Monday, November 11, 2013

LATEST MECHANICAL ENGINEERING NEWS (Oct.16, 2013)

LET'S KNOW ALL ABOUT THE LATEST HYPERCAR OF THE WORLD.

If you have some spare cash on hand and are hunting for a vehicle with a little pop in the accelerator, then Koenigsegg Automotive AB may have the car for you. (Just kidding)




Details -- The Swedish automaker’s 2014 Agera S “hypercar” will take you from 0 to 62 mph in a scant 2.9 seconds and will hit a top speed of 260 mph if you have a long straightaway in your backyard. It also offers a V-8 engine that peaks at 1,030 hp and 811 lb-ft of torque, a max lateral acceleration of 1.6 g’s, and a braking package that enables it to decelerate from 62 mph down to zero in just 100 ft. All for a starting price of $1.46 million.
As dazzling as those numbers are, however, the Agera’s most amazing stat may be the size of its engineering staff. “We have between 15 and 20 engineers at any given time, and all of them have to do more than one thing,” Jens Sverdrup, regional director for Koenigsegg Automotive AB, told Design News. “Our software engineers do hardware. We have one engineer who designs our carbon wheels and our electronics. You can’t be a one-trick pony around here.” Indeed, the engineers at Koenigsegg have a full plate. They designed the vehicle’s 5.0 liter, V-8 aluminum engine, front and rear suspensions, carbon-fiber monocoque, carbon-fiber leather-clad interior, and one-of-a-kind carbon-fiber wheels. And along with creating those performance systems, they also configured the car to include all the normal street-legal vehicle amenities, such as airbags, emission components, antilock brakes, electronic stability controls, and countless other necessary sub-systems. ”It’s brutal yet refined,” Sverdrup told us. “It’s an old-school supercar combined with new technology.” From its 1,000-hp engine and Triplex rear suspension to its carbon-fiber wheels and custom-designed electronics.