The modern day equivalent to the 2005 or 2014 rules would have been a maximum wheelbase, but instead they make a change that benefits low-rake cars like the Mercedes

Or the FIA could have just introduced a rule change tailored to take out their adavantage. LIke they did with early 90s Williams, 2000s Ferrari, 2010+2012 Red Bull

Just out of curiosity, where do you find a 330Wh/kg cell?

And the video and the website show them manned, despite the cockpit not looking like it has the structural integrity to crash.

If we’re getting into semantic bitching, I wouldn’t even call it a drone, as it seems to have a cockpit for manned flight, which would make it a regular helicopter.

Is anyone else surprised by the whitewall tires?

The american democracy is far more vulnerable than the Weimar Republic or post-soviet Russia were.

You have two listed passenger cars to prove your argument about commercial vehicles, and found that they have almost the same mi/lb. Great. But what happens if we scale up? Obviously both powertrains are going to get heavier, but in the hydrogen vehicle the share of the buffer battery is going to reduce drastically,…

The governments are fueling this development with regulations. Cars that cost below 25k€ have been expected to die out for years.

The point about hydrogen is not thermal efficiency, but its high gravimetric energy density, which might be able to overcompensate for the conversion losses.

Anyone with a high school level of science of economics should be aware of the importance of payload capacity for the transportation, and the resulting importance of having an energy storage with high gravimetric energy density.

The US military has definitely funded less promising projects or ones with less potential gain than ones like this.

I’m surprised that the millitary is not all over research into synthetic fuel. You’d think fuel than can be produced domestically or in the field would be quite attractive to them.

IIRC the reason for the rebadge was that they feared that buying Mecedes would be seen as wasting money, as the american population doesn’t know Mercedes as a manufacturer of commercial vehicles.

Gravimetrically and volumetrically, batteries are a ridiculously inefficient method of energy storage. If excess energy and water are converted into liquid hydrocarbons or hydrogen, your warehouse can store many times more net energy, despite the high conversion losses. A large-scale implementation would also pave the…

I could see the solution for air travel being only a few years away, but it probably needs more investment than it is currently getting. Biofuel is unlikely to be ever available in large enough quantities to replace fossil fuel, but synthetic fuel could.It would also not have the surprisingly large production…

Opel DTM cars 2001-2005

But it is much easier to be seen in an EV if it is convertible

Nobody thinks about poor people when talking about traffic emissions. Everone likes to pat themselves on the back when they subsidised some nice>$40k cars for wealthy suburbians, but the people who can’t afford new cars are slapped with higher gas taxes. Massively expanding public transport would probably be a more…

1. Cars are much cheaper in the US. If it costs €40k in Germany, expect it to be $40k-43k in the US