Mclaren Mp4 12c Police Car
5 tricks automakers can learn from McLaren's $231,400 MP4-12C supercar
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The world's automakers can learn a lot from the spirit of the McLaren MP4-12C. Not the scissors-opening dihedral doors or the show-off rear wing that pops up when braking (unlikely on the next Toyota Camry) but the technologies that will make a difference in the next decade. There are features mainstream automakers could emulate to make their cars lighter, more efficient, safer, better-handling, and more fun to drive. It won't happen overnight. Over a decade, the technology could trickle down and become cheaper with the advantages of manufacturing scale. Here are five technologies and designs that mainstream automakers should study and try to replicate.
Lighter materials, even carbon fiber
Everybody knows carbon fiber is super-strong, super-light, and super-expensive? The expensive part is coming down. McLaren has built only carbon fiber vehicles since the 1980s: race cars, bodies for other automakers, bodies for its own cars. The grind-it-out, find-savings-here-and-there effort is paying off. According to McLaren, assembling the monocell (the part that looks like a sandbox with sloping sides) took 3,000 hours for the McLaren F1 two-seater of the 1990s, 500 hours for the joint project Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, and just four hours for the MP4-12C monocell. It's the labor more than the raw materials and presses that make carbon fiber expensive.
The entire tub weighs 176 pounds (80kg). Along with the use of aluminum and plastic panels in other parts of the vehicle, the entire MP4-12C weighs about 2,700 pounds (1,200kg) and that, in turn, is why a 592-hp vehicle can avoid paying a gas guzzler tax. In case you have to watch your budget.
Simplify the cockpit controls
No BMW iDrive, Audi MMI, Mercedes-Benz Command, or other cockpit controller here. The stuff you need to tinker with is good old-fashioned knobs and buttons. Engine Start-Stop, you can figure that one out. The knob marked H stands for Handling (left) and the one marked P stands for Powertrain. Press the Active button once the car starts up, then you can adjust the car from Normal (shown) to Sport to Track, and these are three distinctly different settings for both Handling and Powertrain. Aero invokes the aerodynamic pop-up rear wing (it swings into position when braking from 60 mph and above), Manual lets you shift gears using paddle shifters, Winter eases the car's performance characteristics so you don't slide around, and Launch lets you make a full throttle start with no wheelspin. Controls for climate control have been moved to the doors (given their size, room is available) and they follow the visual styling of the center stack buttons. This is a far cry from cars with 75-plus buttons and knobs on the center stack.
Improved handling with adaptive suspension, torque vectoring
Some days you want a cushy ride, other days you want to be sporty or tow a trailer. No one set of springs and shock absorbers (dampers) can do it all. But with an adaptive suspension you get the best of all worlds. A network of cross-connected hydraulic lines (hoses and lines in the lower left of the photo) and dual-chamber shocks (compression chamber, rebound chamber) bleeds excess pressure from one side of the shock to the other, or from one side of the car to the other. The ride is soft (relatively) in Normal handling mode, firm and firmer in Sport and Track modes. The same hydraulic lines minimize body roll in cornering and do it so well the car doesn't even have an anti-roll bar. This is a complex way to have multiple suspension settings in the same car; Delphi and GM a decade ago developed MagneRide shock absorbers that vary the ride using a magnetic charge to change the viscosity of the shock absorber fluid. Air suspensions (complex) can also provide a variable ride.
Going around corners or on slippery roads, McLaren brakes the inside wheel, effectively providing more traction to the outer wheel and helping power the car through a curve. McLaren calls it brake steer; more commonly it's called torque vectoring. Automakers such as Acura, Audi and BMW have accomplished torque vectoring through complex mechanical differentials (and microprocessors). McLaren says it chose its form of adaptive suspension and torque with an eye toward reducing the weight of the car. The McLaren method of torque vectoring is finding support and mainstream automakers, especially Ford, are adopting electronic torque vectoring on mainstream models. Either way, torque vectoring lets the driver stay more in control on slippery roads, or do even dumber things at higher speeds before eventually falling to the laws of physics.
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Source: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/122031-5-tricks-automakers-can-learn-from-mclarens-231400-mp4-12c-supercar
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