takeoff.
Not saying they can't be damaged, just that a parking lot is a poor comparison
But the asphalt is mostly fine. It's a lot tougher than rubber.
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/mcmurtry-launch-...
"It will feature a track mode, which will turn on the downforce-creating fan"
However the percent of time saved for the slower cyclist is less, but only a little.
Basically at cycling speeds the aerodynamic curve is pretty flat so it doesn't really matter if you are fast or slow.
If acceleration were an instantaneous off-on step, that would be a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_delta_function
Drag racers have had this problem for a long time; those races last less than 5 seconds. This hill climb is interesting because it's only a bit longer, half a minute, which really changes the equations for electric race cars vs. something like Pikes Peak which is 8 minutes to the top (and is now also totally dominated by electric cars).
Obviously, this is wrong in the real world for so many reasons, but that doesn't stop this from getting repeated.
Everyone who's ever used a drill knows that while speed and torque are inversely related in most of a motors normal operating range you don't get insane torque at low speed. Of course you can wind a motor differently to mitigate this somewhat but still, not a huge improvement. You wouldn't see reduction gears on all sorts of things if this were the case.
I don't know what you consider "serious speeds", but wings can produce meaningful downforce at pretty low speeds. Check out the various unlimited class autocross cars which carry giants wings for downforce, even though autocross events are typically very low speed events (2nd gear most of the time).
Plus, with extreme aero, there's a top-speed vs downforce tradeoff to be made. The big fan trick doesn't have that issue.
Example: Porche Cayman GT4 RS, extremely potent track-day Porche with giant wing.
> https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/press-kits/718-spyder-cayman...
> "At the car’s maximum speed, there is a total of 122 kg of rear downforce."
Yes, thats right, you get 122kg of extra downforce once you hit 196mph. Really helpful in 2nd gear... The reason manufacturers generally only quote wing downforce on road cars at incredible speeds is because the number is not very impressive at lower ones.
i couldn't find any numbers, but they do put them in the wind tunnel.
That's a street car. You need to look at race cars to see where wing development can go.
For an example of race cars which generate downforce at autocross speeds, take a look at cars like https://www.autoxandtrack.com/a-mod-acme-special-fastest-aut...
That's why fan cars can be considered cheating. The fan is made of mobile aerodynamic surfaces. The Brabham BT46B try to circumvent the rules by saying their fan was a cooling fan, it didn't work.
If you allow mobile aerodynamic surfaces, indeed, you are going to have aircraft. It is easy to imagine a car with actual wings, with flaps, ailerons and elevators.
For those who aren’t aware, Harry Metcalfe was the founder of EVO magazine and had an outsized behind the scenes influence of Top Gear’s new format in the early 2000s. While Gordon sticks to some of his script, the two get VERY nerdy at points digging into all sorts of non-obvious minutiae and detail. 53 minutes is a lot, but by far it’s the best interview about the car by a large margin.
Harry is also a very big EV and renewable electricity nerd, and loves digging into those topics with tons of research.
The McMurtry by comparison is more like the old F1 fan car, in that it is literally sucking itself down to the road, with tons of force, with a skirt and so on.
When I watched it do the hill climb I was thinking of all the drivers they might’ve approached, and thought that if Mark Webber hadn’t hung it up a few years ago he would’ve, “noped out” of that conversation immediately given his history of flying for Mercedes in the beginning of his career.
The one at Goodward FOS was cleared by DoT and is road legal. The driver announced it in an interview on TV.
I presume the fans must be turned off on public roads?
aside : how does one engineer a fan blade that's going to suck in rocks all day under normal use?
In the PT6 turboprop engine, the system forces air to go around a bend, and also opens a trap door. It's actuated by the pilot for landing/takeoff.
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/16206/how-do-in...
Also the output it filtered so there are no rocks or other debris thrown into the car behind. That was already the case on the prototype raced at Goodwood.
Thrust vectoring could serve as a safety system to dynamically produce downforce in case a high speed car starts to go airborne, can counter spin-outs, etc.
One further famous example was the so-called “fiddle brake”, given its name much later by Ferrari technical boss Ross Brawn, but known within the team as “brake-steer,” that McLaren ran in the latter half of 1997 and into 1998. This simple concept allowed the rear brakes to operate on either the left or right side only, providing a clear benefit under acceleration in corners – and an instant lap time advantage.
https://www.mclaren.com/racing/inside-the-mtc/mclaren-extra-...
Basically a standard diff using brakes to shape power output. Basically a brake limited version of a limited slip diff.
11.1 Brake circuits and pressure distribution
11.1.1 ... all cars must be equipped with only one brake system. This system must comprise solely of two separate hydraulic circuits operated by one pedal, one circuit operating on the two front wheels and the other on the two rear wheels. ...
11.1.2 The brake system must be designed so that within each circuit, the forces applied to the brake pads are the same magnitude and act as opposing pairs on a given brake disc.
https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/2022_formula_1_techn...
This doesn't really seem like that big of a disadvantage to me. You can just keep increasing downforce until the tires are able to give you the traction you need for any maneuver. It seems like that should scale as far as you need it to, and be way more efficient than rockets. I guess the limits would be in the tires and suspension.
You would need something other than pneumatic tires, or some sort of dynamic tire pressure system.
Paraphrasing: https://www.whichcar.com.au/news/mclaren-f1-secret-downforce...
I’m impressed that this video game technology comes back!
Check out the Brabham car that won on its debut at the Swedish Grand Prix.
"when the drivers blipped the throttle, the car could be seen to squat down on its suspension as the downforce increased"
They all have their fans and their critics who think it’s a boring sport.
I don’t follow F1, but based on a bunch of people in my Twitter feed, they finished one of the most exciting seasons in years.
> Since 1937, the only year in which races were held but no fatalities occurred was 1982.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Isle_of_Man_TT_Mountai...
Turns out, it's fairly straightforward to build a car that rather radically exceeds the physical limits of the driver.
I would love to watch the autonomous version of that, though, with "no restrictions" (or nearly none - melting the nose of the car behind you with a flamethrower isn't quite in the spirit). You want to have a driver in a sim booth drive it over wireless? Great. You want to have a self driving algorithm? Great. You want to generate gobs of downforce with upward firing jets? Great. Just define some basic fan safety based limits, or... don't, and have a closed track.
I would love to see what some of the race teams could come up with, unrestricted from all the various "Hey, let's keep drivers and fans alive!" limits out there.
Also, formula one for years has cars leave a so highly turbulent wake that they had to introduce a system that gave cars close behind other cars some leeway as to their aerodynamics to make overtakes possible (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_reduction_system)
I guess you’d need something similar, too.
DRS is still there though. The basic argument for it is that it makes races more exciting by encouraging overtakes even more (though there is a lot of debate about that).
I mean, things like X-games get a lot of viewers, why not the above?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_propulsion_engine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiXuHjyxW14
It would need quite a lot of energy, so batteries are the limiting factor, as always.
The author proposed "Formula Zero," where teams would be national rather than purely sponsor-oriented. Team America (cue music) vs. Team Japan vs. Team Italy etc. Note that this was years before the zero-emissions effort of the same name. Cool idea, and one might imagine what could emerge from efforts where NASA helps with aerodynamics for Team America, DLR for Germany, etc. (and/or DOE's combustion engineering experts consulting on Team America engine design: the potential collaborations run long).
Fun fact: a major limiting factor for racing speed is the allowed size of the brakes. Let F-1 cars have titanic wheels with low profile tires and lap speeds would shoot way up. Of course, brake too little or too late and the resulting wreck will almost certainly be fatal — it's pretty tough to protect against coup-contrecoup injuries no matter how energy-absorbent the car may be when speeds get really high. Scrambled brains are good for breakfast, bad for drivers.
It's been tried in all sorts of endeavors and eventually falls apart.
Back in the day, there was a motorcycle series "Formula USA", with rules essentially "must have 2 wheels, no alcohol", and it was all well and good with folks running their hand crafted, bored out Superbikes until Kenny Roberts showed up with a pair of factory Yamaha Moto GP 500cc two stroke machines (which is, essentially, "unobtainium"), and, in time, dominated the field. Things like that lead to rule changes in F-USA.
Also, consider the origin of modern MMA. The "Ultimate Fighter Championship", which was a "no rules" bout. Royce Gracie dominated those events early on.
I will never forget UFC 4. Dan Severn, a very powerful wrestler, was dominating his bouts (3 as I recall). His fights were over very quickly.
Meanwhile, Royce, who was a skilled grappler, while winning his bouts, they were taking quite a bit of time.
At the end, Royce had just finished his 3rd bout and then had to stand up to Severn, with very minimal rest. Combining Severn's fast bouts, with Royce long bouts gave Severn a lot of time to rest and recover between fights. Royce was obviously quite tired going in to the final round.
Severn dominated that fight, but it drew on...and on...and on. Over 15 minutes.
In the end, Gracie prevailed, upside down, pinned against the fence, with Severn bent over him. It was an extraordinary encounter.
But in the end, it led to rule changes. 15m fights don't really work with the broadcast schedule. Seeing two guys tangled in knots for 10m straight with minimal movement isn't very interesting to watch, either. And now we have modern MMA with combined striker and grappling skills.
Turns out competition is only fun when it's fair. While its technically interesting to see folks exploit the rules, and even dominate, it's more interesting when they have to work within them.
In the end, you (most folks, I know I do) want the man behind the wheel to be the deciding factor, not the machine beneath him.
For the driver, keep safety requirements: "safety cell", driver+seatBallast minimum weight (G-force maximums?)
For the car:
- regulate tyre contact patch minimum-at-all-times. NB: not number, placement, manufacturer or compound
- regulate other safety stuff like brake light(s) and mirrors/mirror-equivalent-screens etc.
- physical size and minimum&maximum-at-all-times weight limit IE mass window.
- design wise go nuts. Do whatever you want.
Then, when they go too fast. Reduce the size or mass or both for the car. Make them do more, with less.
Eventually, you'd end up with gokarts doing current F1 speeds with ridiculous tech.
But the driver would be largely a passenger as perfect traction electronics take over and AI driving etc.
So then you make the passenger a lottery for those who attend the races... obviously minimum physical requirements.
The other thing that was really exceptional about the 2J, at least as simulated in GT4, was how tall the 3-speed automatic gearing was. Between the car seemingly never changing gears, barely varying RPMs despite accelerating like a rocket, and essentially not needing to brake for turns, it just seemed like the epitome of buggy arcade physics. Through a 2022 lens that description sounds apropos to an EV, despite it being a rather old ICE machine.
>* Brabham BT45 was an overweight and bulky car, initially weighing 625 kg*
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabham_BT46, linked in other comments.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/2022-f1-cars-set-for-furt...
There’s no metric by which an electric motor, sufficiently supplied with everything it needs to function, doesn’t embarrass them. Very exciting future.
I own an electric vehicle, and range is an issue, since I don't have access to the Tesla charging network. I have to take my gas car when traveling to my mom's house (California to Colorado). Even within California, I've been stuck in remote places on level 2 chargers too many times to take it more than 40% from home, without some serious planning.
I assume you own a Tesla? ;)
Long races like Formula 1, Le Mans, Dakar Rally are far from being won by Electric cars, because of the range/enormous batteries it would require.
If nothing else, replacing a better in under 4 seconds seems completely doable.
I don't have the latest statistics from here, but I just read that in the neighboring country over 80% of the new vehicles (90+% of the private vehicles) this year have been BEVs. It's a solved problem.
Additionally, Goodwood has a 150mph speed limit, so the pinnacle of petrol cars can't even attempt it.
We'll probably get there even for road vehicles in the next few decades.
That's a large caveat in a performance context, as the battery that does that equates to "for 10-20 minutes" at the moment. But exciting none the less!
>There’s no metric by which an electric motor, sufficiently supplied with everything it needs to function, doesn’t embarrass them.
There is no way a snail, sufficiently supplied with a speedboat, doesn't embarrass Michael Phelps.
Power and cooling are the hard parts. You can't just take them as given.
With regard to taking records away from the VW ID.R, a much more interesting benchmark would be its performance at Pike's Peak. I don't imagine they're ready for that yet.
The differences are mainly intangible but the events are just not in the same league
Just as a very unscientific benchmark, looking at the instant fuel consumption on my car shows that driving slowly up a mountain road (i.e. to a ski field) consumes about 3 times the fuel as flat driving at highway speeds.
More to the point, in terms of testing an electric car there's a stark difference in the amount of storage (and therefore, mass) needed to climb Pike's Peak and to climb the hill at Goodwood. If VW had to beat the Speirling's time at Goodwood tomorrow, they'd make the run with less battery storage. I honestly don't know if the Spierling could even be set up to make it all the way to the top of Pike's Peak. Their stock car surprisingly has, on paper, more battery storage than the VW (60KWh vs 40KWh) but they need to spin those giant fans...
I would not want to make any guesses about how Spierling's ground effects would perform at a much higher altitude. I'll be the first to watch if they set it up as a proper race car.
edit: intriguingly, a Top Gear article suggests the VW ran at Goodwood with a smaller than normal battery. No idea how the Spierling was setup. Pike's Peak, or a sprint race at any proper sports car track, would be a more realistic test for both cars. I actually don't have any doubts about who would win that, short of some very real development on Speirling's part...
>I actually don't have any doubts about who would win that, short of some very real development on Speirling's part...
It is a team that figured out how to absolutely shatter the goodwood record that VW had set, seems strange you are so confident they can't figure out Pikes Peak.
> seems strange you are so confident they can't figure out Pikes Peak.
I meant what I said: they would need some real development to make that car into something that could win at Pike's Peak. I'm pretty sure VW spent seven figures preparing their car for that race. Don't get me wrong, I hope these guys do it.
If they're taking publicity seriously, they'll do something at Nürburgring once they've made their street legal version available. Of course it would be interesting to see how the current car performs there as well.
Pikes Peak is also extremely bumpy and was only paved all the way to the top in 2011. A car like the Speirling relying on fans for downforce would really struggle to maintain grip throughout a Pikes Peak run as each bump would cause a momentary loss of aero (not dissimilar to this season's F1 porpoising issue, just bigger and worse)
Do you also get your health information from anti vaxxers and space news from moon hoaxers?
https://insideevs.com/news/354805/volkswagen-id-r-returns-go...
Have a look on photo / video sites for "goodwood revival crashes" to get an idea. It's a fantastic weekend and seeing these old classics doing what they were designed for is wonderful.
https://www.visordown.com/news/general/isle-man-tt-investiga...
Pike's Peak Hill Climb (in the US) is safer than that but has still had 7 deaths, most of which were motorcyclists.
If you think the guys on normal bikes are crazy, tt has a sidecar category that beats it hands down for OMGs/mile
I watched a pair pull into the pits after their lap. The pilion took off his helmet and tried to clean his glasses. His hands were shaking so much that I took pity on his wife and two young kids as they watched.
Still to this day I have no idea where that guy's priorities are.
Not sped up (he launches at about 1m37, cuts beam at top about 2m12 for a 35 sec run.
Crashes can be pretty serious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJdQ5wtWqZU is doing a show run, but you get some idea of how little you can see from inside the car. I know the eyes are better than the camera, but even so it's quite a ride.
An example, continuously running since pre-quake SF:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelsley_Walsh_Speed_Hill_Clim...
As far as I'm aware of how things work, compared to ICE vehicles, EVs currently have better instant torque but lower top speeds. That said, is there anybody who doesn't appreciate many of the nice qualities of electric engines? Just from the perspective of the engines, they're extremely fun toys and I think that opinion is close to universal.
I think that most of the skepticism of EVs doesn't have anything remotely to do with the engine performance, but many of the complicated infrastructure and social factor questions surrounding their usage.
Imho the infrastructure required for them will be much simpler than the existing infrastructure required to power gasoline cars. All those underground tanks with trucks delivering toxic flammable fluids are replaced with modest upgrades to the grid (it doesn't take much, as refining a tank of gasoline requires as much electricity as charging an electric car).
This transition is already well underway and many of us have been doing road trips with minimal or no pain for years already while others are still skeptical! Granted, there are still use cases that are difficult, like towing large things a long way.
I'm very skeptical on the road trips part as well, it still appears you're going to spend 15% to 30% of your total trip time sitting at several chargers along the way. For day trips this might not be an issue, but for long range multi day trips, the patchy availability still seems to be a real problem.
The intersection of Hotels and Motels with Supercharging On Site is still a very narrow proposition. I'm excited for the future, but I believe it's further away than most people readily acknowledge.
Some also have limits on battery output. The Mustang MachE can only go full speed for 5 seconds before power is cut really drastically. So much so, that in a quarter mile drag race, the Mach E is as fast as a 5.0 to 60 MPH, but slower than a 2.3L to 100. Not that every EV has this weird limit, but it does exist.
Plus, EVs are all quite heavy, and even though the weight balance is much better, they don't handle nearly as well. The writing is all the wall though, there will never be an EV Miata or GR86. Future vehicles are all going to be gigantic cars with hypercar acceleration and numb handling.
Then once on firm ground, flip it and go back to racecar mode.
I'd be very concerned about trapped energy thermal runaway fire risk with the batteries surrounding the driver especially at impact, but this is an absolutely spectacular machine imo
WILD ELECTRIC FAN CAR BEATS GOODWOOD HILL RECORD! | EXCLUSIVE TOUR https://youtu.be/qTgL8_1GDI0
It's worth reading the comments section of the article as it includes some observations from spectators at the hill climb. It sounds like the car in motion is quite a sight to behold!
I find the whole concept fascinating, just because it seems ridiculous in a way.
Edit to add a link to Jim Hall's "sucker car" that predated the Brabham: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaparral_Cars#2J
> “.. and we calculated, we could actually drive it on the wall around Sebring.”
The fan can't be activated that quick in order to create vacuum so it would need to be running most of the time, also can you imagine having hundreds of cars rolling down the street with their fans on blasting whatever gunk, dirt, gravel into the air?
These magnetic carbon shifters feel great in my simrig; it's interesting how they are to be seen in this monster of an EV!
Edit: Here, cheers. https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=6m50s&v=qTgL8_1GDI0
It is my opinion that the current generation of supercars (not to mention hypercars) not only exceeds the driver skills but also the driver's ability to properly function for 7-10 days after bringing said supercar to the limit.
Makes sense to have both the V12 and a small electric motor because the rich folks would buy the car for the option (but not the obligation) to use the V12 but in reality it's gonna be the electric motor doing all the work while proceeding at 7mph around Harrods/Piccadilly or the Burj Khalifa. I think the environment can handle a couple of V12 revs per week when rich folks get out of Harrods.
It totally looks like an old 1960s/70s/80s low-budget TV show special effect.
Most sports cyclists consider 5% a "steady climb". I don't doubt that you regularly pass cyclists on both, but for a sports cyclist I can confirm that - as the OP said - 6% is considered a mild gradient.
Cycling races regularly have hills above 10%. For example in the recent Giro d'Italia race the final 10km of the Blockhaus climb average 9.4% and the final 6km of the Santa Cristina are over 10%.
If you aren't looking to climb hills you'd avoid it for sure, but that isn't what the OP claimed.
"That's a hill?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31896087
Yes, it's a hill. Maybe a small hill, maybe a mild gradient, but still a hill. We already have multiple sports involved in this thread, and none of them have goalposts so let's not move any. The motorists, who have it even easier physically than the cyclists, call it a hill. Maybe we should just let them. Turning it into an "I'm so tough" contest is just silly, especially from folks who are squarely in the middle of the effort-per-mile scale.
The road in my backdoor that I use for my short cycling climbing loops is averaging 5.8% over 18.8km, from sea level to 1100m. It is only difficult because it includes 2 small descents in between which mean that some parts have to be double-digit gradients, including one at +17%, to reach that final elevation. Appart from that 17% part it is still considered a relatively easy climb.
So is it a hill? Yes. Is it a really small and mild one, also yes.
>> I've seen people climb it with some 2-3 decade old 26" MTB and I climbed far more difficult climbs with my 13kg (28lbs) fat bike and my 15kg (33lbs) full suspension trail bike.
> Not what I was asking.
That would be "yes". I don't understand how you think he didn't answer your question.
Edit: unless you mean "have you run/walked up it?" - but I don't understand what the point of that question would be.
The person you responded to said "Even by cyclists standard, 6% is pretty mild." and you said "That's funny" and went on to say how some cyclists struggle on it.
I was confirming that "cyclists" (as in people who enjoy the sport of cycling as opposed to ride a bike to get somewhere) generally think a 6% hill is mild.
Video cameras really flatten out slopes.
This is especially so where snow or consistent surfaces are involved. I've raced on yikes-steep hills that later you see the video — and it doesn't matter if it's just some coach's camera or network sports coverage — it just looks like barely a notch above the novice slopes. A cameraman needs to really work to show the steepness anything close to being there.
The only situation where the slope might really show up is where there are dramatic changes in slope like a sudden drop-off, flat, crossroad on a slope, etc. Then you can sort of see a good comparison, but it still doesn't rival the reality. And the Goodwood course is a fairly consistent grade with no sharp features like that.
The basic problem with this concept is that if it ever stops working you are now driving way over the limit (not just a tiny bit) of what the car can handle and are unceremoniously thrown out of the track at a dangerous speed.
It becomes basically the contest of who can create more downforce.
The cars resulting from this have very little clearance and very hard suspension. Add a huge, changing downforce and you can imagine how anything failing like a suspension or a tyre can immediately put the driver in danger.
I think allowing this creates unhealthy, dangerous incentive to escalate the downforce until something fails -- the driver due to G-force, some component in the car or an object on the track that causes the car to bump up, etc.
Cars that get their downforce from traditional aero elements are also susceptible to catastrophic failures if they hit bumps too big for the design to handle. Mercedes famously demonstrated this at Le Mans.
Anyway this car is designed for people to have fun with at track days, so their are no rules, so you can't make it illegal.