Shelby Supercar Tuatara aims for Bugatti Veyron 268 mph speed record for production cars

The competition for the world's fastest car appears set to escalate once more with Shelby Super Cars finally pulling the wraps off the car it has had under development for several years.

The aluminum and carbon fiber SSC Tuatara was styled by talented American designer Jason Castriota, and will run a mid-rear mounted, seven-litre, twin-turbo, Quad camshaft V8 producing 1,350 bhp.

Shelby is making no bones about the aim of the car - it is aiming for 280 mph and wants to once more produce the world's fastest production car, a title it held as recently as 2010 with the 1183 bhp, twin-turbo V8 Ultimate Aero TT which ran 412.68 km/h (256.18 mph).

It bested the previous fastest, the original 1001 bhp Bugatti Veyron's 408 km/h (254 mph) but lost the title back to the French marque last year when a 1200 bhp Bugatti Veyron Super Sport ran 431 km/h (268 mph).

SSC has only just disclosed the name of the car and some images, and no doubt intends to get as much value from the project as it can by staged releases of additional information over time. Hence we don't yet know what the performance figures will be for the car, but it can reasonably be expected to eclipse the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport's 268 mph.

Traditionally, new speed records are achieved in small increments unless your name is Bugatti. The McLaren F1 held the record at 386.4 km/h (240.1mph) for seven years, before it was marginally improved to 387.87 kmh (241.01 mph) by the Koennigsegg CCR. Then followed Bugatti's 408 km/h (254 mph), the Ultimate Aero TT's 412.68 km/h (256.18 mph) and then the quantum leap by the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport to 431km/h (268 mph).

Hence, our bet is that when the SSC speed runs are made, the American crew will be aiming for something in the vicinity of 280 mph from the Tuatara and even then, there are some who believe that the Bugatti's 268 mph speed might not be bettered for some time.

It must be noted that 431 km/h is an astonishing top speed for a road car, considering it's capable of pulling out and passing any Formula One car in a straight line. Indeed, it'll best any speed an F1 car can do by more than the outright speed limit in most countries and happens to be the exact speed of the Shanghai Maglev train.

In terms of further details of the SSC Tuatara, very little more is known at this stage. The twin turbo V8 delivers its power through a seven-speed gearbox which will come with either a conventional H-pattern stick shift or F1-style sequential paddle shifters tucked in behind the steering wheel.

The Tuatara will be built almost entirely of carbon fiber - the cabin, chassis, sub-frames and even the wheels are carbon fiber while there are also some "energy absorbing aluminum crash structures".

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Tuatara is that it is both visually arresting and immediately identifiable - while many supercars are beginning to look the same from a distance, the Tuatara is visually unique, and for the dozen individuals who will have the money to own one (only a dozen will be built), no-one will be left in any doubt what it is that they're driving.

The car is the work of American design prodigy Jason Castriota.

Castriota designed the SSC Ultimate Aero and his other work so far includes the Bertone Mantide concept, the Ferrari P4/5 by Pininfarina, the Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano, the Maserati GranTurismo, the Maserati Birdcage 75 and the Saab PhoeniX. Pictures of all of these cars are in this article or in the gallery and it's interesting to look at the Tuatara and the cars Castriota has previously penned. Can you see similarities between the Birdcage and the Tuatara, or the aerodynamic detailing of the PhoeniX and the Tuatara?

For such a young designer, his portfolio is already brimming with astonishingly beautiful and significant machinery. He now leads the design team at Saab.

No price has yet been mentioned, but talk suggests you'll not only be able to go faster than a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, you'll also have to contend with a price tag of less than half that of the French supercar.

Which speaks volumes for the efficiencies of SSC - Bugatti spent so much money designing and building the Veyron that many people believe they effectively subsidized the purchase of every single one of them.

Breakthrough promises $1.50 per gallon synthetic gasoline with no carbon emissions

UK-based Cella Energy has developed a synthetic fuel that could lead to US$1.50 per gallon gasoline. Apart from promising a future transportation fuel with a stable price regardless of oil prices, the fuel is hydrogen based and produces no carbon emissions when burned. The technology is based on complex hydrides, and has been developed over a four year top secret program at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford. Early indications are that the fuel can be used in existing internal combustion engined vehicles without engine modification.

According to Stephen Voller CEO at Cella Energy, the technology was developed using advanced materials science, taking high energy materials and encapsulating them using a nanostructuring technique called coaxial electrospraying.

“We have developed new micro-beads that can be used in an existing gasoline or petrol vehicle to replace oil-based fuels,” said Voller. “Early indications are that the micro-beads can be used in existing vehicles without engine modification.”

“The materials are hydrogen-based, and so when used produce no carbon emissions at the point of use, in a similar way to electric vehicles”, said Voller.

The technology has been developed over a four-year top secret programme at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, UK.

The development team is led by Professor Stephen Bennington in collaboration with scientists from University College London and Oxford University.

Professor Bennington, Chief Scientific Officer at Cella Energy said, “our technology is based on materials called complex hydrides that contain hydrogen. When encapsulated using our unique patented process, they are safer to handle than regular gasoline.”

Aluminum-Celmet material could boost the range of electric vehicles by 200 percent

Range anxiety, the fear that such vehicles will leave the vehicle's occupants stranded well short of their destination, remains one of, if not the main barrier to the widespread adoption of EVs. A new material developed by Japanese company Sumitomo Electric could help allay such fears by potentially improving the capacity of lithium-ion batteries by 1.5 to three times,
and therefore extending the range of EVs by an extra 50 to 200 percent. That would give a Nissan LEAF a range of up to 109 to 219 miles (175 to 352 km) or a Tesla Roadster a range of up to 366 to 732 miles (589 to 1,178 km) - enough to assuage the range anxiety of the most fretful drivers.

The material in question is called Aluminum-Celmet that features an Aero bar-like, three-dimensional mesh-like structure that forms interconnected, open and spherical pores. Sumitomo Electric had previously been producing its proprietary Celmet material made from nickel or nickel chrome alloy. Its high porosity of up to 98 percent and favorable filling, retaining and current-collecting performance when used with an active material, led to Celmet recently being adopted as a positive electrode current collector in hybrid vehicle nickel-hydrogen batteries. It is also easy to process the porous metal into various shapes by cutting and stamping.

Using a similar process used for producing nickel Celmet, the company has now succeeded in developing Aluminum-Celmet that shares the high porosity of Celmet, but is lighter, offers greater electrical conductivity and excellent corrosion resistance - all attributes that make it attractive for use in lithium-ion batteries for EVs and other batteries operating at high charge/discharge voltages.

Sumitomo Electric says that by replacing the aluminum foil used for the positive electrode in conventional lithium-ion batteries with Aluminum-Celmet's three-dimensional mesh-like structure increases the amount of positive active per unit area. According to the company's trial calculations, the material could increase the capacity of electric vehicle onboard battery packs 1.5 to 3 times. This could extend the range of electric vehicles using the same volume battery pack by an extra 200 percent, or maintain the existing range while reducing the battery volume by one to two-thirds.

While electric vehicles are the most immediately obvious use for extended capacity batteries, Sumitomo points out that such technology also holds advantages for reducing the physical footprint of home-use batteries for storing power from solar and other renewable sources, as well as fuel cells. Similarly, the material can also be used for improving the capacity and reducing the footprint of capacitors.

Sumitomo Electric has set up a small-scale production line in Osaka in an effort to accelerate development of Aluminum-Cemet with an eye towards mass production and commercialization for such applications.

Source: Gizmag Via Autoblog Green