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Internet sleuths take down the SSC Tuatara's 316-MPH speed record

aww_dang 6y ago
I saw this flame war on youtube and reddit. I noticed that there was a statement from the driver about crosswinds blowing him onto the shoulder during his fastest run. However, I didn't see anything like that in the video. I assumed this meant they didn't want to show that run because the potential danger of being blown off the road wouldn't look good. Perhaps they mixed the speed data with a safer run from earlier in the day. This would explain the discrepancies. If this is true, perhaps they are simply using the calibration talk as a red herring to distract from the misleading video. This scenario would allow them to not take responsibility and comeback with a genuine record.
- parsimo2010 6y ago
  They pretty much got caught blatantly lying. It’s possible that Shelby didn’t know it was faked at first, but by now he’s had the chance to find out and is complicit in the lie since he hasn’t confessed. I think a lot of other companies are going easy on them because they have also cheated and don’t want to start throwing stones in their zillion dollar sky castles, lest all the ultra rich owners that never drive their cars find out it’s a lie. But expect to see a lot of hemming and hawing about how they’re having a tough time getting this next attempt scheduled and ask the permits in place. Because it isn’t going to happen. If it could, then they would have released the real footage and data to begin with.
  - MikeAmelung 6y ago
    So what exactly makes you think it's not possible for this car to achieve that speed? Do you think all of the publicly released stats are a lie?
    - parsimo2010 6y ago
      The publicly released stats by them? Yes I think they are a lie for now, they’ve been shown to be dishonest. If a Tuatara owner wants to post specs that weren’t measured with the help of SSC, then I might believe them. But so far the independent analysis points to the car not going that fast. This wasn’t an “editing” error where the framerate of the video accidentally was slowed down, it wasn’t a GPS calibration error, it was a company being caught in a lie. It happens from time to time, especially in motorsport. Edit: to clarify, it’s not on me to prove that the car isn’t the fastest in the world. It’s on SSC, which is making the claim, to prove it. That their first attempt has been debunked means they will be given more scrutiny the next time around, and I’m not confident that they will do it. Because if this was just an editing error, why don’t they just go back to their footage and show us the real stuff? Did it conveniently get deleted?
      - MikeAmelung 6y ago
        That's valid, there's certainly something going on with the video thing. I guess my current thinking is that trying to fake the video in the first place would be tremendously stupid. Then on top of that to do such a bad job. So maybe it was an accident in video editing. But yeah, it's possible they're completely full of shit.
thebeardisred 6y ago
Wild seeing this. I heard from a family member that this was _about_ to happen. Specifically, these records occur on a stretch of "Blue Diamond Highway" between Pahrump, NV and Las Vegas, NV. This is the spot right before it splits into a divided highway. https://goo.gl/maps/nom16aarrpDVymFj6 https://goo.gl/maps/nom16aarrpDVymFj6 They'd just finished up years of construction in the area and allowed it's use (since it shuts down all traffic going over the mountain for folks commuting into Las Vegas).
olivermarks 6y ago
This is the wonder of the internet, the clues, anomalies and illogical, contradictory evidence people pick up on and expose like a crowd sourced episode of the old TV show 'Columbo'. It's great that Shelby have accepted this, not crying 'tin foil hat', conspiracy theorists etc etc as so often happens with higher stakes anomalies
- lgl 6y ago
  Sure they have accepted, but it's the only way to save face. Let's not forget that they did put out press releases (that are still up btw [0] [1]) falsely claiming that "Officials were on site to verify all world record criteria was met -- including review of Dewetron GPS measurements" which then prompted Dewetron themselves to distance themselves and post several comments and their own statements denying that claim [2]. Only when evidence and press/public attention started increasing did SSC then miraculously also started finding inconsistencies in the videos, etc etc. But at this point, their only options were to either admit to their wrongdoing or go along and side with the people that, by this time, already had pretty damning reports and proofs that the evidence for the "record" was very sketchy. If you haven't seen, you should check out Shmee150's video [3] So, to me this was either purposely done for attention/press or the SSC people were really incompetent at trying to break this kind of record without proper measurement tools and official/independent reviewers. Something like this should, imho, be done as professionally and with as much redundancy as possible before any wild claim is made and press releases issued. It should never have come to a point where a few car enthusiasts on youtube can, from just a video and basic math/physics and knowing your own car parts, figure out that your record claims are false or at least very inaccurate. It has never happened when Bugatti or Koenigsegg broke the records. But now, if you search for "fastest production car" on Google, you get a whole lot of SSC results so, in a way, I guess they have succeeded. [0] https://www.sscnorthamerica.com/news/ssc-tuatara-hypercar-earns-worlds-fastest-production-vehicle-title https://www.sscnorthamerica.com/news/ssc-tuatara-hypercar-ea... [1] https://www.sscnorthamerica.com/news/dewetron-validates-ssc-tuatara-record-top-speed https://www.sscnorthamerica.com/news/dewetron-validates-ssc-... [2] https://www.autodevot.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Dewetron-SSC-Tuatara-Press-Release-October-28.jpg https://www.autodevot.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Dewetro... [3] https://youtu.be/nPXXGTuQKbk https://youtu.be/nPXXGTuQKbk
sneak 6y ago
The inaccurate information (added by a semi-anonymous ipv6 user not logged in) is still up on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nevada_State_Route_160&type=revision&diff=985647420&oldid=954009051 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nevada_State_Rout...
- bipson 6y ago
  And someone just fixed it shortly after your post. Thanks, I guess?
  - sneak 6y ago
    That was half of the idea, WP doesn't let you edit from a VPN even with an account. :)
    - bipson 6y ago
      That's the part I was thanking you for ;), since I could not possibly know if you fixed it yourself. And I would not have expected you to write about something that needs to be changed (in that tone) and doing it yourself immediately afterwards. Why then write about it before fixing it, or in fact at all. Didn't make sense to me. Also, my thank you could be seen as equally directed towards the stranger that got your hint.
thrwyoilarticle 6y ago
I have irrationally strong feelings about production car speed records. Firstly, >Bugatti's claimed 300-mph-breaking Chiron run was never going to count As much as they would like to believe otherwise, Guiness World Records can not create truth. If the Chiron goes faster than the SSC, it's the fastest production car. That's it. Two way runs & proper filming are an important factor if you're trying to decide who gets the piece of paper but there's nothing 'official' about it. If someone goes faster but never tells anyone, they still went faster. That is apart from one point: the Chiron isn't a production car. But neither is the SSC. Nor the Veyron nor the Agera RS. If you don't believe me, try to buy one. No matter how much money you have, or at what time you try to do it, you can't. All of these cars have extremely limited units sold only to people with an existing relationship with the company. All of them set records with special editions. That's just a modified car. If there are only 25 Agera RSes & every one is modified for the owner, how do you establish the one that did the record isn't just the equivalent of a binned, liquid oxygen-cooled CPU that dies after the record setting run? You can't even drive the Veyron away from a record setting attempt: you need to replace its $40000 tyres. Bugatti's record was once in doubt because they deactivated the speed limiter for the run. This was later retracted because it's not actually about trying to set consistent rules, it's about creating marketing material for Volkswagen's halo car. Which is why they won't let anybody else run their faster cars on their track. Other, assorted viewpoints: - If your car is just a modified Lotus, it doesn't count. - For bidirectional attempts, how can you say that a car has a top speed of C mph when C = A+B/2 mph and A>B? That's an invented figure.
- Traster 6y ago
  >- For bidirectional attempts, how can you say that a car has a top speed of C mph when C = A+B/2 mph and A>B? That's an invented figure. I agree that (A+B)/2 is an invented figure, but I think the logic of "This is the maximum a car can do without external factors" is a reasonable thing to agree on as a top-speed, and wind is an external factor. Otherwise a lot of cars can set their top speed by being dropped from a sky scraper, and the testing would get unreasonably expensive. (A+B)/2 is probably a good first approximation to a wind-neutral value (and a gravity neutral value too).
Traster 6y ago
From the sounds of this there's two possible outcomes (assuming good faith): They run again and set somewhere >300mph. If they do that then it's reasonable to say that the original run was legitimate. More likely they run again and they look very silly because all their calibration was screwed and their speeds are a long way off. There's always the third possibility - shenanigans. In which case they'll either pull more shenanigans or they'll just try and slink away. In the meantime it sounds like the record can be safely ignored.
- MikeAmelung 6y ago
  I don't know what the gearing looks like on this car, and I honestly don't care enough to look it up, but why do you and the article seem to think a car with 1750 (claimed) horsepower might be slower than one with 1160 (claimed) horsepower?
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    Just 3 general reasons this could be true: 1. some engines will heat soak and lose more power than others under extended load, which doing 300mph will take, and the tuatara is a smaller engine running a lot of boost, more likely to lose power over time compared to some of the other hypercars with larger engines or partial electric power boosts. 2. gearing 3. aerodynamics. not just drag but will the car become airborne/impossible to control, etc
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    In the video you can guess that the engine power wasn't the limit at all. It was still accelerating super fast when reaching their top speed.
    - MikeAmelung 6y ago
      So that leaves us with two possible reasons the car couldn't have achieved the speed they're claiming. One, it wasn't actually geared to go that fast. Or two, the driver lifted because the car was unstable or he was afraid the tires were gonna explode or something. It seems unlikely that people capable of building a car like this would have released a claimed speed that their car was incapable of reaching due to gearing. Then again, I've seen a lot of stupid things in my time racing.
Jdjdjdjjdhebe 6y ago
Gps has no calibration process which would affect this in any way.
- ansgri 6y ago
  They probably use some RTK / dGPS setup for increased accuracy, which does need calibration.
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    Actual RTK/dGPS makes GPS more accurate, not less. If it doesn’t lock, the software should fall back to regular GPS. Unless they were abusing the system by putting the dGPS reference station on a moving vehicle going the opposite direction or simply feeding spoofed correction data into the GPS.
    - neeleshs 6y ago
      I'm ignorant about speed tests. Given that distance is constant, wouldn't two synchronized timers be simpler than using GPS? And potentially more accurate?
      - olyjohn 6y ago
        I think timing it between two points will give you average speed between them. But this record is about top speed.
        neeleshs 6y ago
        Ah! thanks!
- londons_explore 6y ago
  Any measurement inaccuracy or calibration issue here is going to be <1mph anyway... It could never explain what was seen. Either someone foolishly read km/h numbers as mph, or the whole thing is faked. Considering the silly animation of the camera view on the video, I suspect the latter...
speedgoose 6y ago
I used Audacity (and YouTube-dl) a few days ago to have an estimation of the top speed using the SSC information such as the gearbox ratios and the size of the tires, and the sound of the engine in the YouTube video. Because it's actually simple to listen how fast an engine rotates, I found that they went slower than what is advertised and that the engine didn't rotate as fast as they claim. I computed 7530rpm and they claim 8600rpm. I posted it on HN and I hope it's ok to post it again as a comment : https://fungiboletus.github.io/ssc-rpm/ https://fungiboletus.github.io/ssc-rpm/
- SomeHacker44 6y ago
  Just curious, did you take into account any possible doppler shift of the frequencies?
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    No, should I have? The microphone was inside the car.
    - Waterluvian 6y ago
      If sound source and sensor were at a fixed distance from each other then no.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  when i first saw the video the rate of acceleration in the 300mph domain made no sense to me, given the power of the car. it didn’t creep up to 316! it should have.
- toxik 6y ago
  Interesting analysis! I’ve seen the 2x multiplier myself, when I looked at the spectrogram of an AC induced whine in a speaker IIRC
- tgtweak 6y ago
  > in V8 there is a cylinder firing at every 90° rotation which means 2 cylinder fire in one crankshaft rotation. Your method and math checks out even without the tachometer observations - in a split-plane v8 (such as that in the scc tuatara) you have two cylinder fires per rotation of the engine. You have measured 251 cylinder fires per second (251hz) thus 125.5 rotations per second OR 7530/minute (RPM). Hard to refute that.
pbowyer 6y ago
In speed record world I wasn't aware SSC had two meanings and assumed this was about Thrust SSC's record breaking runs, thinking "they've got the speed a bit wrong". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThrustSSC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThrustSSC
theincredulousk 6y ago
I mean regardless of measurement, the gearbox ratios, engine RPM, and wheel/tire size plainly dictate maximum possible speed. Why even use GPS for this, as opposed to a known distance and a clock, or an on-site laser (or whatever electromagnetic wave) based system? Seems like using satellites is unnecessarily complex and error prone(esp. civilian GPS).
- Avshalom 6y ago
  because you don't know where in the run you're going to be at max speed or how long you can maintain it
  - Animats 6y ago
    The official land speed record uses a measured mile. You start as far back as you need to and then go through the traps and get timed. The Southern California Timing Association sets up time trials on the Bonneville Flats frequently. They routinely time speeds over 300MPH. These SSC guys need to go to a place like that and do it with timers and spectators, or shut up.
- aunty_helen 6y ago
  Tire size changes with speed and weight, weight changes with downforce, downforce changes with speed, winds, air temperature. Maximum theoretical speed on a dyno, sure.
  - bigiain 6y ago
    > weight changes with downforce Your high school physic teacher is on line 1. Wants to talk to you about what "weight" means...
    - bfuclusion 6y ago
      Mass does not change. But the effective pressure on the tires is as if the weight (which can be defined as the force required to support something) is indeed higher.
Causality1 6y ago
nobody's accusing the company of flat-out lying or deception in this case. I don't know why not, because that's obviously exactly what they did. The engineers know the car can't go that fast. The helicopter pilot knows the car wasn't going that fast. They outright lied about the endorsement of the GPS company. You can't do that accidentally.
- ZiiS 6y ago
  What is super wierd is the car probably can, at least set a genuine record. The engine power and aero are plausable. No sane driver would try on thouse tires, but the are plenty of mad ones. Why lie rather then just doing it expecially when they where always going to get caught?
- FrankBooth 6y ago
  SSC have never been faithful actors.
- rasz 6y ago
  Reminds me of Nikola. Releasing fake video, company named to mislead investors and clients. SSC tried calling itself Shelby SuperCars LLC, took a lawsuit by Carroll Shelby International Inc. to make them stop.
- jiofih 6y ago
  Are there statements by engineers or the heli pilot, where is that coming from?
  - Causality1 6y ago
    The article describes the top speed of the helicopter keeping pace with the car as being well below the stated record, ergo the pilot knows the car wasn't going that fast. It also states that analysis of the engine and gearbox ratios indicate the car is literally incapable of going that fast, therefore the engineers who built it know that as well.
    - 6y ago
ryndbfsrw 6y ago
Imagine your car only tops out at 250mph. Pffft how embarrassing. Top speed is a pathetic and long-ago irrelevant metric as its immaterial to driving enjoyment (or anything really). While interesting and meaningful innovation will be done around weight, packaging, efficiency in the near future, none of this will derive from these circle-jerk Influencer “Hey guys” 330mph wankfests
blunte 6y ago
You don't even have to be eagle-eyed to see that the roadside objects going past the car are passing by at well under, let's be generous, 150mph. While the GPS speed indicator shows 289, you can watch roadsigns on the right side of the car passing at relatively normal speeds.
- ubercore 6y ago
  No matter what speed they actually hit, I promise you it was faster than 150mph.
  - bigiain 6y ago
    <tin foil hat>I wonder it it was 180mph? And somebody intentionally switched the speed displays to kmh? (that'd read 288kmh...)
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
In the comments section there is this fascinating bit of information (if true): aki009 NOVEMBER 2, 2020 08:00 AM Not to provide an excuse for these guys, but that stretch of road is not too far from where the US military routinely degrades GPS signals for testing and training purposes. It might explain some of the inconsistencies in GPS data.
pengaru 6y ago
I haven't been paying attention to supercars for ages, but while briefly looking for photos of the Tuatara's powertrain I learned it's an NRE-sourced motor. So let me get this straight; this is a $1.6M "supercar" with an NRE-supplied souped up Chevy (or is it a Ford?) V8 with the usual couple turbos hanging off it? Nice profit margin.
- jiofih 6y ago
  It’s a custom engine, not a “souped up” one, costs about $30k. What’s the difference between having a partnership with an engine builder and doing it yourself?
  - pengaru 6y ago
    So NRE is producing custom blocks pistons heads and cranks for SSC's supercar engines? Because if it's just another Chevy v8 with some shiny manifolds and turbochargers hanging off it and an E85 compatible fuel system, it's nothing more than a souped up crate motor. At 30k I'd personally be more interested in the h1v8 with turbos hanging off it, but it's still not something I'd be willing to pay $1M let alone $1.6M to get in a "supercar" package. That's insane IMO. And it's not that I'm against exploiting COTS parts for performance applications. It's just a matter of cost; Chevy-based powertrains are economical, this vehicle is not; hence: nice profit margin.
    - jiofih 6y ago
      A quick google search shows that yes, they build the high perf engines in-house, starting from a bare block. It’s not a customized Chevy engine.
stevage 6y ago
Since when do you even need a GPS to measure speed?
kumarvvr 6y ago
We live in a strange world. On one side, we have a couple of people on keyboards, taking down dubious claims based on clear facts, logic and power of deduction. On the other side, we have people on keyboards influencing millions using blatant lies, clear twisting of facts, easily verifiable incidents.
- EricE 6y ago
  And yet no one holds the media accountable. That isn't strange, it's just stupid.
Waterluvian 6y ago
I could probably give benefit of the doubt right up to the point he lied about the GPS company. Sure, maybe even that was a misunderstanding or something. But it seems the most likely explanation is fraud.
EricE 6y ago
Why is GPS even a thing with this? A few infrared gates to start/stop the clock and a known distance = computing the speed. Instead lets time signals traveling in space and back. Sheesh.
- sorenjan 6y ago
  Besides not having to reach the top speed at a certain location, it also allows them to break multiple records at once. Koenigsegg has a list of records from their run, like "Flying kilometer on a public road" and "0-400-0 km/h". https://www.koenigsegg.com/koenigsegg-agera-rs-achieves-multiple-production-car-world-speed-records/ https://www.koenigsegg.com/koenigsegg-agera-rs-achieves-mult...
- jcrawfordor 6y ago
  GPS can provide highly accurate measurements using existing infrastructure and relatively low cost hardware. It also makes the results highly auditable since the GPS (and assisted GPS) system is public and well-documented, and open, standards-compliant methods exist in the surveying and DAQ industry for working with GPS data. Laser gates certainly have advantages, but they require more setup and ultimately I am skeptical that they would provide more certainty than GPS results. As mentioned elsewhere a survey GPS receiver can produce raw data which can be processed after the fact as a form of audit, something not really possible with laser gates.
  - jiofih 6y ago
    > I am skeptical that they would provide more certainty Why on earth? They will literally produce two time stamps + known physical distance. What can be uncertain about that? Why is it any less auditable (or possible to tamper) then a GPS log?
    - jcrawfordor 6y ago
      Two timestamps would be trivial to fabricate while a raw GPS log would be technically complex to fabricate. Not impossible, but you'd need people with special expertise and probably custom software.
dmix 6y ago
> including reviewing the Dewetron GPS measurements that tracked the speed runs using an average of 15 satellites. I've got a bit off-topic question, but how accurate are speedometers in run-of-the-mill commercial cars? I live near a pair of schools which set up those radar devices [1] showing how fast you're driving and it's rarely the same as my speedometer. Usually 2-5 km/hr below my cars number. So I always assume now that my car's number is more of a projection of the acceleration levels combined with the current speed to give a picture of how fast you're going to be traveling very shortly. I've long been curious which one is more accurate. Apologies I've yet to do the rabbithole of figuring out how speedometers work vs how the radar speed sign works. I just assumed the radar device (on an empty road) is more accurate to real life than my car since it's a fixed external measure. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_speed_sign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_speed_sign
- jcrawfordor 6y ago
  What I've found, from a regulatory perspective, is that US regulations just require that speedometers be reasonably accurate, but EU regulations require that speedometers err in the direction of reading too high rather than too low. The EU rules must have their impact in the US because, at least anecdotally, it seems like just about every car's speedometer reads 2-3 mph high. There's also apparently a rule in the US that requires that the speedometer never read low for commercial vehicles... probably another reason that the same rule gets applied to passenger vehicles, for parts commonality. The speedometer is just based on the rotation of one of the axles, usually via a magnet and reed switch in modern cars. If you do the arithmetic you'll find that just tire wear can have a surprisingly large impact on the final speedometer indication, a few percent easily. Presumably if your tires are brand new the speedometer is much closer to accurate.
  - dmix 6y ago
    Thank you, this was a very informative reply and makes sense of what I've been seeing IRL. I live in Canada but our laws are almost always similar to the US.
teknopaul 6y ago
Production car speed record is held by Elon Musk's Red coupe travelling at 20,000 miles and hour. Its going to be a while before they can confirm this travelling in opposite direction.

I saw this flame war on youtube and reddit. I noticed that there was a statement from the driver about crosswinds blowing him onto the shoulder during his fastest run. However, I didn't see anything like that in the video. I assumed this meant they didn't want to show that run because the potential danger of being blown off the road wouldn't look good. Perhaps they mixed the speed data with a safer run from earlier in the day. This would explain the discrepancies. If this is true, perhaps they are simply using the calibration talk as a red herring to distract from the misleading video. This scenario would allow them to not take responsibility and comeback with a genuine record.

parsimo2010 6y ago
They pretty much got caught blatantly lying. It’s possible that Shelby didn’t know it was faked at first, but by now he’s had the chance to find out and is complicit in the lie since he hasn’t confessed. I think a lot of other companies are going easy on them because they have also cheated and don’t want to start throwing stones in their zillion dollar sky castles, lest all the ultra rich owners that never drive their cars find out it’s a lie. But expect to see a lot of hemming and hawing about how they’re having a tough time getting this next attempt scheduled and ask the permits in place. Because it isn’t going to happen. If it could, then they would have released the real footage and data to begin with.
- MikeAmelung 6y ago
  So what exactly makes you think it's not possible for this car to achieve that speed? Do you think all of the publicly released stats are a lie?
  - parsimo2010 6y ago
    The publicly released stats by them? Yes I think they are a lie for now, they’ve been shown to be dishonest. If a Tuatara owner wants to post specs that weren’t measured with the help of SSC, then I might believe them. But so far the independent analysis points to the car not going that fast. This wasn’t an “editing” error where the framerate of the video accidentally was slowed down, it wasn’t a GPS calibration error, it was a company being caught in a lie. It happens from time to time, especially in motorsport. Edit: to clarify, it’s not on me to prove that the car isn’t the fastest in the world. It’s on SSC, which is making the claim, to prove it. That their first attempt has been debunked means they will be given more scrutiny the next time around, and I’m not confident that they will do it. Because if this was just an editing error, why don’t they just go back to their footage and show us the real stuff? Did it conveniently get deleted?
    - MikeAmelung 6y ago
      That's valid, there's certainly something going on with the video thing. I guess my current thinking is that trying to fake the video in the first place would be tremendously stupid. Then on top of that to do such a bad job. So maybe it was an accident in video editing. But yeah, it's possible they're completely full of shit.

thebeardisred 6y ago

Wild seeing this. I heard from a family member that this was _about_ to happen. Specifically, these records occur on a stretch of "Blue Diamond Highway" between Pahrump, NV and Las Vegas, NV. This is the spot right before it splits into a divided highway. https://goo.gl/maps/nom16aarrpDVymFj6 https://goo.gl/maps/nom16aarrpDVymFj6 They'd just finished up years of construction in the area and allowed it's use (since it shuts down all traffic going over the mountain for folks commuting into Las Vegas).

olivermarks 6y ago

This is the wonder of the internet, the clues, anomalies and illogical, contradictory evidence people pick up on and expose like a crowd sourced episode of the old TV show 'Columbo'. It's great that Shelby have accepted this, not crying 'tin foil hat', conspiracy theorists etc etc as so often happens with higher stakes anomalies

lgl 6y ago
Sure they have accepted, but it's the only way to save face. Let's not forget that they did put out press releases (that are still up btw [0] [1]) falsely claiming that "Officials were on site to verify all world record criteria was met -- including review of Dewetron GPS measurements" which then prompted Dewetron themselves to distance themselves and post several comments and their own statements denying that claim [2]. Only when evidence and press/public attention started increasing did SSC then miraculously also started finding inconsistencies in the videos, etc etc. But at this point, their only options were to either admit to their wrongdoing or go along and side with the people that, by this time, already had pretty damning reports and proofs that the evidence for the "record" was very sketchy. If you haven't seen, you should check out Shmee150's video [3] So, to me this was either purposely done for attention/press or the SSC people were really incompetent at trying to break this kind of record without proper measurement tools and official/independent reviewers. Something like this should, imho, be done as professionally and with as much redundancy as possible before any wild claim is made and press releases issued. It should never have come to a point where a few car enthusiasts on youtube can, from just a video and basic math/physics and knowing your own car parts, figure out that your record claims are false or at least very inaccurate. It has never happened when Bugatti or Koenigsegg broke the records. But now, if you search for "fastest production car" on Google, you get a whole lot of SSC results so, in a way, I guess they have succeeded. [0] https://www.sscnorthamerica.com/news/ssc-tuatara-hypercar-earns-worlds-fastest-production-vehicle-title https://www.sscnorthamerica.com/news/ssc-tuatara-hypercar-ea... [1] https://www.sscnorthamerica.com/news/dewetron-validates-ssc-tuatara-record-top-speed https://www.sscnorthamerica.com/news/dewetron-validates-ssc-... [2] https://www.autodevot.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Dewetron-SSC-Tuatara-Press-Release-October-28.jpg https://www.autodevot.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Dewetro... [3] https://youtu.be/nPXXGTuQKbk https://youtu.be/nPXXGTuQKbk

sneak 6y ago

The inaccurate information (added by a semi-anonymous ipv6 user not logged in) is still up on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nevada_State_Route_160&type=revision&diff=985647420&oldid=954009051 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nevada_State_Rout...

bipson 6y ago
And someone just fixed it shortly after your post. Thanks, I guess?
- sneak 6y ago
  That was half of the idea, WP doesn't let you edit from a VPN even with an account. :)
  - bipson 6y ago
    That's the part I was thanking you for ;), since I could not possibly know if you fixed it yourself. And I would not have expected you to write about something that needs to be changed (in that tone) and doing it yourself immediately afterwards. Why then write about it before fixing it, or in fact at all. Didn't make sense to me. Also, my thank you could be seen as equally directed towards the stranger that got your hint.

thrwyoilarticle 6y ago

I have irrationally strong feelings about production car speed records. Firstly, >Bugatti's claimed 300-mph-breaking Chiron run was never going to count As much as they would like to believe otherwise, Guiness World Records can not create truth. If the Chiron goes faster than the SSC, it's the fastest production car. That's it. Two way runs & proper filming are an important factor if you're trying to decide who gets the piece of paper but there's nothing 'official' about it. If someone goes faster but never tells anyone, they still went faster. That is apart from one point: the Chiron isn't a production car. But neither is the SSC. Nor the Veyron nor the Agera RS. If you don't believe me, try to buy one. No matter how much money you have, or at what time you try to do it, you can't. All of these cars have extremely limited units sold only to people with an existing relationship with the company. All of them set records with special editions. That's just a modified car. If there are only 25 Agera RSes & every one is modified for the owner, how do you establish the one that did the record isn't just the equivalent of a binned, liquid oxygen-cooled CPU that dies after the record setting run? You can't even drive the Veyron away from a record setting attempt: you need to replace its $40000 tyres. Bugatti's record was once in doubt because they deactivated the speed limiter for the run. This was later retracted because it's not actually about trying to set consistent rules, it's about creating marketing material for Volkswagen's halo car. Which is why they won't let anybody else run their faster cars on their track. Other, assorted viewpoints: - If your car is just a modified Lotus, it doesn't count. - For bidirectional attempts, how can you say that a car has a top speed of C mph when C = A+B/2 mph and A>B? That's an invented figure.

Traster 6y ago
>- For bidirectional attempts, how can you say that a car has a top speed of C mph when C = A+B/2 mph and A>B? That's an invented figure. I agree that (A+B)/2 is an invented figure, but I think the logic of "This is the maximum a car can do without external factors" is a reasonable thing to agree on as a top-speed, and wind is an external factor. Otherwise a lot of cars can set their top speed by being dropped from a sky scraper, and the testing would get unreasonably expensive. (A+B)/2 is probably a good first approximation to a wind-neutral value (and a gravity neutral value too).

Traster 6y ago

From the sounds of this there's two possible outcomes (assuming good faith): They run again and set somewhere >300mph. If they do that then it's reasonable to say that the original run was legitimate. More likely they run again and they look very silly because all their calibration was screwed and their speeds are a long way off. There's always the third possibility - shenanigans. In which case they'll either pull more shenanigans or they'll just try and slink away. In the meantime it sounds like the record can be safely ignored.

MikeAmelung 6y ago
I don't know what the gearing looks like on this car, and I honestly don't care enough to look it up, but why do you and the article seem to think a car with 1750 (claimed) horsepower might be slower than one with 1160 (claimed) horsepower?
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  Just 3 general reasons this could be true: 1. some engines will heat soak and lose more power than others under extended load, which doing 300mph will take, and the tuatara is a smaller engine running a lot of boost, more likely to lose power over time compared to some of the other hypercars with larger engines or partial electric power boosts. 2. gearing 3. aerodynamics. not just drag but will the car become airborne/impossible to control, etc
- speedgoose 6y ago
  In the video you can guess that the engine power wasn't the limit at all. It was still accelerating super fast when reaching their top speed.
  - MikeAmelung 6y ago
    So that leaves us with two possible reasons the car couldn't have achieved the speed they're claiming. One, it wasn't actually geared to go that fast. Or two, the driver lifted because the car was unstable or he was afraid the tires were gonna explode or something. It seems unlikely that people capable of building a car like this would have released a claimed speed that their car was incapable of reaching due to gearing. Then again, I've seen a lot of stupid things in my time racing.

Jdjdjdjjdhebe 6y ago

Gps has no calibration process which would affect this in any way.

ansgri 6y ago
They probably use some RTK / dGPS setup for increased accuracy, which does need calibration.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  Actual RTK/dGPS makes GPS more accurate, not less. If it doesn’t lock, the software should fall back to regular GPS. Unless they were abusing the system by putting the dGPS reference station on a moving vehicle going the opposite direction or simply feeding spoofed correction data into the GPS.
  - neeleshs 6y ago
    I'm ignorant about speed tests. Given that distance is constant, wouldn't two synchronized timers be simpler than using GPS? And potentially more accurate?
    - olyjohn 6y ago
      I think timing it between two points will give you average speed between them. But this record is about top speed.
      - neeleshs 6y ago
        Ah! thanks!
londons_explore 6y ago
Any measurement inaccuracy or calibration issue here is going to be <1mph anyway... It could never explain what was seen. Either someone foolishly read km/h numbers as mph, or the whole thing is faked. Considering the silly animation of the camera view on the video, I suspect the latter...

speedgoose 6y ago

I used Audacity (and YouTube-dl) a few days ago to have an estimation of the top speed using the SSC information such as the gearbox ratios and the size of the tires, and the sound of the engine in the YouTube video. Because it's actually simple to listen how fast an engine rotates, I found that they went slower than what is advertised and that the engine didn't rotate as fast as they claim. I computed 7530rpm and they claim 8600rpm. I posted it on HN and I hope it's ok to post it again as a comment : https://fungiboletus.github.io/ssc-rpm/ https://fungiboletus.github.io/ssc-rpm/

SomeHacker44 6y ago
Just curious, did you take into account any possible doppler shift of the frequencies?
- speedgoose 6y ago
  No, should I have? The microphone was inside the car.
  - Waterluvian 6y ago
    If sound source and sensor were at a fixed distance from each other then no.
gameswithgo 6y ago
when i first saw the video the rate of acceleration in the 300mph domain made no sense to me, given the power of the car. it didn’t creep up to 316! it should have.
toxik 6y ago
Interesting analysis! I’ve seen the 2x multiplier myself, when I looked at the spectrogram of an AC induced whine in a speaker IIRC
tgtweak 6y ago
> in V8 there is a cylinder firing at every 90° rotation which means 2 cylinder fire in one crankshaft rotation. Your method and math checks out even without the tachometer observations - in a split-plane v8 (such as that in the scc tuatara) you have two cylinder fires per rotation of the engine. You have measured 251 cylinder fires per second (251hz) thus 125.5 rotations per second OR 7530/minute (RPM). Hard to refute that.

pbowyer 6y ago

In speed record world I wasn't aware SSC had two meanings and assumed this was about Thrust SSC's record breaking runs, thinking "they've got the speed a bit wrong". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThrustSSC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThrustSSC

theincredulousk 6y ago

I mean regardless of measurement, the gearbox ratios, engine RPM, and wheel/tire size plainly dictate maximum possible speed. Why even use GPS for this, as opposed to a known distance and a clock, or an on-site laser (or whatever electromagnetic wave) based system? Seems like using satellites is unnecessarily complex and error prone(esp. civilian GPS).

Avshalom 6y ago
because you don't know where in the run you're going to be at max speed or how long you can maintain it
- Animats 6y ago
  The official land speed record uses a measured mile. You start as far back as you need to and then go through the traps and get timed. The Southern California Timing Association sets up time trials on the Bonneville Flats frequently. They routinely time speeds over 300MPH. These SSC guys need to go to a place like that and do it with timers and spectators, or shut up.
aunty_helen 6y ago
Tire size changes with speed and weight, weight changes with downforce, downforce changes with speed, winds, air temperature. Maximum theoretical speed on a dyno, sure.
- bigiain 6y ago
  > weight changes with downforce Your high school physic teacher is on line 1. Wants to talk to you about what "weight" means...
  - bfuclusion 6y ago
    Mass does not change. But the effective pressure on the tires is as if the weight (which can be defined as the force required to support something) is indeed higher.

Causality1 6y ago

nobody's accusing the company of flat-out lying or deception in this case. I don't know why not, because that's obviously exactly what they did. The engineers know the car can't go that fast. The helicopter pilot knows the car wasn't going that fast. They outright lied about the endorsement of the GPS company. You can't do that accidentally.

ZiiS 6y ago
What is super wierd is the car probably can, at least set a genuine record. The engine power and aero are plausable. No sane driver would try on thouse tires, but the are plenty of mad ones. Why lie rather then just doing it expecially when they where always going to get caught?
FrankBooth 6y ago
SSC have never been faithful actors.
rasz 6y ago
Reminds me of Nikola. Releasing fake video, company named to mislead investors and clients. SSC tried calling itself Shelby SuperCars LLC, took a lawsuit by Carroll Shelby International Inc. to make them stop.
jiofih 6y ago
Are there statements by engineers or the heli pilot, where is that coming from?
- Causality1 6y ago
  The article describes the top speed of the helicopter keeping pace with the car as being well below the stated record, ergo the pilot knows the car wasn't going that fast. It also states that analysis of the engine and gearbox ratios indicate the car is literally incapable of going that fast, therefore the engineers who built it know that as well.
  - 6y ago

ryndbfsrw 6y ago

Imagine your car only tops out at 250mph. Pffft how embarrassing. Top speed is a pathetic and long-ago irrelevant metric as its immaterial to driving enjoyment (or anything really). While interesting and meaningful innovation will be done around weight, packaging, efficiency in the near future, none of this will derive from these circle-jerk Influencer “Hey guys” 330mph wankfests

blunte 6y ago

You don't even have to be eagle-eyed to see that the roadside objects going past the car are passing by at well under, let's be generous, 150mph. While the GPS speed indicator shows 289, you can watch roadsigns on the right side of the car passing at relatively normal speeds.

ubercore 6y ago
No matter what speed they actually hit, I promise you it was faster than 150mph.
- bigiain 6y ago
  <tin foil hat>I wonder it it was 180mph? And somebody intentionally switched the speed displays to kmh? (that'd read 288kmh...)

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

In the comments section there is this fascinating bit of information (if true): aki009 NOVEMBER 2, 2020 08:00 AM Not to provide an excuse for these guys, but that stretch of road is not too far from where the US military routinely degrades GPS signals for testing and training purposes. It might explain some of the inconsistencies in GPS data.

pengaru 6y ago

I haven't been paying attention to supercars for ages, but while briefly looking for photos of the Tuatara's powertrain I learned it's an NRE-sourced motor. So let me get this straight; this is a $1.6M "supercar" with an NRE-supplied souped up Chevy (or is it a Ford?) V8 with the usual couple turbos hanging off it? Nice profit margin.

jiofih 6y ago
It’s a custom engine, not a “souped up” one, costs about $30k. What’s the difference between having a partnership with an engine builder and doing it yourself?
- pengaru 6y ago
  So NRE is producing custom blocks pistons heads and cranks for SSC's supercar engines? Because if it's just another Chevy v8 with some shiny manifolds and turbochargers hanging off it and an E85 compatible fuel system, it's nothing more than a souped up crate motor. At 30k I'd personally be more interested in the h1v8 with turbos hanging off it, but it's still not something I'd be willing to pay $1M let alone $1.6M to get in a "supercar" package. That's insane IMO. And it's not that I'm against exploiting COTS parts for performance applications. It's just a matter of cost; Chevy-based powertrains are economical, this vehicle is not; hence: nice profit margin.
  - jiofih 6y ago
    A quick google search shows that yes, they build the high perf engines in-house, starting from a bare block. It’s not a customized Chevy engine.

stevage 6y ago

Since when do you even need a GPS to measure speed?

kumarvvr 6y ago

We live in a strange world. On one side, we have a couple of people on keyboards, taking down dubious claims based on clear facts, logic and power of deduction. On the other side, we have people on keyboards influencing millions using blatant lies, clear twisting of facts, easily verifiable incidents.

EricE 6y ago
And yet no one holds the media accountable. That isn't strange, it's just stupid.

Waterluvian 6y ago

I could probably give benefit of the doubt right up to the point he lied about the GPS company. Sure, maybe even that was a misunderstanding or something. But it seems the most likely explanation is fraud.

EricE 6y ago

Why is GPS even a thing with this? A few infrared gates to start/stop the clock and a known distance = computing the speed. Instead lets time signals traveling in space and back. Sheesh.

sorenjan 6y ago
Besides not having to reach the top speed at a certain location, it also allows them to break multiple records at once. Koenigsegg has a list of records from their run, like "Flying kilometer on a public road" and "0-400-0 km/h". https://www.koenigsegg.com/koenigsegg-agera-rs-achieves-multiple-production-car-world-speed-records/ https://www.koenigsegg.com/koenigsegg-agera-rs-achieves-mult...
jcrawfordor 6y ago
GPS can provide highly accurate measurements using existing infrastructure and relatively low cost hardware. It also makes the results highly auditable since the GPS (and assisted GPS) system is public and well-documented, and open, standards-compliant methods exist in the surveying and DAQ industry for working with GPS data. Laser gates certainly have advantages, but they require more setup and ultimately I am skeptical that they would provide more certainty than GPS results. As mentioned elsewhere a survey GPS receiver can produce raw data which can be processed after the fact as a form of audit, something not really possible with laser gates.
- jiofih 6y ago
  > I am skeptical that they would provide more certainty Why on earth? They will literally produce two time stamps + known physical distance. What can be uncertain about that? Why is it any less auditable (or possible to tamper) then a GPS log?
  - jcrawfordor 6y ago
    Two timestamps would be trivial to fabricate while a raw GPS log would be technically complex to fabricate. Not impossible, but you'd need people with special expertise and probably custom software.

dmix 6y ago

> including reviewing the Dewetron GPS measurements that tracked the speed runs using an average of 15 satellites. I've got a bit off-topic question, but how accurate are speedometers in run-of-the-mill commercial cars? I live near a pair of schools which set up those radar devices [1] showing how fast you're driving and it's rarely the same as my speedometer. Usually 2-5 km/hr below my cars number. So I always assume now that my car's number is more of a projection of the acceleration levels combined with the current speed to give a picture of how fast you're going to be traveling very shortly. I've long been curious which one is more accurate. Apologies I've yet to do the rabbithole of figuring out how speedometers work vs how the radar speed sign works. I just assumed the radar device (on an empty road) is more accurate to real life than my car since it's a fixed external measure. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_speed_sign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_speed_sign

jcrawfordor 6y ago
What I've found, from a regulatory perspective, is that US regulations just require that speedometers be reasonably accurate, but EU regulations require that speedometers err in the direction of reading too high rather than too low. The EU rules must have their impact in the US because, at least anecdotally, it seems like just about every car's speedometer reads 2-3 mph high. There's also apparently a rule in the US that requires that the speedometer never read low for commercial vehicles... probably another reason that the same rule gets applied to passenger vehicles, for parts commonality. The speedometer is just based on the rotation of one of the axles, usually via a magnet and reed switch in modern cars. If you do the arithmetic you'll find that just tire wear can have a surprisingly large impact on the final speedometer indication, a few percent easily. Presumably if your tires are brand new the speedometer is much closer to accurate.
- dmix 6y ago
  Thank you, this was a very informative reply and makes sense of what I've been seeing IRL. I live in Canada but our laws are almost always similar to the US.

teknopaul 6y ago

Production car speed record is held by Elon Musk's Red coupe travelling at 20,000 miles and hour. Its going to be a while before they can confirm this travelling in opposite direction.