Lucid had their motor/inverter and drivetrain on display in exploded fashion. There are familiar parts in there like the planetary gears, ring gear, and differential. High power electronics need cooling; you can see the coolant connection hose barbs on the inverter.
I think the Lucid Sapphire is the quickest accelerating car you can buy. 1200hp, AWD, and Michelin tires gets you to 60mph in under two seconds and past the quarter mile in under nine seconds. It will just cost you a quarter million before taxes and all that stuff.
The rear trunk had these beams going rearward which I found interesting. I guess they are part of the crash structure.
No control arm brake ducts visible here either. It does have the typical air deflector ahead of the front tire. It also has the not-so-common air turning vane on the front undertray.
A cool thing about EVs at auto shows is that you can actually drive them indoors without choking on CO, unburnt HCs, and NOx.
The downside to EVs from a geek-out perspective is that motors and battery packs are not that interesting to look at. There’s a magnitude fewer parts and areas for differentiation. Where the differentiation will come that we care about is in EV sports cars. Porsche is one of the first to hop into that market with a serious mass market vehicle with their upcoming EV Boxster and Cayman. The question is if, or when, OEMs will make an EV with a good enough thermal system for sustained track use. I doubt the base model EV Porsches will be anything better than what’s already available, but maybe they will have some GT versions with the big enough thermal systems.
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Dang, I was hoping to see to coaxial turbine turbo trickle down to the IC market before things went Full ICE.
Oops, I meant Full EV.
I’m curious to see if/when more e-turbo makes it onto cars. Mercedes has a Garrett e-turbo on one of their AMG cars. Genesis has a 48V electric supercharger and e-turbo uses the same 48V. With more cars coming hybrid like all the new super cars from Ferrari and McLaren, one logical step is e-turbo. Conversely, they could just say the electric motor does the torque filling.
Yeah, we have probably hit ‘Peak Turbo’ in our civilization, but I was kind of hoping to see the development of these turbos stretched out a bit more.
“The amount of turbocharger lag plays a key role in the driver’s perceived quality of a passenger vehicle’s engine response. This paper investigates an alternative method to the conventional design of a turbocharger turbine to improve the transient response of a passenger vehicle. The investigation utilises the Ford Eco-Boost 1.6 L petrol engine, an established production engine, equipped with a turbocharger of similar performance to the GT1548 produced by Honeywell. The commercially available Ricardo WAVE was used to model the engine. Comparing the steady-state performance showed that the axial turbine provides higher efficiencies at all operating conditions of an engine. The transient case demonstrated an improved transient response at all operating conditions of the engine. The study concluded that, by designing a similar sized axial turbine, the mass moment of inertia can be reduced by 12.64% and transient response can be improved on average by 11.76%, with a maximum of 21.05% improvement. This study provides encouragement for the wider application of this turbine type to vehicles operating on dynamic driving cycles such as passenger vehicles, light commercial vehicles, and certain off-road applications.”
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/21/7452
Bummer this turbo didn’t make it into serial production. I wrote about it a while ago. https://motoiq.com/the-secret-turbo-in-the-ring-slaying-porsche-919-evo-honeywell-garrett-dualboost-for-gasoline-turbocharger/
Yeah, that’s the turbo!
“The amount of turbocharger lag plays a key role in the driver’s perceived quality of a passenger vehicle’s engine response. This paper investigates an alternative method to the conventional design of a turbocharger turbine to improve the transient response of a passenger vehicle. The investigation utilises the Ford Eco-Boost 1.6 L petrol engine, an established production engine, equipped with a turbocharger of similar performance to the GT1548 produced by Honeywell. The commercially available Ricardo WAVE was used to model the engine. Comparing the steady-state performance showed that the axial turbine provides higher efficiencies at all operating conditions of an engine. The transient case demonstrated an improved transient response at all operating conditions of the engine. The study concluded that, by designing a similar sized axial turbine, the mass moment of inertia can be reduced by 12.64% and transient response can be improved on average by 11.76%, with a maximum of 21.05% improvement. This study provides encouragement for the wider application of this turbine type to vehicles operating on dynamic driving cycles such as passenger vehicles, light commercial vehicles, and certain off-road applications.”
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/21/7452
So true…there’s a snail shell design for maximum vortex compound combustion…but, that’s kinda secret, for now.
1. The GTD rear suspension looks to be based on the GT500 rear. Probably tweaked a bit and converted to inbound dampers. Lower arm looks very chunky, probably just a prototype still.
The front is very interesting. Based on other photos i have found online, the vertical height difference between the multilink lower “arm” pivot points looks to be over 2 inches.
The exhaust tips are probably very thin wall titanium, as they are made by Akrapovic.
2. The LT6 is impressive, the bore/stroke ratio is even greater than that of the 458.
And the design of the Z06 is what the C8 should have been from the start.
3. That WRX thing is hideous, oh my god.
Appreciate the comments! 3. To be fair, the WRX has never been a looker, ha!
Nothing says Nissan fanboy like a Nismo bathrobe. Nothing makes you look like more of a weirdo than a Nismo bathrobe. I’d rock one!