This
weekend something held over to the weekend, but too good not to share. With the
Detroit Motor Show just about to get underway tomorrow, move over CES, today the
Golden Age of early motoring. GM’s Bolt. Bentley’s 700 HP Supersports car.
The fastest cars in history: 1894 to 1914
Mike Hanlon January 3rd, 2017
Our history of the world's fastest production car is
produced in three parts: pre-WWI, WWI to WWII and the already-published segment from WWII until now. This
is article covers the earliest period from the first cars through to WW1. The
nature of the data available means we've had to rely on disparate data points
and some ballpark figures in tracing the early development of the fastest road
cars, making it less clinical than our look at the cars of the modern era, but
no less fascinating.
The modern car evolved from initial attempts to motorize a
horse-drawn carriage in just two decades, from 1894 to 1914. In many ways, the
rise in speeds from 1894 to 1914 charts that wave of innovation: from one
cylinder to 12 cylinders, from two- to four-wheel brakes, from side-valve to
DOHC 4-valve hemispherical combustion chambers, from open to streamlined, from
solid axles to pneumatic suspension and incredibly, from 12 mph to 120 mph.
In one generation, the automobile was embraced by civilization as a symbol of personal freedom. The initial circumstance was ideal for the success of the automobile, as a ready-made market existed comprised of the millions who had experienced personal transport's first "killer app" – the bicycle.
Viewed in this narrow
time-frame, the automobile's top speeds increased on average more than 5 mph
per year for 20 years from 1894 to 1914. This was Moore's Law v 0.9.
Defining a road car during this period of time is problematic, as race cars and record cars were almost always based on road cars. It was a different time, and cannot be seen clearly with a mentality framed by 21st century mass production and road registration rules. Each jurisdiction meant that different road registration rules and applications of those rules existed and as you'll see in the research below, purpose built racetracks didn't exist, so all competition was staged on public roads throughout this period.
In 1900, a mass market for personal transportation had already existed for thousands of years – the horse drawn carriage. The largest producer of horse-drawn vehicles in the USA was Durant-Dort which was selling over 150,000 carriages a year and already had sophisticated manufacturing operations and a sales channel to America's wealthy. There was life before the motor car, just at a more leisurely pace.
---- Trains might have owned the market for luxury long-distance land travel, but automotive pioneers could see that would change once the engine, roads, tires and cars achieved their full potential.
An automobile would ultimately offer greater possibilities than the steam train, most notably being able to transport you quickly and safely from A to B, instead of the train's station A to station B.
The world's road infrastructure
was in its infancy 100 years ago. The first automobile crossing of America was
not achieved until 26 July 1903. The 4,500-mile journey had taken 63 days, 12
hours and 30 minutes. The same New-York Los Angeles road record now stands at
28 hours and 50 minutes.
The vast majority of the world's cars prior to 1907 were built in Europe, with America overtaking France as the leading car manufacturer in the world in 1904 by volume and in 1905 by value. By 1907, America's 250 car manufacturers were producing more cars (44,000 per year) than France, Britain and Germany combined, and America's more equitable income distribution and far higher average wages put the dream of personal transportation within reach of the common man.
Ultimately,
although America would start behind the European countries in its quest for
mass personal transport, it would put the freedom machine in the hands of the
people a full generation ahead of Europe.
Production
capabilities were growing quickly in 1907 as America embraced the new
low-priced four-cylinder Ford Model N and Buick Model 10 "Nifty".
Ford was producing 100 Model N cars a day in one factory and the 6000 cars it
made in 1908 were behind only Buick's 9000 as they fought to be the largest car
manufacturer in the world.
From five vehicles for every
1000 Americans in 1910, there were 86 vehicles for every 1000 people by 1920,
and by the end of WW2, Europe lay in ruins while America's homeland was
untouched by war and there were 220 cars for every 1000 people. In just a few
decades, one in five Americans had purchased a car. Next to a home, it was the
most expensive discretionary purchase most people ever made and car ownership
would eventually reach eight in 10 Americans.
More
GM's journey from Volt to Bolt
January 3, 2017 Updated 3 days ago
Ten years
ago, General Motors Co. was in deep trouble.
Yet
then-CEO Rick Wagoner took the stage at the 2007 Detroit auto show with his
usual stoic confidence. On the other side of the wall was the Chevrolet Volt, a
plug-in hybrid concept car that was as much about proving that GM still had a
bright future as it was about guzzling less gasoline.
"This
isn't about science projects," Wagoner said after unveiling the Volt.
"This is about creating cars and trucks propelled in an efficient manner
that people really want to own. And that's the way we're going to win."
The
concept Volt featured plastics extensively, including body panels and
polycarbonate window features. While the version that went into production
dropped some of that dramatic plastic styling, it still relies on plastics. Its
battery system won the Society of Plastics Engineers’ top auto award in 2011
for the injection molded nylon used in its prismatic cells.
The
current Volt also added a battery pack with a glass-reinforced polyester
structural composite cover.
The Volt
didn't keep GM out of bankruptcy (or save Wagoner's job), and consumers didn't
embrace it the way GM had projected. But it did set GM on a decadelong path
that culminated in the launch late in 2016 of the Chevy Bolt, a battery-powered
car that presages a future with self-driving, emissions-free vehicles that
consumers might share rather than own.
GM's
journey from the Volt to the Bolt mirrors the dramatic shifts and lessons for
the entire auto industry over the course of that decade. The fact that the Bolt
runs on electricity is now only part of its story: Its greatest legacy may lie
in its ability to help GM navigate a future in which automakers that fall too
far behind can become obsolete.
The Bolt
arrives as automakers race to acquire technology startups, align themselves
with ride-hailing companies and battle Silicon Valley for software-development
talent. Many of the news conferences that kick off the Detroit show Jan. 9 will
focus on that mobility frenzy rather than traditional vehicle debuts.
While
complete details on the Bolt’s battery system have not been released yet, it
likely represents a higher amount of plastics used. The original Volt had 135
individual prismatic cells, which used 37 pounds of nylon for their individual
cell frames.
The
updated Volt, which debuted at the 2015 auto show in Detroit, increased the
battery pack to 192 cells. GM says the Bolt’s battery pack will have “96 cell
groups,” with each group consisting of 3 individual cells — or 288 prismatic
cells.
The Bolt,
whose half-ton battery can store enough juice to travel an estimated 238 miles
before recharging, became real on Dec. 13, when the first three buyers drove
away in them from Fremont Chevrolet in California. The location for those first
deliveries was highly symbolic. When Wagoner rolled out the Volt concept, GM
was building Pontiac Vibes in Fremont, at a factory it jointly ran with Toyota
Motor Corp.
Today,
Tesla Motors uses the same plant — cast aside by GM, along with Pontiac, in
connection with its quick-rinse bankruptcy — to churn out $80,000-plus electric
cars favored by celebrities, and a crossover with overengineered falcon-wing
doors. Tesla, a company that built its first vehicle just nine years ago, has
collected more than 350,000 deposits for its upcoming Model 3, which has
similar specs to the Bolt's. Unlike the Model 3, though, the Bolt is already
here.
More
Bentley's New 700-HP Continental Supersports Is Its Fastest Car Ever
It's the fastest, most powerful Bentley ever.
by Hannah Elliott 6 January 2017, 22:50 GMT
On
Friday, Bentley announced the fastest, most powerful production Bentley ever:
the 2017 Continental Supersports.
This is
the third iteration of the Supersports model that Bentley first produced in the
1920s and reintroduced in 2009. Everything on this latest model has been
lightened, tightened ,and sculpted. The new car looks potent, fresh, and agile.
The $293,300 Continental Supersports four-seat coupe comes with a six-liter, twin-turbocharged W12 engine that gets 700 brake horsepower and 750 pound-feet of torque, up 79bhp and 160 pound-feet over the 2009 version. It has Bentley’s eight-speed automatic paddle-shifting all-wheel drive. It’ll hit 60 miles per hour in 3.4 seconds, an improvement by 0.3 seconds—pretty fast for a four-seat chariot that weighs 5027 pound. (For reference, that's not as fast as a Lamborghini Huracán or even a Ferrari 488 GTB, but it nearly touches the speed of the 2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus, which hits 60mph a mere 0.2 seconds faster.) Top speed is 209 mph, beating the previous figures by five miles per hour.
Better yet, the Continental Supersports also comes in a $322,600 four-seat convertible option, which has a 0-60mph sprint time of 3.7 seconds and a 205mph top speed. That makes it the fastest four-seat convertible on the market.
More
As usual we close with the thoughts and
observations from Jason Jencka, normally in Lake Tahoe California, but this
week in cold and rainy London.
Process at Indian Chemical Plant may Represent
Inadvertent Breakthrough
For Global Battle Against Carbon Emissions
N. Jason Jencka January 6th, 2017 3:20 am GMT
Discussion
of India's role in global efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions generally
revolves around how to bring electricity to the ~300 million Indians lacking
access to it without blowing much of whats left of the global “carbon budget”.
Initiatives have included a robust push to increase clean energy capacity,
particularly that of solar power as well as to boost efficiency through a
program that has distributed over 190 million subsidized LED bulbs since May of
2015. While efforts have won global
praise and attracted billions in foreign investment, an inadvertent
“breakthrough” at a small Indian chemical plant may be of equal or greater
global relevance.
The
plant expects to capture 60,000 tons of C02 then incorporate it in a marketable
product, baking soda, without subsidy. This emphasis is critical as
global projects to capture C02 to-date have depended on inconsistent subsidies
and been plagued by substantial cost overruns. One of the better-known
projects, the Kemper coal power plant the American state of Mississippi has
exceeded initial cost projections by $ 4 billion and is still not fully
operational as of this writing. The large Boundary Dam project in Saskatchewan,
Canada has faced similar troubles as it became evident that it had not secured
enough demand for the CO2 it produced (in its case from oil companies looking
to boost the yield of wells). While the quantity of C02 captured at the
chemicals factory in far-southeastern India is orders of magnitude too small to
be relevant from a climate perspective, the fact that process has gone forward
without subsidy is momentous and may prove to be a historically significant
milestone in efforts to reduce anthroprogenic climate change.
Sources:
Tom Embury-Dennis The Independent January 5th,2017:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/industrial-plant-india-worlds-first-ever-capture-co2-emissions-baking-soda-tuticorin-tamil-nadu-a7509571.html
Jeff Amy, Associated Press January 6th,
2017: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/latest-delay-pushes-kemper-power-001349332.html
Ministry of Power, Government of India-web January 7th,
2017: http://www.delp.in
Stefani Langenegger, CBC News December 14th,
2016: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/saskpower-carbon-capture-1.3896487
N. Jason Jencka is presently studying Finance and
Economics at Sierra Nevada College, located near the shores of Lake Tahoe on
the border of California and Nevada. His interests include the interplay
between world markets and the global political sphere, with a focus on
developments of both sides of the Atlantic in North America and Europe. In his
leisure time he enjoys connecting with those people that have an interesting
story to tell and a genuine desire to make an impact in the world.
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