The Jet Beetle page is downright hilarious. Read the whole thing.
Street racing action. The other guy wimped out after a few “big-fire” demonstrations. What you see in the picture is about one-twentieth the full size of the fireball. Guy standing beside car had never seen it run before and was smiling ear-to-ear throughout the show. Had I launched, I would have burned him to a crisp. Well, live and learn.
We get this a lot. A police officer picking at his nose while trying to figure out what to charge me with. Notice the hopeful anticipation of us on the right. We’re rooting for him and offer suggestions but unfortunately, the California Department of Motor Vehicles did not anticipate such a vehicle so he’s out of luck. Hmmm, the car has two engines making the car a hybrid so maybe we can drive in the commuter lanes along with the Toyota Priuses.
*** Update 7/18/06 *** You have to give the California Department of Motor Vehicles (the DMV) credit for creativity on this one. A DMV insider has disclosed to me that the DMV has made a formal request to a federal agency to rule if my Beetle constitutes a threat to national security based on what could happen if it got into the wrong hands. This raises three questions in my mind: #1 Does this mean I’m the right hands? #2 If someone with the name “b_laden13” is the highest eBay bidder for my Beetle can I refuse his offer even if he has the prestigious eBay Red Shooting Star feedback rating (the highest)? #3 Would this affect my eBay rating?
#1) Yes
#2) Yes
#3) Do you really care?
Four years and a quarter million dollars to build, it gets 15 gallons per mile:
Three years of aerodynamics research has created the Bloodhound supersonic car design, unveiled recently at Farnborough:
It looks just like The Blue Flame to me, which set the land speed record in 1970.
The Blue Flame reached 1014.513 km/h (630.388 mph), a record that lasted 27 years.
This post might reveal my lack of expertise in rocket cars, I realize, but I had hoped for a much more radical design than just a rocket with wheels. The Thrust2 and ThrustSSC broke The Blue Flame record but they also did it with new designs. The Thrust2 looked like the BatMobile. The ThrustSSC looked like an F-4 fighter jet without wings, perhaps because that is what it was.
When I say I want to see a more radical design I really wonder about efficiency. How much fuel is used to reach these speeds? What would the records look like if they had to account for input? I have similar questions about output in terms of emissions and air quality.
What do you get when you cross a Volkswagen modern diesel engineer with an electric vehicle engineer from GM?
If you guessed a hybrid electric-diesel we have all been waiting for, you are wrong. No, this dynamic duo has reinvented the two-stroke engine using the horizontally-opposed piston concept from diesel engines of the early 1900s.
Interestingly, the OPOC engine design was conceived by Peter Hofbauer, the former Volkswagen powertrain engineer that designed the German automaker’s first high speed diesel engine. Additionally, EcoMotors’ CEO, Don Runkle, is a former employee of General Motors and one of the key men behind the EV1 all-electric car.
They call it the OPOC (Opposed Piston Opposed Cylinder)? Heh. Sounds like they have a sense of humor. I wonder if EcoMotors International will allow anyone to name a vehicle the Alypse.
The article suggests the OPOC will run diesel or gasoline. Who would bother with gasoline? That might be the biggest news of all. Small efficient diesel engines everywhere! Most excitement right now seems to be directed towards the efficiency of the engine (50% higher) and the big money backing the company ($23mil from Bill Gates and Vinod Khosla). Maybe they had to include gasoline in the business plan to get support.
