A fun little exercise

"TheOnelectronic" (theoneelectronic) 08/25/2015 at 17:46 • Filed to: None

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A while back, I was talking with someone about the Veyron and they said “yeah, it can go really fast, but it can’t maintain that speed for long or take the smallest turn.” So I thought, “what would it take to have a car that could?”

Assume power is no issue. Your magical hypercar has a Tächnoböbel Quantum Fusion Turbine powering all four wheels. Also for the sake of simplification assume you have magical tires that have no speed/time limitations. Also assume that because I don’t understand tires well enough.

It’s not hard to figure out something that could do 250mph on conventional highways. That’s probably not far out of reach for an F1 or LMP car.

But what about 300? 500? 700? What sort of ludicrous technologies, without going all the way into the realm of made-up shit (Inertial dampening is TOO easy. Keep your Bergenholms at home, kids.), would be necessary to maintain control?

So the basic challenge is, what would a car with four tires and two passengers that could do a standard highway commute at 300+mph incorporate?

I won’t go into too much detail about how I’d do it, because I’m curious to see how others would approach the problem.

Photo Credit: GIS for “Concept Car”

MarquetteLa > TheOnelectronic 08/25/2015 at 17:56

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Having racetrack-quality highway surfaces would be a good first step.

TheOnelectronic > MarquetteLa 08/25/2015 at 18:04

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Assume the road is “well maintained interstate” in quality. Not potholes, but not laser level of micron smooth either.

SVTyler > TheOnelectronic 08/25/2015 at 18:06

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1. Rubber that can handle those kinds of stresses. To quote a MotorTrend article on developing the Veyron’s tires:

In testing Michelin had run the Veyron’s massive meats on its tire dyno at 270 mph — the fastest it can spin — for 20 seconds, then at 250 mph for 20 seconds. It repeated that cycle two more times. Then the tires exploded.

Of course if you’re talking about much higher speeds you’d probably end up foregoing the tire altogether and using a one-piece wheel made from aluminum like the land-speed record cars, in which case normal roads couldn’t be used anyways.

TheHondaBro > TheOnelectronic 08/25/2015 at 18:07

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VTEC

TheOnelectronic > SVTyler 08/25/2015 at 18:09

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Also for the sake of simplification assume you have magical tires that have no speed/time limitations. Also assume that because I don’t understand tires well enough.

Just because the tire integrity thing takes a lot of the fun out of it.

TheOnelectronic > TheHondaBro 08/25/2015 at 18:10

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SVTyler > TheOnelectronic 08/25/2015 at 18:24

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Reading comprehension fail lol. In that case an extremely aerodynamic body to minimize the power needed to reach those speeds. The Thrust SSC had something like 100,00HP to reach 763mph but it only fit one person:

Having a comfortable commuter car with a liveable interior probably wouldn’t be shaped so efficiently.

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