Posts Tagged Cars
Awesome Extreme Police Cars
Tesla Motor Electric Car 244 Mile Range 0-60 in 2.7 seconds
Posted by Car_Guy in Cars, Great Ideas, Innovation, Technology, The Environment on December 8, 2009
Acceleration & Torque
Instant Freedom
The first time you drive the Tesla Roadster, prepare to be surprised. You’re at freeway speed in seconds without even thinking about it. There is no clutch pedal to contend with and no race-car driving techniques to perform. Just the touch of your foot and you’re off, without any of the sluggishness of an automatic.
How powerful is the acceleration? A quick story to illustrate. A favorite trick here at Tesla Motors is to invite a passenger along and ask him to turn on the radio. At the precise moment we ask, we accelerate. Our passenger simply can’t sit forward enough to reach the dials. But who needs music when you’re experiencing such a symphony of motion.
Rest assured that this responsiveness works at all speeds, as noticeable when you’re inching your way through parking lots as when flying along freeways.
100% Torque, 100% of the Time
The Tesla Roadster delivers full availability of performance every moment you are in the car, even while at a stoplight. Its peak torque begins at 0 rpm and stays powerful at 14,000 rpm.
This is the precise opposite of what you experience with a gasoline engine, which has very little torque at a low rpm and only reaches peak torque in a narrow rpm range. This forces you to make frequent gear changes to maintain optimal torque. With the Tesla Roadster, you get great acceleration and the highest energy efficiency at the same time. All while requiring no special driving skills to enjoy it. This makes the Tesla Roadster six times as efficient as the best sports cars while producing one-tenth of the pollution.
Source: Tesla Motor
Popularity: 15% [?]
Beautiful Concept Car Designs
Posted by Car_Guy in Cars, Great Ideas, Innovation, Technology, Unique Designs, Videos on December 5, 2009
Egyptian Inventor Esslam Zahra – Five-wheeled car for easy parking
Posted by Daoco in Cars, Gadgets, Inventions, Technology, Videos on December 4, 2009
Esslam Zahra from Egypt put a fifth wheel, mounted perpendicular to the other four, on the back of his car. The wheel can be raised or lowered, depending on if he is parking or driving. The purpose is so that he can get in and out of the very tightest parking spaces.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Narrow track vehicles – the convergence of the car and the motorcycle
Posted by Car_Guy in Cars, Gadgets, Technology, The Environment, Videos on December 4, 2009
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Sitting in Nissan’s Landglider was an experience, I’d been looking forward to it since I first spied the pre-show imagery – this truly is near the point where the motorcycle and automobile meet. It’s a two passenger vehicle, one behind the other, it’s half the width of a conventional car and it leans through corners like a motorcycle.
Being fully enclosed and with impact absorption zones and a composite protection tub, the Land Glider’s pilot is a lot less vulnerable than a motorcycle rider, yet the Land Glider’s light weight and the punchy electric motors mean a motorcycle-like torque to weight ratio for quick acceleration and the steer-by-wire system leans the Land Glider up to 17 degrees – it may not be the 45 degree plus of a sports motorcycle, and the proof-of-concept will surely be in the driving experience as to how drive-by-wire feels in comparison to the mechanical systems we’re all accustomed to, but it’s more than enough to have safe, low-speed fun commuting to the office.
The Land Glider is one of a wave of new single track concept vehicles being shown by auto makers this year as they begin preparing for yet another looming crisis for the auto industry – Global Traffic Congestion!
Source: Gizmag
Popularity: 11% [?]
VIDEO: Chevrolet Volt tests driver-controlled audio warning system with the blind
As the popularity of hybrids has grown over the last few years, advocates for the blind have been raising a red flag about noise, or — more to the point — the lack of it. Because electric-drive vehicles emit much lower levels of sound on the street, blind pedestrians who’ve relied on the noise emitted from traditional vehicles lose a major source of information when navigating the streets and sidewalks.
There have been movements in various legislatures to mandate some minimum sound level from electric vehicles to ensure that blind pedestrians can tell when they’re approaching, and General Motors recently conducted a test session at its Milford Proving Grounds with a group of the visually-challenged to assess the audible warning systems on the Chevrolet Volt.
The engineers have employed the car’s horn to emit a series of warning chirps when a pedestrian is in proximity to GM’s gas-electric hybrid, evaluating the nature and level of the warnings to alert pedestrians rather than startle them. GM spokesman Rob Peterson tells us that on the first generation Volt the warnings will be manually activated by the driver, although future iterations are likely to incorporate some sort of active system. Currently, the biggest hurdle is developing an active system that can distinguish a pedestrian from another vehicle. Otherwise, without a reliable detection system, the horns would be going off at all times, increasing noise levels and making it largely useless.
Source: ChevroletVoltage
Popularity: 6% [?]
