Talking of hypercars, they ooze with an aerodynamic play of design honed by the muscular built that evokes a sense of style and masculinity. No doubt these mean monsters manage to capture more than the odd glances and oomphs… Lukas Haag who’s an automotive designer with a fair experience at Mercedes-Benz has created the blueprint of a BMW concept that is an improvement on his earlier concept design dubbed Connected Dynamics created way back in 2014.
This renewed vision of a hair-raising four-wheeler with a refreshing CMF-concept lies right in the realms of automotive designs that strike the right balance between form and function. A very tightly knit body design that flows from the front to the back, urging the onlookers to just be bemused by its presence on the road. The wide stance makes the car generate tons of aerodynamics efficiency and the assurance to stay glued to the tarmac as speeds hit in excess of 185 miles per hour. From what I can assume, the shortened hood of this concept and elongated rear points towards an electric drive train much like the official BMW Group’s concept cars in the Vision series.
The mix of sharp aesthetics with the contoured form makes this concept unique in its own rights. In a way, it is going to please automotive lovers who prefer either the sharper design language or the rounded one. One can’t help but notice the profound shark fin leading to the LED illuminated array that covers the rear. The futuristic dynamics are evident in the LED headlights and the taillights matching them on the rear. Overall the new Connected Dynamics concept looks quite boxy and Lukas has managed to catch our attention on this one.
Nothing motivates people more than a second chance, a do-over, one more shot to win it and that is exactly what SSC North America did with Tuatara! There was a disputed top speed run in October 2020 but on January 17th, 2o21 the 1750-HP Tuatara came back and broke the world speed record for a production car at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
The hypercar finally beat the Koenigsegg Agera RS which reached 277.87 mph (447.19 km/h) in 2017 – the difference between the two is only 5 mph! For the world record, the car must do two rounds and the officials will take an average. Run 1 Northbound saw the car race to a max speed of 277.8 mph (450.1 km/h) and Run 2 Southbound topped at 286.1 mph (460.4 km/h). The two-way average was recorded at 282.9 mph (455.3 km/h) making the SSC Tuatara the world’s fastest production car. The speed and time data were recorded and validated with a Racelogic Vbox 3i 100Hz GNSS system, Life Racing, Garmin, and the International Mile Racing Association.
Tuatara’s team took their first attempt as a lesson to come back stronger and faster – the difference in performance between the first and second attempt was over 30 mph which is a drastic improvement. How? Jerod Shelby, Founder & CEO of SSC North America, points to two key factors: the high-speed run in Florida stretched just 2.3 miles in comparison to the 7-mile road used in Nevada meaning a new acceleration strategy was needed and less time available for braking; secondly, the hypercar was driven by its owner Larry Caplin rather than the experienced British racing driver Oliver Webb.
Caplin used a ‘drag race’ style of acceleration during the record runs, pulling full throttle and boost for 40-50 seconds.“I got a taste of full power in the top of the seventh on the last run. I am excited to come back and break 300mph,” said Caplin which was their benchmark during their very first attempt.”We are not basking in the moment rather we are here at our HQ with our heads down. We are eagerly taking what we have learned from this 2.3-mile challenge and applying improvements to the Tuatara so that we can push to meet our long-standing goal of a verified 300 mph run and ultimately to provide an even better product to our valued customers,” said the SSC team in their official statement. We can all learn one thing from Tuatara – be your own competition!
As a Motorsports fan, how do you think the scene is going to look like come the year 2030? It’ll definitely be dominated by electric cars, as fuel-powered racing monsters, gradually give way to 100 percent clean energy vehicles – on the streets as well as on the racing tracks. Be it the endurance races like the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans or the thrilling Formula-1 races that’ll eventually be overshadowed by Formula-E fraternity. In a future dominated by electric batteries, we cannot overlook the role of Tesla and being a dominant EV manufacturer already, it would be a safe assumption to make that the Elon Musk-led army will also take over the racing field, a decade from now.
The Tesla Squad envisioned by Fabian Breës is a logical assumption of a racing division that is made possible by the battery evolution of the company giving rise to hypercars that battle it out on technologically advanced circuits. Yes, a future where the charging batteries will be laid down the pit lane and certain parts of the track – just like the DRS zones in F1 racing. This will give the drivers the option to juice up their hypercar’s battery while fighting for position on the track – bringing in a new level of strategic decision making to the live race. The cars have lithium-ion batteries rigged to the floor that get charged wirelessly from the induction charging hardware installed underneath the asphalt. Keeping in tune with the future of racing, the airless tires are 3D printed – filled with a porous material to provide cushion from the extreme pressure on the tire walls at high speeds. Interestingly the heat generated from the friction of the tires and the brakes are used to charge the racing cars
Tesla Squad’s most exciting bit will be the cars dubbed Tesla LMPE 2030 that’ll have drivers like Verstappen, Le Mans veteran Webber and probably the young rookie Robin Räikkönen – the youngest LMPE entrant. The crowd at Le Mans will be able to experience the race from the driver’s seat with the VR headsets with all the vital statistics like the graining of tires, battery level and more on the HUD. A unique way to experience high-speed racing, indeed!
The motorsports community is eagerly awaiting the World Endurance Championship to be held in 2022 with the 24 Hours of Le Mans being the season finale. Reason enough for Peugeot to mark a return to the racing fraternity of one of the toughest test of man and machine, after almost a decade. The French automotive manufacturer has revealed the details of the hybrid powertrain that’ll power the Hypercar for the endurance races – sharing the playing field with the likes of Toyota and Glickenhaus.
The powertrain called the HYBRID4 500KW of the Le Mans Hypercar will get the mid-mounted V6 petrol engine weighing 165 kg, that’ll drive the rear wheels via the seven-speed sequential gearbox – churning out 500 kW (670 hp) output. More assistance will come from the 200 kW electric motor mounted on the front axles. This hybrid system is the work of Peugeot Sport and technical partner TOTAL, while the 900-volt battery is developed by TOTAL subsidiary Saft Groupe S.A. According to Peugeot Sport’s WEC program powertrain director Francois Coudrain, “The architecture of the Peugeot HYBRID4 500 kW powertrain is the result of a highly detailed brief shaped by the new WEC regulations.”
Going in line with the regulations for engine development and body dimensions, Peugeot’s battery will be charged before the race to the brim, and then in the race, it will be juiced up via the regenerative braking. To stay within regulations, the V6 engine will control the amount of output to the drivetrain from the motor-generator unit (MGU). So, the car will be a four-wheel-drive when the electric motor is in use and switch back to the rear-wheel-drive when it is deactivated. The powertrain system will undergo testing in early 2021 and finally, the car will debut by the end of next year before joining the championship in 2022.
Touted as “the most extreme, uncompromising, fastest and lightest” car it has ever made, the Bugatti Bolide seems to marry the best of Bugatti’s technical genius, design expertise, and brand values into one automobile. Bugatti was known for making some of the world’s lightest racecars before being acquired by Volkswagen. Under their new ownership, the company created record-shattering speed-demons like the Veyron and Chiron, but lacked in the one area they shone in back in the day, a light automobile. The Bolide hopes to be a “radically light vehicle” that harks back to the old Bugatti days, but without compromising on the speed, values, and aesthetic standards the company’s set in modern times.
“We asked ourselves how we could realize the mighty W-16 engine as a technical symbol of the brand in its purest form—with solely four wheels, engine, gearbox, steering wheel and, as the only luxury, two seats,” Bugatti boss Stephan Winkelmann said in a statement. “Important aspects of our considerations were fine-tuning our iconic powertrain without any limitations as regards the weight-to-power ratio”. The result is a car that almost perfectly walks the balance between form and function, with an aesthetic that is drop-dead gorgeous, but also engineered perfectly for performance.
The car comes with a carbon-monocoque body, engineered to make the overall vehicle lighter than a Mini Cooper. Under the hood sits the quad-turbo W-16, one of Bugatti’s engineering marvels. Couple that with the car’s all-wheel-drive and you have a 1,825 horsepower beast capable of hitting well over 300mph and allowing it to complete a Le Mans lap in 3:07 minutes, faster than any LMP1 car.
A lot of the Bolide’s ability to hit high speeds is a direct result of its fusion of design and engineering. The car’s body is lightweight for sure, but it’s also made to maximize downforce, and comes with a couple of unusual features to increase air-flow and reduce drag. The rear wing and front splitter are both adjustable, allowing them to autonomously reposition themselves based on your speed, but by far the Bolide’s most interesting detail lies in its air-intake on the car roof. Made from a morphable outer skin, the roof’s surface changes based on the speed you drive at. It remains flat at lower speeds, but when you start to pick up pace, bubbles on the roof’s surface inflate to increase its surface-area and allow more air to come in contact with it, optimizing air-flow to the rear wing. To indicate the experimental nature of this new, innovative detail, Bugatti even employed an X-shape in both the headlights and the taillights. The headlights heavily remind me of the X in the SpaceX logo, but I digress… The interiors reinforce the Bolide’s need for speed. If the exterior spots shape-shifting air-intakes and four afterburners, the insides are designed to look like the cockpit of a jet engine, with two racing seats complete with six-point harnesses, a complex steering wheel in front of a digital gauge cluster, and a small panel on the dash with push-button transmission controls and a few other switches.
The Bolide was created as a grand tribute of Bugatti’s car-making prowess and its racetrack domination ever since the Type 35 in 1924, which went on to achieve over 2,000 victories in just 6 years since its production. Designed to inherit the race-track legacy left behind by its ancestor, the Bolide hat-tips Ettore Bugatti’s own genius in creating lightweight race-machines a century ago. The Bolide weighs a mere 1,240 kilograms (2733 pounds), and is currently only a race-track concept. Whether the Bugatti Bolide will go into series production is something that has not been decided yet.
Bugatti’s Bolide is what happens when the French carmaker challenges itself to reach new heights. It’s not just a fast and luxurious speed demon like the Chiron — it’s built from the ground up to destroy the race track. The company calls it the faste...
A new king has climbed to the top of hypercar hill. On Saturday, October 10th, a seven-mile, sun-baked, wind-swept stretch of Highway 160 outside of Pahrump, Nevada was transformed into the high-speed runway from which SSC North America’s 1,750 HP hy...
The hypercars are one of the most fascinating parts of writing about automotive design – it is an imaginary drive into a future that I only ever saw in Jetsons (the 3D renderings are far superior to the 2D cartoons!). Designers Hussain Almossawi and Marin Myftiu have reimagined the 911 Spyder for NCS Company, an Italian prototyping and development company, calling it the 411.
The iconic 911 Spyder is something of an automotive unicorn that hasn’t been replicated, the designers accurately call it a dreamlike beast. The 411 is a design project that aims at leveling up the design game for Porsche’s hypercar by blending the best of their timeless elements from the ‘50s – ’60s with the future. The headlights are aligned with the front wheels with a smoothly wrapped bodywork as a nod to the Porsche heritage. Distinctive design details like no body cut along the front and having all the air ducts are exposed actively play a role in the performance of the car. What sets the 411 apart from the existing hypercars is that it is designed with the goal of being a luxury highway cruiser, the driver should be able to enjoy the 400 kmph speed (well, if the rules allow it) outside the runway too when they invest in a Porsche. The sleek aerodynamic body with a geometric approach gives the electric car the same muscular feel of the real machine.
“The concept envisions a not-so-distant future where, with the perfection of autonomous driving, some highways will allow higher speed limits in this mode. Removing the human error from the equation will allow safe cruising at speeds of 200, 300 or even 400+ Km/h, giving business people and the likes a viable alternative to flight as well as a real reason for boasting about that exotic car,” explains Almossawi who has formerly designed crazy concepts for Adidas too. The concept as interesting as the future it is designed for – a world where a car’s fast speeds would be achievable with on-the-go inductive charging thanks to advanced tech and in-built inductive charging stripes underneath the roads. It is a concept but not impossible as automakers work to make the electric batteries smaller which would help with the driving dynamics. Elon, if you are reading this can you tweet at Porsche and do a collab that can give us hope for the future?
Designers: Hussain Almossawi and Marin Myftiu for NCS Company
Built for the year 2080, the Rimac Scalatan concept by Max Schneider gives us a unique window into what our world and the transport industry could look like over half a century from now. Known for their advanced hypercars powered by cutting-edge innovations and technology, Rimac’s brand image literally screams futuristic… and the Scalatan concept capitalizes on that, with a combination of features that make it incredibly enticing. The car comes with a stunningly aerodynamic carbon-nanotube graphene outer surface that sits coolly on top of a generative-design chassis made from 3D-carboprinted titanium graphite. This organic looking chassis gives the car its structure and strength, while also being hollow on the inside to store the car’s lithium-oxygen batteries. These batteries react with oxygen (from air that passes through the chassis as the car drives) to produce lithium oxide that’s converted into energy… in short, the Scalatan actually BREATHES air like a living organism.
The Scalatan champions renewable energy like all of Rimac’s hyper-mobiles… the concept runs on air-powered lithium-oxygen batteries, but also features a unique induction-charging aero-fin base that has the capability of charging itself through the road as it drives, a feature that supports the Li-O batteries by offsetting some of the car’s energy demands and pulling electrical energy right from the induction-ready road. The car’s wheels embrace futurism too, and while the chassis relies on being hollow to allow air to fill it up and charge the batteries, the wheels don’t share the same distinction. The Scalatan’s airless wheels (like most of the car) come 3D-printed too, using a unique lattice structure to absorb shock, just like air-filled wheels; while resisting wear-and-tear and being completely puncture-proof.
Schneider’s design process for the Scalatan involved a two-pronged approach – A future study, to understand how a car in 2080 would be built and how it would operate, as well as a detailed study of Rimac’s own design language, in order to help the car capture the Croatian automotive company’s brand DNA. The Scalatan, in that regard, does a pretty remarkable job of showcasing future technologies while entirely embracing Rimac’s design playbook. It comes with the unique cutaway shape in front of the rear wheel, a detail that’s common to all of Rimac’s cars, while going for the sleek headlights, and amping up the beauty with edge-lit floating taillights that look mesmerizing from any and every angle. The Scalatan, like all of Rimac’s cars, also packs doors that give you a dramatic entry and exit to and from the vehicle. The doors form a part of the car’s front surface panel, and open upwards from the front, instead of from the side. This reveals the car’s aggressive chassis, almost like a predator revealing its teeth before it attacks its prey. Gaps in the side of the chassis (as well as the front) allow you to enter the car’s interiors, which seat the driver and passenger one behind the other in a 1+1 arrangement, much like a fighter jet… which seems like a pretty apt metaphor for a car that’s designed to absolutely ‘take-off’ on roads, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust behind. If the future is even half as cool as Max imagines it to be, I have a vested interest to live till I’m a hundred.
The Czinger 21C is a pretty impressive hypercar. The completely American-made automobile comes with an in-house developed 2.9-litre twin-turbo V8 engine which supplies it with 1250 hp and takes it from 0 to 60mph in a staggering 1.9 seconds… like I said, that’s pretty impressive for an automobile, especially considering the 21C is also the world’s 1st 3D printed hypercar.
Designed and built in California, the 21C is best described as one of the most unique hypercars ever built. Most of the car’s chassis, for starters, is 3D printed to achieve strength while saving costs on tooling. Made with aluminum and titanium alloys for the most part, with a few pre-fabricated carbon-fiber tube parts making their appearances wherever possible, the entire car’s chassis is like an organic skeleton. Moreover, it achieves exactly what it needs to, by saving materials wherever necessary, reducing cost by avoiding tooling and molding, and giving you the best combination of strength and aerodynamics. This unique ability also allows the 21C to have the kind of cockpit it does… because while most hypercars have two seats arranged side by side, the 21C uses a 1+1 layout by putting its driver in front and the rider right behind. This unique seating layout comes personally from founder Kevin Czinger’s love for bikes and their seating arrangement. There’s a sense of control and focus when you sit in the 21C’s driver seat which comes from the seat’s central alignment, almost like being in an F1 racecar’s cockpit, with all your controls at arm’s length. For the most part, the car’s steering wheel and dashboard sport the same organic styling associated with its 3D-printed approach, while being fabricated from carbon fiber, just like the car’s outer body. Two butterfly doors on either side of the 21C give you access to both the driver and the rider seats at the same time, while the car’s incredibly narrow cabin allows its front wheels to have massive air exhausts right behind them. Move to the rear and the car’s rear panel is almost entirely a grille, allowing air to easily pass through, barring probably the 3 taillights which lend a strong character to the car’s rear, and a unique 3D printed rectangular exhaust tip (right beside the branding), which shoots X-shaped flames as you rev its engine… because why not – which seems to be an underlying theme in the 21C
The 21C is limited to 80 units, which will be manufactured at Czinger’s unit in California. From start to end, the entire vehicle is an amalgamation of possibilities, showcasing the sheer power of 3D printing combined with top-notch designing and engineering… after all, with a top speed of 236mph, and an acceleration of 0-60 in just 1.9 seconds, the 21C definitely deserves a world of credit for pushing both boundaries as well as performance!
