3 ms·

So, not exactly the ideas you're talking about, but the racing world is increasingly exploring outside of the aero that FIA/F1 et all have allowed. Check out t

So, not exactly the ideas you're talking about, but the racing world is increasingly exploring outside of the aero that FIA/F1 et all have allowed. Check out this fancar that set a new course record at Goodwood this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtvT2XYlcOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtvT2XYlcOY For anyone unfamiliar, a fan car uses motor driven fans to actively create a low pressure zone under the car, while also reducing the low pressure drag bubble behind the car. This particular one is all electric and quite compact. It's very fast, and yes footage of it looks weird, almost artificial, because its sustaining grip through corners that rivals F1 cars, with the torque of electric. Running full tilt the fan system creates about 2000 kg of downforce. But the neat thing is you can flip a switch and then the thing just becomes a Nissan Leaf with a really crazy body kit. So some future "track day" car based on this concept would be surprisingly practical. I think the future of auto racing in a pure electric era is going to be surprisingly bright. Anyhow, not really relevant to talking about making big trucks more efficient, but thought you'd find it interesting.

semi-extrinsic 4y ago
> But the neat thing is you can flip a switch and then the thing just becomes a Nissan Leaf with a really crazy body kit. So some future "track day" car based on this concept would be surprisingly practical. This car is really cool, I'm not going to argue against that for a single second. But your suggestion of a "practical track day car" is missing the fact that there are two things making this crazy fast: huge downforce and ridiculously low weight. It weighs less than half of what a Nissan Leaf does, has a single seat, no storage for anything, no aircon etc. etc. If you tried to make it approach the practicality of a Nissan Leaf while still being performant, you would not just need more space and weight for the practicality, but you'd end up tripling the weight since you would also need a much bigger battery pack to keep the runtime at the current ~30 minutes on a track, bigger motors to keep the acceleration high when you're dragging that weight, much wider tyres to enable cornering at these speeds, etc. etc. Then you're no longer killing hypercars but rather maybe matching a Bugatti Veyron, and you might as well just go for standard aero so you don't have the 120 dB (!!) fan noise inside the cabin.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  Nope. There's already a variety of track cars in this weight class, including road legal ones. Check out Palatov motorsports for example. This compact but high performance format is indeed very practical and in fact in very high demand, at least for race car crap. If you can spend the same amount of money as you would on a track built 911 for something considerably higher performance, a lot of people will.
  - semi-extrinsic 4y ago
    Sure you can get very lightweight two seater road legal track cars. You can even slap an Exocet kit on an MX-5 and get that for very cheap. But you said "Nissan Leaf". A five-seater car that can fit a full baby stroller plus a bit of luggage in the trunk. That is fully incompatible with being a lightweight track car.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
      Can you not understand I was being figurative vs so literal? This behavior is so common and so very tiresome here. Read charitably.
      - semi-extrinsic 4y ago
        I'm sorry, but then I don't understand the point of the original comment. As we agree, you can already buy a lightweight two-seater track car with very good performance for quite cheap. I understood the point of your original comment to be that with active aero devices we could now have something far more practical, like a Nissan Leaf, but still having very good track performance. If that was not the point, then what is the new thing you think is going to be enabled by active aero?

semi-extrinsic 4y ago

> But the neat thing is you can flip a switch and then the thing just becomes a Nissan Leaf with a really crazy body kit. So some future "track day" car based on this concept would be surprisingly practical. This car is really cool, I'm not going to argue against that for a single second. But your suggestion of a "practical track day car" is missing the fact that there are two things making this crazy fast: huge downforce and ridiculously low weight. It weighs less than half of what a Nissan Leaf does, has a single seat, no storage for anything, no aircon etc. etc. If you tried to make it approach the practicality of a Nissan Leaf while still being performant, you would not just need more space and weight for the practicality, but you'd end up tripling the weight since you would also need a much bigger battery pack to keep the runtime at the current ~30 minutes on a track, bigger motors to keep the acceleration high when you're dragging that weight, much wider tyres to enable cornering at these speeds, etc. etc. Then you're no longer killing hypercars but rather maybe matching a Bugatti Veyron, and you might as well just go for standard aero so you don't have the 120 dB (!!) fan noise inside the cabin.

jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
Nope. There's already a variety of track cars in this weight class, including road legal ones. Check out Palatov motorsports for example. This compact but high performance format is indeed very practical and in fact in very high demand, at least for race car crap. If you can spend the same amount of money as you would on a track built 911 for something considerably higher performance, a lot of people will.
- semi-extrinsic 4y ago
  Sure you can get very lightweight two seater road legal track cars. You can even slap an Exocet kit on an MX-5 and get that for very cheap. But you said "Nissan Leaf". A five-seater car that can fit a full baby stroller plus a bit of luggage in the trunk. That is fully incompatible with being a lightweight track car.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    Can you not understand I was being figurative vs so literal? This behavior is so common and so very tiresome here. Read charitably.
    - semi-extrinsic 4y ago
      I'm sorry, but then I don't understand the point of the original comment. As we agree, you can already buy a lightweight two-seater track car with very good performance for quite cheap. I understood the point of your original comment to be that with active aero devices we could now have something far more practical, like a Nissan Leaf, but still having very good track performance. If that was not the point, then what is the new thing you think is going to be enabled by active aero?