Cult cars

[a_majoor]

Porsche ups the ante again with a hybrid LeMans car. A 550 Hp V4 motor....?

As they say in the article, look for some of this tech to appear in a 911 soon.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/porsche-919/

Porsche’s Glorious, Next-Gen Hybrid Racer

By Damon Lavrinc
03.07.14
6:30 AM

The Porsche 919 Hybrid LMP1 is ready to dominate the World Endurance Championship Porsche

The future of racing is about more than speed. It’s about using technology to combine performance and efficiency in a winning package. Nowhere is this more important that at Le Mans, where Porsche hopes the 919 Hybrid will redefine endurance racing.

Porsche is returning to the greatest race in the world after a 16 year hiatus to compete in the top-tier prototype class. Although private teams have raced, and won, at Le Mans in various iterations of the venerable Porsche 911, the automaker has not fielded a factory team since the GT1 took the overall win in 1998.

Porsche timed its return to exploit new World Endurance Championship regulations to make racing more efficient, in every way. That means smaller engines, hybrid drivetrains and wider use of lightweight materials. The company, which has pioneered a wide range of motorsports technology that eventually wound up on road cars, calls the 919 “the most technologically advanced race car Porsche has produced.” The machine builds on the lessons learned from the 911 GT3 R Hybrid race car and the 918 gas-electric supercar and applies them to the most grueling race in the world.

It’s entering an arena dominated by Audi. Although Porsche has racked up 16 outright wins at Le Mans–more than any other manufacturer–Audi is the team to beat. It’s amassed 12 wins in 14 years with its diesel racers, but has faced stiff competition from hybrid racers from Peugeot and Toyota in the past.

Like Porsche, Audi and Toyota are bringing hybrids to Circuit de Le Sarthe in June, but Porsche has the most at stake. It has more than a racing rep to uphold, it has a technological one as well. Ferdinand Porsche developed the world’s first hybrid car over 110 years ago. Even if Porsche purists may not want to admit it, gas-electric technology is a hallmark of the marque. And that heritage is going to come into play in a big way.

The LMP1-H class of prototype racers in which Audi, Porsche, and Toyota are competing must, under the rules, carry less fuel–and therefore burn less fuel–than in the past. At the bottom line, they’ve got about 30 percent less fuel per lap to play with than last year. To offset that, the amount of energy they can carry in batteries or hybrid flywheel systems has increased substantially. But naturally, there are restrictions. And here’s where it gets a bit tricky.

Depending on the type of drivetrain used, a car can use two, four, six, or eight megajoules per lap at Le Mans. Exceed that and they’ll be held in the pits for between 10 and 60 seconds–a lifetime in a race where minutes, or even seconds, can separate first and second place.

While Audi is using a diesel V6 and Toyota is running a gas V8, Porsche is a 2.0-liter V4–yes, V4–producing close to 500 horsepower and spinning at 9,000 rpm. Of course it’s got direct injection and turbocharging, but that’s not especially noteworthy considering you can find that in a Ford Focus.

What’s most impressive about the 919 is the two ways Porsche recovers energy to juice up its hybrid system. The first system uses an electric generator with a turbine driven by the exhaust. A second system gathers kinetic energy during braking just like a Toyota Prius. All that energy is stored in a water-cooled, lithium-ion battery pack (Porsche isn’t saying how big it is) that powers an electric motor (Porsche won’t say how powerful) that drives the front wheels, giving the 919 on-demand all wheel drive.

Porsche is competing in the Premiere Class, which gives it the maximum eight megajoules to play with. Although that means the hybrid system is heavier and more complex–which means there are more things that can go wrong–it also means less fuel consumption. Greater efficiency means less time spent refueling, which means greater distance covered, and that’s the entire point of endurance racing. Porsche says the 919′s engine will be driven at full load 75 percent of the 8.48-mile circuit, and use just 1.23 gallons of fuel in the process. Drivers adjust, on the fly, when and how the electric boost comes on, allowing them to account for, say, track conditions or a dogfight in traffic.

Despite all this hardware, the 919 Hybrid is remarkably light at 1,918 pounds–66 pounds lighter than last year’s cars. You can do that when you use carbon fiber for pretty much everything, from the bodywork to the tub the driver sits in. The car is tiny, too, just 183.1 inches long, about 70 inches wide, and just 41.3 inches tall–nearly waist-height. It makes the 911, which is by no means a leviathan, look absolutely huge.

The 919′s first battle is set to take place on April 20th at Silverstone, with the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June and another seven, six-hour races throughout the season.1

But don’t think all this tech is just for the track. Porsche has a storied history of bringing race technology to the road. The list includes the stuff already on your car, like fuel injection and disc brakes, and more specialized fare like dual clutch transmissions and even carbon fiber monocoque construction. Bet on Porsche using the 919 to expand that tradition. Porsche says the 919 is  a research and development platform for for future models. It’s already begun with the 918 Spyder. It’s only a matter of time before you see you see this technology in the 911.

 

[a_majoor]

An odd finding in the Tesla Model S. Perhaps the most intriguing part of the article is how Tesla discovered the car was being "hacked"? Are Teslas communicating with the company over the Internet without the owner being aware of this? If so, why?

http://jalopnik.com/the-tesla-model-s-is-basically-a-good-looking-it-depart-1558372928

The Tesla Model S Is Basically A Good Looking IT Department On Wheels
Jason Torchinsky

It's pretty well known that modern cars are full of little computers talking to each other. This internal network, known as the CAN bus, is pretty specific to cars and as a result is pretty unfamiliar to most people. Tesla, of course, loves to be different. And by different, I mean not different. Hear me out.P

Recently, an intrepid and curious Tesla owner found a hidden four-pin connector, and with a hunch and some trial-and-error work discovered that it is in fact an ethernet port, and wired up a standard ethernet cable to connect to it.P

What he discovered next is notable for how strangely familiar it all is to anyone with even a passing knowledge of computer networking

The car's internal 100 Mbps, full duplex ethernet network consists of 3 devices with assiged IP addresses in the 192.168.90.0 subnet, the center console, dashboard/nav screen and one more unknown device. Some ports and services that were open on the devices were 22 (SSH), 23 (telnet),53 (open domain), 80 (HTTP), 111 (rpcbind), 2049 (NFS), 6000 (X11). Port 80 was serving up a web page with the image or media of the current song being played. The operating system is modified version of Ubuntu using an ext3 filesystem.P

It's really odd just how, well, normal all this feels — it's just like any home or office network. They're using it in some interesting ways — for example, the current song playing artwork is being served to the center large display simply like normal web traffic. P

There's a full thread from the original poster, nlc on the Tesla Motors Club forum, that's full of really interesting information about the network, and lots of useful basic details

The ethernet network of the car contains 3 peripherals :
- The center console, IP Address 192.168.90.100
- The dashboard/navigation screen, IP Address 192.168.90.101
- An unknown peripheral, IP Address 192.168.90.102

These 3 peripheral send of lot of data in broadcast UDP, to 192.168.90.255 broadcat address. Different UDP ports are used depending of data type.

In fact they use the same principle a CAN bus use :

- Everyone send data on the network
- Anyone who need it listen for this data.

The data shared on the netword seem to be in clear. I can see a Ascii header which define the type of the frame. Some data are in binary format thus it will need some reverse engineering to understand the data.

I also tested the openeds ports of the 3 peripherals :

- Central console :

PORT STATE SERVICE
22/tcp open ssh
53/tcp open domain
80/tcp open http
111/tcp open rpcbind
2049/tcp open nfs
6000/tcp open X11
MAC Address: FA:9E:70:EA:xx:xx (Unknown)

- Dashboard screen :

PORT STATE SERVICE
22/tcp open ssh
111/tcp open rpcbind
6000/tcp open X11
MAC Address: 36:C4:1F:2A:xx:xx (Unknown)

- Unknown device :

PORT STATE SERVICE
23/tcp open telnet
1050/tcp open java-or-OTGfileshare
MAC Address: 00:00:A7:01:xx:xx (Network Computing Devices)P
He even managed to get Firefox running on both the center screen and the dash cluster screen. It's interesting to see how the displays are oriented, at least according to how the OS actually sees them. I'm guessing there's some sort of reason why the screen orientation would be rotated 180° on the dash cluster, though I have no idea what it is.P

If you want to try this on your (or a very open/inattentive friend's) Tesla, here's a picture of the pinouts for the color-coded Ethernet wires. Also, you should be aware that Tesla was alerted to his explorations, and contacted him to suggest that he knock it off, already

This evening I got a call from service center

They told me Tesla USA engineers seen a tentative of hacking on my car...

I explained it was me because I tried to connect the diagnosis port to get some useful data (speed, power, etc...). They told me it can be related to industrial espionage and advised me to stop investigation, to not void the warranty....

Don't know if they really seen something in the log, because I just sniffed the network. Or maybe they seen the port scanning with nmap ? Or maybe they just read this topic ? 4P

I'm all for people hacking the things they own; it was decided that jailbreaking your phone is legal, though you can't blame Tesla for not wanting to be on the hook if someone does something dangerous or stupid. Still, with appropriate caveats, it's the man's car and he should be able to tinker as he pleases.5P

This opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities, especially since the protocols they're using in the car are so well-known outside the automotive universe. I'm excited to see what happens next.P

 

[a_majoor]

The past of the Ford Mustang. Some are interesting in an....interesting....way:

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/mustangs-that-never-were/#slide-id-729231

Ford is celebrating the Mustang’s 50th anniversary, and as much as we love the original GT350 and the sublime second-gen Boss 302, we’re utterly fascinated by some of the Mustangs that never were.

Automakers create dozens of design studies, concepts and prototypes when developing a new car, and dozens more over the course of its life. When a car’s been around half a century, a lot of ideas wind up on the cutting room floor, and they provide fascinating glimpses into what the designers were thinking, what avenues they were pursuing. Some of them discarded quickly–the world definitely did not need a four-door Mustang(!)–and soon forgotten. Others, the Mach I concept of 1967, yielded ideas that shaped future models. And some were simply flights of fancy, like the ridiculously sexy Mustang Milano that Ford really should have built.

Ford released a trove of drawings and photos from its archives, and we dug through them all to offer the craziest and coolest Mustangs that never were. Click full screen to get the full story on each image and let us know your favorites down in the comments.

 

[mariomike]

An odd finding in the Tesla Model S. Perhaps the most intriguing part of the article is how Tesla discovered the car was being "hacked"? Are Teslas communicating with the company over the Internet without the owner being aware of this? If so, why?

http://jalopnik.com/the-tesla-model-s-is-basically-a-good-looking-it-depart-1558372928

Responding to a crash involving a Tesla Model S?  Watch out for the giant explosion & hard to extinguish battery fire.

Tesla Model S battery explodes in a giant fireball after fatal crash.
https://www.inverse.com/article/23281-tesla-battery-explodes-indianapolis-crash
The cells were "firing off almost like projectiles".

 

[a_majoor]

One man decides to create his own dream car inspired by 1930 era Art Deco roadsters and limousines:

http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-shows/geneva-auto-show/interviews/a33056/the-eadon-green-black-cuillin-is-an-admirable-dream-project/

 

[a_majoor]

A street legal car with a 2700hp motor? Capable of "almost" reaching 300 mph? (For perspective, Land speed record cars of the pre WWII era, using modified fighter aircraft engines putting out similar horsepower were hard pressed to reach 300 mph.....)

http://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/a13100567/street-legal-ford-gt-hits-292-mph/

Watch This Street-Legal 2700-HP Ford GT Hit 292 MPH
Nearly 300 mph in a car with a license plate. That's outrageous.
JOHNNY BOHMER RACING

BY BRIAN SILVESTRO
OCT 26, 2017
3.9K
Earlier this year we showed you a heavily modified Ford GT that hit 293.6 mph from a dead stop in the standing mile. That car went faster than Guinness World Record holder Johnny Bohmer's 283.2 mph standing-mile run set in 2012 (but didn't break the record since Guinness officials were not on site). Well, Bohmer is back, and he's not messing around.

This past Friday, Bohmer and his crew took his 2700-horsepower, street legal "BADD GT" to the Kennedy Space Center Shuttle runway in Florida to see if it could crack the 300 mph barrier.

According to Jalopnik, Bohmer lost some boost pressure in 6th gear, and had to settle for just 292 mph. More worrying, the parachute he planned to slow down with ripped off his car on deployment, meaning all the stopping power had to come from the car's brakes.

Bohmer was able to slow the car down safely using the brakes, but the immense heat cracked the rear rotors. Bohmer told Jalopnik he thought the car was on fire when he finally got it stopped, the brake heat was so intense.

The team is now aiming for 315 mph as a new benchmark, though Bohmer would be happy to exceed 300 mph. Watch for yourself as this Ford GT flies down the runway.