C8 Hybrid: ZR1 and a model in between Stingray and Z06?

I'm curious to see what a couple hundred pounds of electric motor hung over the front wheels does to the handling.

It could help it, by putting drive and weight over the front wheels, or it could make it more likely to under (or possibly even over) steer.

I also would like to think that the engineers are turned on enough to make the "changes" to the front suspension to accommodate the driven axle don't mess up the "normal" C8 handling traits that everyone seems to be raving about right now....more power with worse handling is a bad mix.

I'd also like to think they are switched on enough to work some "electronic magic" to eliminate any possible torque steer effects by driving the steering wheels.

I'm sure all these things were taken into consideration, but it will still be interesting to see how the car handles when it finally hits the streets.....:)
 
Tourmax said:
I'm curious to see what a couple hundred pounds of electric motor hung over the front wheels does to the handling.

It could help it, by putting drive and weight over the front wheels, or it could make it more likely to under (or possibly even over) steer.

I also would like to think that the engineers are turned on enough to make the "changes" to the front suspension to accommodate the driven axle don't mess up the "normal" C8 handling traits that everyone seems to be raving about right now....more power with worse handling is a bad mix.

I'd also like to think they are switched on enough to work some "electronic magic" to eliminate any possible torque steer effects by driving the steering wheels.

I'm sure all these things were taken into consideration, but it will still be interesting to see how the car handles when it finally hits the streets.....:)
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So many high end cars have this feature now+ you get AWD which would be awesome IMHO. Motors will not weigh a hell of a lot, I would think? My son is a mechanical engineer and says this would be of great value to power generation etc. He was part of a group that designed and built a car from scratch every year which was auctioned off. A very professional job - it was amazing.
 
JCWP said:
So many high end cars have this feature now+ you get AWD which would be awesome IMHO. Motors will not weigh a hell of a lot, I would think? My son is a mechanical engineer and says this would be of great value to power generation etc. He was part of a group that designed and built a car from scratch every year which was auctioned off. A very professional job - it was amazing.
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Since the C8 "Hybrid" doesn't yet exist (at least we know nothing more than press releases), this is all just me speculating.

AWD is kind of debatable. The way the system operation is described, "on demand FWD" is probably more accurate. My truck has AWD and it doesn't operate the way they describe the C8 (my AWD is all computer controlled too). It sounds like it's an "on demand" system to fill in the dips and valleys from the SI engine and to offer up some chassis stabilization. It's likely that "fill in" is probably all "bottom end" stuff. That way, they can tune the SI engine to make nice HP numbers at higher RPM and fill in the bottom end with electric motor "punch". It gives the "bench racers" the ability to brag "it makes XXX HP" without being a dog on the bottom end. Advertising departments LOVE being able to quote high HP numbers, whether they are usable or not. It's all part of our "bigger is better" culture. Unfortunately, that's not always the case.

I'll wager the motor is going to be some variant of what they put into the "Spark EV". they make it in house at GM and earlier iterations of it made 114 Hp (there's a coincidence, eh?). The Spark motor weighs around 70 KG, which works out to about 155 lbs. There's also going to be a transmission and drive of some sort. Figure 200 lbs total to be conservative. 200 lbs on the nose of any car that wasn't designed to be that way can present some serious engineering problems. I have to believe they are smart enough to see that coming and re-jigged the design for it. Still, no one knows until it hits the street.

The battery is also going to add weight, not to mention the electrical system upgrades to support it. Copper isn't exactly light and neither are bigger alternators. Again, the Spark has a 400 lb battery pack, but since the C8 isn't an "EV only" vehicle, you can probably figure 100-150 lbs for battery. That goes into the center of the car, so that's not so bad. But now you're looking at a good 300-350 lbs in the car, with 200 of it in the worst possible spot. Or, if it's a strickly stand alone battery system that you have to charge from shore power, once the battery is out of juice all that added weight is just that: added (IE: dead) weight.

You can't really compare the C8 "hybrid" with other cars that have implemented a similar "FWD EV" scheme in performance cars. All it takes is a different engineering solution to get the EV system in there and the vehicle behaves completely different. That's like saying an Audi R8 AWD is going to perform like a Lamborghini AWD Aventador because they both have AWD and rear engines. Just doesn't work that way. The devil is in the details and each manufacturer deals with those details differently. This might be a problem for the C8 because (while seemingly expensive for teh average Joe) it's built to a price point unlike the mega-buck hyper-performance exotics.There's always a compromise somewhere when building to a price point. It will be interesting to see how GM handles that part too...

Like I said, it's all speculation on my part. We need to see the actual car on the road to know how it's going to work out. Aa I already mentioned, I really want to believe that they are smart enough to work it in properly.....;)
 
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Interesting ... but all speculation on our part. I would love to see a flat plane 5.5 L 600 hp engine. Lighter weight car, more power would be my choice. Whatever GM decides to do, I'm quite sure it will be power and performance enhanced compared to the current C8. We shall wait and see.
 
OttawaKev said:
:Party:The article says its WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY off in the distance ….we will all have Z06s by then hahahahhahahahahah 🏎
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Still fun to discuss, speculate and respectfully debate.

I'm one of those guys that enjoys talking engineering because, well......I'm an Engineer!

At least a type of engineer......lol!

:)
 

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