http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/should-tesla-motors-sell-out-1084.html

An interesting opinion article, especially in the context of the global financial crash that has occurred since this piece was first published.

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I think that the people responsible for the design and evaluation of cars sometimes lose the wood for the trees.

I am as much as an automotive technology aficionado as anyone I’ve met. I love technology like stability control, radar cruise control, telematics and hybrid petrol/electric drivelines. I look forward to pure electric cars, to better aerodynamic technology and to exotic materials use.

But I think that all new technologies must be assessed within the paradigm of what is currently cutting edge, and not just adopted because in just one or two respects they are advantageous.

I’ve recently driven two high performance cars with transmissions that are clearly, in important aspects, inferior to what is currently available.

The twin clutch SST transmission in the Lancer Evo MR can be lumpy in urban driving, and (worsened by the over-large turbo, high mass of the car and small capacity of the engine), has terrible lag off the line.

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It’s a new year – so what do we have coming up in AutoSpeed?

In short, it looks to be a great year.

First-up, we’ll be continuing our ‘How to Electronically Modify Your Car’ series. At this stage the series has about 15 parts – it may grow a little. By reading those stories, you can be taken from knowing literally nothing about electronically modifying a car to the stage where you can confidently make changes to analog and digital signals, and understand how car systems can be altered.

In the second half of the year we expect to cover an innovative development in DIY electronics that will put the power of making major, custom electronic modification of cars into the hands of everyone. It’s a development that has been more than 12 months of work in the making, and one that I think is enormously exciting. More on this as we get closer to launch.

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It’s been said that the victors write history. It’s also the case that history tends to be written in the native language of the country – or company. Perhaps it’s for those reasons that good histories of the major Japanese car makers seem so absent – or, when they do appear, are rather lame.

Honda Motor – the Men, the Management, the Machines was written by Tetsuo Sakiya in 1982. When I came across it, the age of the book didn’t worry me – surely all the foundations of the company were in place by then – so it was a read I was looking forward to.

However, the promise isn’t fulfilled. Basically, it’s because the author feels the necessity to wander off into prolonged diversions on Japanese history, culture, labour practices, emancipation of women, trading companies, the role of government – and God knows what else.

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Years ago I did a muffler comparison test for a magazine. I used about $120,000 of equipment to test the sound attenuating properties of the mufflers – including a dyno, test car and sound pressure level meter.

Since I was working from home, I ended up with a lot of mufflers (all clean and brand new, I might add) strewn around the lounge room.

And, in a moment of (drunken?) lunacy, I found a much simpler way of testing the mufflers than using a dyno and the rest of the gear. In short, I simply grabbed a muffler and yelled through it.  And then another muffler, and then another muffler…

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This is the last blog post for this year, and this week’s edition of AutoSpeed is the last until January 6.

It’s been an interesting year, not least because in response to reader requests, we’ve been again testing more new cars.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I think that when testing cars, nearly all journalists are way too soft in their criticisms. I mean, to make just a simple point – by definition, half of all new cars should be rated below average and half should be above average.

But read most car tests and you’ll find that nearly all cars are said to be way above average!

I also think that journalists – and especially enthusiasts’ magazines and TV shows – need to in part be blamed for the absurd direction that some manufacturers have taken with their cars.

The car that this year amazed me the most was the Ford FG Falcon.

The model that I would think sells the best – the XR6 – was incredibly off the pace in the things that matter to most purchasers. All I can say is: what on earth was Ford thinking when they set the priorities?

I wrote about this when the car was first released – see The New Falcon – Mostly Irrelevant and the ironic The Ideal Car for the Times – but the car’s reality was even worse than I’d guessed.

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The topic of bump stops does not attract much interest. But especially in cars with lowered suspension, and in light-weight cars, bump stops form an important part of the springing system.

A bump stop is the (usually) rubber buffer that is compressed as the suspension reaches full bump. (Some cars also have full droop buffers as well.)

Traditionally, bump stops were impacted only rarely, but more and more often in current cars, the suspension is designed in such a way that the bump stops are frequently contacted.

Let’s look at light weight cars first.

In a light weight car, the variations in possible loads make up a greater proportion of the overall vehicle mass. This means that, to avoid bottoming-out, the suspension must be set up more stiffly to cope with the potential load variation.

Or – and here’s the key point – the bump stops can be designed to be increasing rate (but still relatively progressive) springs that are brought into operation when the car is carrying full loads over bumps. That way, the spring rate of the suspension during ‘normal’ load carrying can be set much softer, giving a better ride.

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Orville and Wilbur Wright were genuine engineering heroes. Despite their relatively humble beginnings, these men were the first to ever to build – and then successfully fly – a powered aircraft.

I’ve often read descriptions of their brilliance that damns them with faint praise: they were ‘just bicycle mechanics’, their work built heavily on the efforts of others, and so on.

In fact, they were simply brilliant engineers, with an astounding work ethic and the ability to both physically make things and also theorise about outcomes.

Unless you think I overstate the brothers’ abilities, consider these points… They built their own wind tunnel and tested in it almost 200 wing sections; they built an internal combustion engine with the then best power/weight ratio of any engine in the world; they made every part of their own aircraft – from that engine through to propellers to wing and control systems; they developed the concept of an aircraft banking into turns – and a lot more. 

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The more you think about turbo boost control, the more implications there are for any given system.

Let’s just refer to a traditional wastegate system.

(That’s where there’s a bypass passage – the wastegate – around the turbine. Open the wastegate and exhaust can bypass the turbine, slowing turbo speed and so dropping boost pressure. Remember – the less open the wastegate, the higher the boost pressure.)

In this discussion it doesn’t matter if it’s an electronically controlled system or a simple pneumatic system.

Let’s say that boost pressure is sensed from the compressor outlet of the turbo. If the maximum desired boost is 10 psi, the maximum outlet pressure of the compressor will also be 10 psi.

But the situation changes if the boost pressure is sensed from the intake manifold. If 10 psi is again desired, the boost pressure at the manifold will be 10 psi, but the boost pressure being developed by the turbo will need to be higher.

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