So, christie and I are watching TV on the couch, and all of a sudden this Lexus ad comes on. It involves a claim that a car is defying gravity. If you have not seen it, here is a link:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1044812007219366880&q=lexus+commercial
Go watch it, and then read my commentary.
I have several problems with this advertisement. First of all, the car that is supposedly accelerating faster than gravity has a HEAD START. We have no idea how fast the car is already moving when they drop the lexus from the helicopter... For all we know, it could be going 100 mph and in that case, a god damn Geo Metro could do this.
For all the folks that do not know me, I am really into cars, specifically, fast cars. I own one, and I always have, hopefully I always will. I have ridden in a car that has 1g of straight line acceleration (this means it accelerates as fast as gravity), and it will blow your mind. Its fast, scary fast. But this lexus obviously does not have that kind of acceleration, since it requires a head start.
Lets do some math on this to try and determine the 1/4 mile time of a car that =could acheive 1g of straight line acceleration.
1/4 mile = 1320 feet
Working this out gives a t of 9.08 seconds. Thus, the lexus (if it started from a rest) would have to be capable of running a 1/4 mile in 9 seconds. A 2007 Bugatti Veyron (considered the fastest production car in the world) can do a quarter mile in 10.2 seconds, and it has 1001 horsepower. By contrast, the Lexus IS350 puts out a max of 306 horsepower. Triple that and you still wouldn't beat old man gravity. Sorry Lexus, it just doesn't impress me.
At the very end of the commercial, their smooth talkin spokesman says "Lexus. So much for gravity" Riiiiiight. So much for your bogus and misleading ad, jerks.
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10 years ago
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Looking at the math a little further:
From Lexus website: 0-60 in 5.3s
This give the acceleration of this car as 5m/s^2, almost half of what gravity can do (9.81 m/s^2).
If this car where to start from a stop as it claims it could do, it would have to hit 247 mph to beat the dropped car. Even if this car could do 247mph (it can't), at it's given acceleration it would take it 22 seconds. The amount of time neglecting air resistance of the falling car to hit the ground would be 15.7s.
Even with a running start, this car could not cover the 4000' in the amount of time needed to beat the falling car. That is why the car must take off with a head start starting at 4000' away.
This whole commercial pisses me off.
I have seen the car, and like it. So there.
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