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2018 Bentley Continental Supersports | More exciting than space travel

For the final song on their delightfully buoyant and mordant 1996 album This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About, Pacific Northwest indie rock band Modest Mouse penned an even more cynical response to David Bowie's already nihilistic ode to interstellar flight, "Space Oddity" The song imagines the life of a lonely female passenger on a flight to some distant lunar satellite, lost in post-gravitational anomie ("She's the only rocketeer in the whole damn place/They gave her a mirror so she could talk to her face.") Dreading the endless blankness of her voyage as much as the senseless achievement of reaching its destination, the unnamed woman wishes she could just read a dime-store novel and return home. It is titled, poignantly, " Space Travel is Boring." We recently visited the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, NASA's literal launch pad for the Apollo missions and the Space Shuttle. Since there are currently no rockets going up, Space Florida's Shuttle Landing Facility did us the favor and allowed us to use the 3.5-mile-long runway built for the Shuttle — literally, the longest stretch of underutilized, perfectly straight, perfectly paved roadway in the world — for a series of automotive maneuvers. Our vehicle of choice was the $293,300 2018 Bentley Continental Supersports. This was decidedly not boring. The Supersports is an enhanced version of an already extremely potent vehicle. Featuring an upgraded crankshaft, torque converter, and turbochargers for more power and improved power delivery, the Supersports' 6.0-liter W12 engine produces an even 700 horsepower, and 750 lb-ft of torque. That makes this the most powerful and fastest Bentley ever made. Sixty miles per hour is dispatched in 3.4 seconds on the way to a maximum velocity of 209 mph. The largest carbon ceramic brakes of any production car come as standard equipment, as do carbon fiber hood vents, front splitter and rear air diffuser, side trim, and a planed long-board of a rear wing. Handsome 21-inch lightweight forged wheels are also part of the package, though, really, weight savings is almost irrelevant in this vehicle. The Supersports weighs over 2.5 tons, or about as much as one of the tread belt shoes on the diesel/electric crawler used to tug the 70-million-pound Space Shuttle and its boosters out onto Canaveral's runway. We were tugged out onto the runway as well, though in a slightly different fashion.

Audi's Project Artemis woes could delay range of VW Group EVs

Two years ago, Audi's then new CEO Markus Duesmann announced his first big initiative called Project Artemis. The plan's marquee component is "to implement a new lighthouse project for Audi in record time," being "a highly efficient electric car scheduled to be on the road as early as 2024" on a brand new platform that would be shared with Porsche and Bentley. An ex-VW and -Porsche man named Alex Hitzinger, who'd also spent time at Apple working on the tech company's electric car, was brought on board to lead Project Artemis and come up with new ideas. Parent Volkswagen Group said it wanted to become "as agile as in a racing team," removing the bureaucratic molasses and bottlenecks interfering with getting the best product on the road in the best time. However, in any grand venture, failure comes before success. Automobilwoche reports that Artemis is struggling through issues large enough to push the product plans back by years. The issue, as it was with the ID.3 lineup on the eve of that car's launch, is software. Well, that's the latest, largest problem; Artemis has already been through copious struggles before getting to the software bit. Two months after Hitzinger came on, in December 2020, VW raised its EV volume target from 50% to 70% by 2030. That necessitated a rethink of the VW Group's entire platform strategy considering the far greater production scale. Hitzinger only lasted six months in the job, ousted in May 2021, supposedly because Audi believed his ideas were "not suitable for profitable series production" among other reasons. By that time, the pace of software development was already said to be six months behind schedule, with the Car.Software division working on VW.OS 2.0 "not yet running at the speed hoped for." Internal frictions were noteworthy and costly as well. VW's commercial division plant in Hanover was meant to build Artemis vehicles for Audi, Porsche and Bentley, but Automobilwoche reported in January of this year that Porsche paid a ""small three-digit million amount" — like $100 million or so — to get out of the deal mandating its vehicles come from the Hanover facility.    So Audi effectively brought Artemis in-house to lead vehicle development, and Car.Software turned into Cariad to get VW.OS and VW.AC, which stands for Automotive Cloud, to market.  The first Audi vehicle under Project Artemis was planned to arrive by the end of 2024, a production version of the Grandsphere concept.

Bentley EXP 10 Speed 6 Concept is a British Racing Green dream [w/video]

"Oh, hey there Bentley EXP10 Speed 6. You're damn handsome." That, of course, was our reaction to seeing Crewe's latest concept under the lights of Geneva's Palexpo convention center after yesterday's debut. Finished in a gorgeous, heavily metallic shade of British Racing Green, the EXP 10 Speed 6 is, as we said yesterday, a truly different take on what we've come to expect from Bentley. It's low, featuring a classic long-hood, short-deck design that expands on the British luxury marque's traditional styling features. The egg-crate grille and quad headlights give the Speed 6 a face that is at the same time new and familiar, while the wide rear haunches bleed over the rear wheels and add to the car's svelte silhouette. The cabin, meanwhile, is absolutely striking. Open the swan-wing doors and aside from the tan quilted Poltrona Frau leather on the seats and doors, the aluminum accents on the steering wheel and shifter are the big aesthetic takeaways. The digital dash and tablet-like center stack are modern takes that Bentley desperately needs to implement in its production models, while the cockpit-like layout places a greater focus on the driver than even the more enthusiastic Continental GT. Take a look at our full gallery of live images of the new EXP 10 Speed 6 Concept above, and hope that Bentley sees the wisdom in putting this stunner into production. EXP 10 SPEED 6 - A VISION OF BENTLEY DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE MAR 2, 2015 Concept for sector-defining two-seater sportscar Futuristic Bentley design, a statement in modern British luxury Potential future model line (Crewe / Geneva, 2nd March 2015) Bentley Motors is showing the future direction of luxury and performance with the EXP 10 Speed 6 at the 2015 Geneva International Motor Show. The concept is a British interpretation of a high performance two seater sportscar using modern automotive design, highly skilled handcrafting, the finest materials and advanced performance technology. From the racing success of the company's early years to the international motorsport success of today, 'speed' is part of Bentley's DNA. This inspiration is expressed throughout the EXP 10 Speed 6, where iconic Bentley design cues are fused with progressive craftsmanship techniques and modern technologies. Copper elements are used as accents to both exterior and interior features to highlight the performance hybrid potential of the concept's advanced new powertrain.