took my baby to the wind tunnel

[leilanimunter]

My #55 race car went to the wind tunnel prior to going down to Daytona testing (I was 6th quick of 78 drivers at the Daytona test! :biggrin and since the wind tunnel hadn't had a Model S in before, they asked me to come back with Phoenix! She has a lower coefficient of drag than my Daytona race car. Here is video from our visit...

And a few photos...

 

[ElSupreme]

So I put this up on Twitter the other day, when @TeslaMotors tweeted it.

"Is that really surprising? Don't most race cars burn lots of aero for downforce?"


I mean this is about as un-aero as you can get.

Cool pics and video though!

 

[leilanimunter]

"Is that really surprising? Don't most race cars burn lots of aero for downforce?"

at Daytona we are taking as much drag out of the car as possible to make up for the lack of HP due to the restrictor plate. I'm not saying my race car was far off, it was very close.

 

[Denarius]

Excellent video! Thanks for sharing it!

 

[7racer]

Hey Leilani,

for us weekend HPDE/time trial guys is there any benefit to getting our cars put into a wind tunnel or is it too cost prohibitive?

Also, what kind of down force numbers do you like to see?

 

[stevezzzz]

Those are really nice photos, Leilani. Did you take them, or did the wind tunnel operator?

The video really shows just how slippery Model S is; the only big opportunity I see for improvement shows up as vortex shedding on the sides, as the flow wraps around the nose and encounters the forward wheel wells.

 

[EdA]

The video and pics are awesome! Thanks for sharing.

You've got to do something about the license plate incandescent bulbs though!

 

[leilanimunter]

Hey Leilani,

for us weekend HPDE/time trial guys is there any benefit to getting our cars put into a wind tunnel or is it too cost prohibitive?

Also, what kind of down force numbers do you like to see?

It's pretty expensive, I only got to do it because they had never had a Model S in the tunnel and they were testing my race car anyway. On the race car downforce, my team is pretty secretive about the numbers. It varies track to track. At Daytona we try to minimize drag because of the lack of horsepower due to the restrictor plates.

 

[Discoducky]

Wind tunnel time for a large surface area can run around $1K/hr. It is about $100/hr for bikes last time I checked.

 

[7racer]

you're are awesome! thanks for taking the time out to reply!

 

[Eeyago]

That was very cool to watch. Thanks for sharing!

 

[chickensevil]

Any chance you were able to confirm the Drag Coefficient of the car at .24? As far as I have been able to tell only Tesla has posted this number on the car, and it would be nice to confirm this from an unbiased (hopefully) third party. Not that I don't trust Tesla, but it is always nice to have these things confirmed.

Also, really cool video, so thanks for running it through for us!

 

[dailydriver]

Great pics and very cool video. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Raffy.Roma]

Great pics and very cool video. Thanks for sharing!

+ 1 :smile:

 

[brianman]

Wind tunnel time for a large surface area can run around $1K/hr. It is about $100/hr for bikes last time I checked.

And how many hours does it usually take?

- - - Updated - - -

Any chance you were able to confirm the Drag Coefficient of the car at .24? As far as I have been able to tell only Tesla has posted this number on the car, and it would be nice to confirm this from an unbiased (hopefully) third party. Not that I don't trust Tesla, but it is always nice to have these things confirmed.

+1
Hope she'll see this and reply.

 

[Discoducky]

And how many hours does it usually take?

- - - Updated - - -


+1
Hope she'll see this and reply.

For a bike about 2 hours . A car might be more or less depending on the telemetry you want to collect, but with a bike there is a tweaking of position and I'd bet if you just want a CD/CoD then it might only be an hour of time billed.

Also, I wonder if the downward force curve was returned for this S tunnel test?

 

[leilanimunter]

This video from the wind tunnel. Just... OMG... No words. Instagram

 

[Raffy.Roma]

This video from the wind tunnel. Just... OMG... No words. Instagram

Cool!

 

[JRP3]

The video really shows just how slippery Model S is; the only big opportunity I see for improvement shows up as vortex shedding on the sides, as the flow wraps around the nose and encounters the forward wheel wells.

I have the answer :biggrin:

 

[SCW-Greg]

This video from the wind tunnel. Just... OMG... No words. Instagram

You tease!
Give us more than 15 seconds. That was cool.