Audi R15 Win at Sebring and the Future of Factory Performance Divisions - Garage419

matt i totally agree with hydrogen i saw the top gear episode with the fxc clarity and i agree that they should scrap the electric battery car

Matt, Key point with hybrid technology - reusing fuel energy converted to kinetic energy, and stored as momentum. No matter the fuel source, retaining that energy for further use is the point. Matt Worth. P.S. Good show.

I agree we need hydrogen infrastructure for hydrogen engines and future hydrogen fuel cells. Electric isn't the future.

Good show. You guys should have Leo commentary on racing all the time, with clips of course. ;-) Killer background, table is a little bird bath-ish. Make a desk out of apple crates. ;-)

another great episode. whats up wit the gloves matt?

As far as batteries go I used to have hydraulics (12yrs ago) and it was a pain to charge the batteries because I lived in an apartment complex. People would bitch because I would run extexnsion cords from the hallway to the battery charger in my trunk. How the hell are we gonna charge electric cars!? Answer that. Not everyone lives in a house. What about at the job? Are you gonna have 200 power cords running into the building on the companies dime? Just something to think about.

To comment on Hydrogen vs. electricity in this video and a few posts below… It has two forms, Combustion and Fuel Cell. The combustion is no different than a gasoline engine in function. In the fuel cell, hydrogen reacts with oxygen to produce water and electricity. From everything I research there are no other emissions, therefore it is very clean. It is the production of hydrogen outside of cars that will produce as much carbon, if not more, than it replaces by making cars clean. That is the problem with hydrogen; you have to produce it into a viable and useable source for consumers and cars. This so far, is not clean and it would use as much energy as it would take just to make the same amount of energy to charge an electric vehicle. You see the problem here? In the end, we can make electricity in clean ways over time, from solar to wind etc. Hydrogen thus far, will be dirty and polluting in productionl, plus the energy used to make it could really be used to charge electric cars…you see REAL the problem here?

I dont mean to change the subject or anything but does anyone know how to mount a digital camera in your car?

In answer to your question of the day about "how the relationship between tuners and auto makers should work" I think that they should take the "fast food approach" where they don't make it till you order it! And if they can $h!t out custom cars the way we do burgers... then everyone would be a winner!

Honda FCX Clarity. It is all I have to say.

1. Hydrogen or Batteries? Batteries. Any place you have a building you can have a power socket and a charging station. The infrastructure is already in place, minus some upgrades, but DOES NOT need to be built from the ground up. There are no Hydrogen plants and not hydrogen stations and people still think "Hindenburg" when you say "Hydrogen". Hydrogen will never take hold in cars as long as there is any choice at all. Gas, Battery, or Hydrogen? Hydrogen is dead last every time. 2. I don't care if you want to "rumble-thrumble" of an ICE or "stirring the stick". I want a fast car and EP cars are proving much better at that and are far less prone to breakage or failure from regular and deliberately hard use. In that regard, the "feel" being eluded to is just the engine running. Not the most endearing attribute of a Sports cars to me. Steering and suspension feel is something I have more of and interest in. Propulsion really does not matter to me as long as the power is there. 3. QOD. Being a gear-head is fine. There will always be those that will do it themselves. But the majority of those who want a hot car do not want or can not put in the time to mod a car themselves. Smart Tuners will make deals to do the tuning and upgrading and get those warranties secured. But Factory Tuning is not altogether dead but the Third party Tuners will have to move fast and hard to make it work.

The move to use Electric power vs. Hydrogen power is ridiculous. 12hrs. of SB was damn good. I have followed Audi since the R8 era and I have always wondered why they are always on top of their game. After watching Truth in 24; that really explained alot to me. You can even see it yourself in the film how Pugeot doesn't work together. I have always been a fan of building up my own cars. Hennesy, Roush and all of the other comapnies are great at what they do. But in reality, I'm doing the same thing but on a smaller budget. ALOT smaller. The aftermarket is going to always be there because the automaker is just not going to be able to supply original spec parts all the time.

I am extremely disappointed in Obama for the Electric Car research. Battery powered car might not take gas but the electricity still has to come from somewhere.....guess what, we are still using oil. Hydrogen is the most abundant resource in the universe and we already have the technology ready, why the hell are we not using this money for Hydrogen Infrastructure? ALMS....seriously awesome. Im sad that the GT1 class is dead, those cars are amazing. I'm looking forward to Corvette Racing moving to GT2, I'm tired of seeing them race themselves. But I'm still sad the GT1 cars are gone. As far as the Aftermarket vs Factory Performance, it's sad that it has come to this. I think overall that Tuners like Lingenfelter, Hennessy, Saleen, ect are going to make money on this but in the long run if we don't get any new performance cars from the factory we will not get any progress. These tuner companies don't have the major engineering resources the factories do. And if we start getting Electric cars....Jay Leno said this the other week when he drove the Mini Cooper Electric, how do you hop up an electric car? And what about IMAGE? A company like GM that has no iconic Performance car Image is as good as selling Saturns and Buicks all day. No one wants to come see those cars. You might as well pull the trigger now because the only good cars GM has right now ARE the Performance cars like the Corvette and Cadillac V-Series. Maybe they should make all of the Redline and SS cars the base models and build off of those cars

Great show. The only downside to hydrogen is the boil off effect. BMW reported that in the H7 that if you left the vehicle sitting for the weekend, you would have 1/4 tank less than when you parked it. That's it. With the expected prices of hydrogen in a cohesive system, it should be about $0.80/gallon according to speculation and supply line studies. On a tangent note, don't be a "Twit"ter. All the best!

Great Show Thursdays episode is going to be an interesting one. I guess since Top Gear USA didn't work out. You guys are going to try to make Garage 419 (where did this name come from btw?) like Top Gear. I wish you guys luck in the future. I am sad that Top Gear USA didn't work out ( would have voted for you Matt) because I think it would have been a great show unlike the Australian and Russian ones.

Clarifications- 1] In fairness to Bobby R, the dry sump tank crack could have depressured the oiling system and caused the engine fails... 2] 9 Ferrari's headed to LM24 vs only 3 Porsches. No P Fest @ La Sarthe, just more Italian agita. 3] Acura is built for US tracks, not a Sebring fast sweeping euro course. Plus, 2011 ACO rules call for smaller motors, so R15 and Pug will be dead in 2 yrs. Maybe Acura is just working on the future @ the 24 while kicking it in the US? Still, they should be hitting their knees each nite thanking someone that Audi is not running the full ALMS sched!

hey guys i think its better for us to us hydrogen its better and faster and for the and for the tunersi think we shold be about buy a car and but like a lil more moeny down for us to keep the car warrting and about to fixs them and make it are own like com on is they take off performes parts out of there cars then i think should be about to buy the cars and make are own with out them saying we have no more warrtin on them right ?

Anybody wanna guess where hydrogen comes from ? either "steam reforming" -> CH4 + H2O → CO + 3 H2 "water gas shift reaction" -> CO + H2O → CO2 + H2 would have been good answers. Notice how there is carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide in the solution XD You call that green?

Also, regarding the battery v. hydrogen argument: I personally believe that there's no hope for batteries ever being able to charge up enough in say 10 minutes to allow any sort of travel past 50 miles, at least not in the next 15 years. This means that for the average motorist a hydrogen car would make more sense. Unfortunately, for hydrogen fuel cells to work efficiently they need to operate at a temperature higher than what would be experienced in a car. That, and their efficiency decreases as the current load increases. Both of these things however I believe could be either overcome, or at least significantly improved through research, and so I agree with Matt that the government should really be directing funds towards H2.

Regarding what was mentioned at the end of the episode, I believe that Steeda is offering "complete aftermarket tuned" Mustangs (S197s that obviously) through some Ford dealers. There are different levels you can choose from based on both the level of performance you want, and what the car will be used for (drag or road racing). Basically they just put on all of the parts in their catalog for you to buy as a whole.

I thought the same thing about tuners a few months ago. Which is why I'm happy we agree that tuners will be able to pick up the slack left by in house tuners. I also agree about the hydrogen, I dont think it will ever replace the visceral feel of an internal combustion engine but it will work to save gas from becoming obsolete and free up driving performance cars for recreational purposes.

The biomass liquid from Audi and Shell sounds very good and it sounds as if only the infrastructure is missing. So why don't enforce such projects instead of electric cars. Where does electricity come from? Yeah right, from the plug... Electricity plants are also a thing to invest because Nuclear power plants have no future. We can't produce waste which is so highly toxic and don't know what to do with it instead of digging holes and bury the nuclear waste. Doesn't we all want that our children and their children have a good future? I think nuclear energy is a ticking time bomb expecially when it comes to the waste! I love the idea of cars running with Hydrogen but unfortunately producing Hydrogen needs an enormous amount of energy. So my conclusion is before the scientists have a solution how to solve that, we should see how the biomass-liquid thing works. It might be the fuel of the future because we all have waste in our trash can. Which could be recycled into fuel.;-)

What do you guys mean poor Bergmeister. He had two crashes since the guy does not know how to pass. The first one he ran wide to block the Ford and in turn broke his own suspension. The other pass he tried to make on the Panoz was a joke. The track is 50FT wide yet he kept the left on the front strait giving the panoz nowhere to do but right into the wall.

As for the question of the day. I think that a car company that caters to performance enthusiasts would only be doing good business when providing OEM quality performance customization. However unless it's a Porsche or Ferrari or something of the like then factory just isn't is cool or fun as something aftermarket.

I've always wondered what was the faster better cornering car, the Lemans or F1? Any ideas. I think that Hydrogen is the more viable fuel source too. The engines exist and with modification the gas stations in this country could easily provide hydrogen. Even with fast charging batteries you have issues with disposal and environmental damage. Plus I don't want to pull up to a station and take the battery out of my 100,000 Audi and put in one that came out of a beat up Kia Rio. Are you gonna have a battery at the stations for every make and model? I hope someone in the Auto industry or the government is watching this.

Matt, What if we have fully charge batteries in every Station(like gasoline station)ready to swap any cars low batt batteries. Then driving accross United States is no more a problem.

hey matt, the biomass-liquid program that audi and shell have sounds it would lead the way to crating an infastructure for future of hydrgen.