news

Around the Tracks: Toyota GR Supra Funny Car prepares for NHRA silly season

Plus, the cutest autonomous vehicle you ever did see.

-0

When we're not creating it ourselves, theDrive team spends a lot of time finding and consuming motoring content from all over the world.

Here's a handful of the photos, articles, videos or social media posts that most caught our eye last week. Some of them are brand new, others have been online for a while.

Enjoy them – just not too much, okay?

Could Honda's adorable Autonomous Work Vehicle be the future of construction work?

-0

First unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2018, Honda has finally made its cute Autonomous Work Vehicle (AWV) a reality by deploying it on the site of a future solar farm.

While the AWV has undergone various phases of testing in the years since its debut, its first real-life application involved it working collaboratively with both personnel and other AWVs.

A partnership between Honda and manufacturer of sustainable technologies Black & Veatch saw a number of AWVs deployed on its 1000-acre (404-hectare) construction site in New Mexico, US.

To allow the autonomous electric workhorses the best chance at success, Honda mapped out the grid-format work site with precise start and stop points for the AWVs to follow. The AWVs then use a suite of sensors including radar, LIDAR, and stereoscopic cameras to navigate their way around, loaded with a 399kg payload - or while towing up to 721kg.

Honda hasn't outlined commercial plans for the AWV, though it continues to develop the technology and showcase it to interested companies.

Toyota GR Supra Funny Car makes debut for 2022 NHRA racing season

-0

It might be stretching the imagination to continue to call this a Toyota Supra, but that's the idea behind the NHRA's Funny Car season which sees teams approximate a showroom model onto a Top Fuel dragster chassis. Toyota's entrant for 2022 sees it use a Supra for the first time, replacing the Camry Funny Car which has competed since 2012.

Toyota insists this new 2022 car features the most significant styling attributes of any previous Funny Car, but all we can see is a set of Supra-shaped headlight stickers.

Funny Car regulations dictate that vehicles are only allowed to run V8 engines with displacements not exceeding 8.2 litres, while many of the cars produce over 6000kW and 9500Nm.

Ryan Tuerck's latest Formula Drift build is a V10-powered Supra monster

Formula Drift competitor Ryan Tuerck is no stranger to a custom-built drift car, but we think he and his team have outdone themselves on their latest. Big power is required for the sport, and while many turn to turbocharging for ultimate outputs, Tuerck and team have decided there is no replacement for displacement by fitting a Judd GV4 4.0-litre V10 engine.

Judd V10s have become a prominent feature of motorsport, most notably in Formula One throughout the 1990s. In Tuerck's Formula Drift Supra, the V10 produces 559kW, which is sent to the rear wheels through a Holinger six-speed sequential transmission.

He may have become known for shoehorning a Ferrari 458 engine into a Toyota 86, then turning a Toyota Corolla into a drift car, but this V10-powered Supra is arguably his most insane creation yet.

Hyundai Home solves all your household clean energy needs

-0

Not content with merely producing electric mobility for the masses, Hyundai wants to power your house with clean energy too. Hyundai Home is the Korean brand's latest initiative which is designed to work hand-in-hand with its electric vehicles (EVs) and supplant households with green power.

The program will start offering Hyundai customers integrated energy solutions including the installation of quality solar panels, energy storage infrastructure, and EV charging tech. Hyundai insists each customer will received a personalised and tailored process for their home, guided by a concierge. The goal is to have customers buy everything they need for a clean-powered home from a one-stop shop.

Side benefits include the breaking down of barriers to EV adoption, namely the installation of higher-powered 'Level 2' AC chargers which take significantly less time to charge any electric vehicle – though they're still not as fast as a public DC fast charger.

As Hyundai Home is a bespoke process, no pricing has been announced. The initiative will launch in select markets from 2022.

Rimac Nevera skids around off road before being destroyed for crash testing

Rimac is hurriedly pushing on with production of its Nevera electric hypercar, but a few final details need sorting before its development is completed. Sadly, this involves crash testing a perfectly-finished pre-production example as part of Rimac's global homologation program.

It's not all bad news though, because knowing that's coming for the beautifully-finished prototype allows for some unconventional testing to take place - which wouldn't ordinarily be a part of the development phase.

With that in mind, Bugatti Rimac CEO Mate Rimac has taken the electric hypercar on one final shakedown drive - on the gravel roads surrounding the company's forthcoming Campus headquarters.

In the video depicting the adventure, the multi-million-dollar car can be seen sliding about on the muddy off-road tracks at the construction site, avoiding obstacles, and getting dirtier than a Nevera will ever get.

Credit to Mate Rimac too, he flings the hypercar around like he's done this kind of thing before!

Tom Fraser

Tom started out in the automotive industry by exploiting his photographic skills but quickly learned that journalists got the better end of the deal. He began with CarAdvice in 2014, left in 2017 to join Bauer Media titles including Wheels and WhichCar and subsequently returned to CarAdvice in early 2021 during its transition to Drive. As part of the Drive content team, Tom covers automotive news, car reviews, advice, and holds a special interest in long-form feature stories. He understands that every car buyer is unique and has varying requirements when it comes to buying a new car, but equally, there's also a loyal subset of Drive audience that loves entertaining enthusiast content. Tom holds a deep respect for all things automotive no matter the model, priding himself on noticing the subtle things that make each car tick. Not a day goes by that he doesn't learn something new in an everchanging industry, which is then imparted to the Drive reader base.

Read more about Tom Fraser LinkIcon