There are two parts to this. Newton’s 3rd law says that if the air gets pushed up by the car, the car must experience a reaction force downward. So, in this case a downforce at the front end. As a secondary effect, starving off air under the front lowers the pressure there, and augments the downward force contribution.

It’s also important to state that “Cd” isn’t correctly defined in the majority of the automotive world (excludes ambient wind/turbulence effects that are always present, plus the rotational resistive torque on the wheels & tyres), and the ways the number is arrived at varies substantially between OEMs. It’s not quite…

I’m in LA, too, (Hawthorne) and I agree completely! 

The rolling resistance is the dominant part, but that’s more from the rubber compound change than the width (those 22s wear ‘performance’ tyres, not low-CRR boots). The aero impact of the size & style of wheels is still pretty epic, and in that case especially so. Having the rims inside the fenders helps, but the air…

Yes, 0.05 is an upper-ish bound, but it really does depend on a lot of things.

Having studied wheel & tyre aerodynamics for over a decade, & written peer-reviewed papers on them, I can assure you that wheel size & design have huge impacts on aero efficiency. They can be +/-0.05 on CD, depending on how many of the effects you include (most OEMs exclude one aspect in their quoted CD values), and,…

It wasn’t so much the ground effect itself that caused the take-offs, as the naive attempts by the regulators to limit the exploitation of ground effect. They made the cars run largely flat floors, ostensibly to avoid ground effect tunnels, but then a large flat sheet at incidence to the airflow is an insanely…

“car designers with a superficial understanding of aerodynamics had a field day”. This remains true to this day!

10 years ago I moved from the UK to the US, for a myriad of reasons, but including the ones you’ve mentioned here. It was scary, especially as I was gambling a lot on a very fragile job for a crazy billionaire well known to this site, and despite the cultural & language differences at least seeming to be relatively…

The 0.7 multiplier is actually negotiable with the EPA, provided that you can demonstrate that the thermal management (of systems & occupants) doesn’t suck up 30% of your range in the extreme hot & cold tests. Different manufacturers have had this de-rating factor changed to 0.76-0.78 because of this. 

Gears. Gears and torque curves.

I think the usual counterargument put forward for this is that big accidents get cleared up by the local government (fire, police, etc), and that tax dollars can be better spent elsewhere. The extreme version is along the lines of “better that the fire department be using their hoses to put out a house fire than to…

Can you see during the daytime? If so, there’s solar energy to be had. You don’t need to live in a desert, you just need more surface area of panels. An entire roof’s worth might even be overkill for you.

I read an interview with Walter Rohrl once where he said he test drove this car in the rain at the Nurburgring, and *it scared him*.

Rare Earth metals aren’t bad things in themselves, it’s more the shady-ass places and practices we get them from (dodgy, poorly-regulated mines in China & South America). They’re not ‘rare’, though: the name just inficates that they’re rarely found in their pure form. Not that different from the Iron Oxide or Bauxite…

Neither can most stock BMW M cars (brake fade) or AMG Mercs (oil temps). Where else would you need to put your random limiter so that you can justify your dislike of this car?

But “tied for the title with a Porsche” doesn’t sound nearly as impressive for Tesla.

I’m guessing that you’re missing a sarcasm tag? Teslas have AC motors, and normally charge via AC, right from their owners’ regular domestic supply. It’s the ‘Superchargers’ that they can also use that apply DC straight to the battery. Because that’s how batteries input/output electricity. An inverter is required to…

COTD!

As the owner of 2 Caymans, one for track, one for road, I can say nope! It’s difficult to explain, but I think it’s kind of like saying you’d like a cold beer, so you should put ice in it. You’ll make it colder, sure, but you’ll change the essence of what makes it awesome.