2023 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 LT6 Engine-Tech Deep Dive: Ready, Set, Devastate

UPDATE 3/4/22: "The Batman" is now in theaters, racking up a respectable 85 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and appearing to be on a trajectory to cash in at the box office. But, for our purposes, the star of the movie isn't Robert Pattinson—its the muscular Batmobile, with its mid-mounted engine and an overall vibe that wouldn't be too out of place in a Mad Max film. And, like any good Batmobile, it seems to be a central part of the film, speeding through a Gotham City that's as dark and moody as ever, launching baddies' vehicles into the air to land with an explosive thud. Whet your appetite with a longer, more recent trailer below. "The Batman" opens today in theaters, and will hit the HBO Max streaming service in mid-April. The Batman director Matt Reeves just revealed the new Batmobile on Twitter, and it's a definite departure from past movie cars. The movie press had earlier heard rumors that the new Batmobile would be more of a muscle car than the military-inspired Tumbler that appeared in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight film trilogy. That is exactly what we have here, although the mid-mounted engine is a bit of a surprise.What we can see resembles a lot of different classic muscle cars, and that's probably intentional. The deeply recessed front headlamps have a generic late 1960s look to them: a bit of Mopar, a bit of Mustang, maybe even a hint of De Tomaso Mangusta. Extremely swoopy rear fenders with pointed trailing ends that hang over three-element taillights are the closest thing we get to a traditional Batmobile motif. The rear tubes of a roll cage poke through the C-pillars and trailing edges of the roof. It is likely completely custom bodywork over a tube frame or donor chassis, so there's probably not a single recognizable base underpinning this creation.The longitudinally-mounted engine aft of the cabin is an enigma, but an awesome one. It appears to be a V-10—an OHV unit—with a couple of immense turbochargers that dump straight into the atmosphere behind the roof. If the movie magic gods are kind, it'll spit two tongues of delicious fire with every throttle blip. This Batmobile will be neither inconspicuous or quiet. There's obviously some extraneous fantasy bits tacked on to make it look more futuristic, but it seems like a real motor under there.Remember, there are usually several movie cars built for various purposes: stunt cars that can take a jump without disintegrating, "hero" cars that look good in close-ups, a rig that makes it look like our new Batman (Robert Pattinson—yes, that guy, from the sparkly vampire movies) is actually driving it even though it's grafted to the front of some other vehicle. This is probably a "hero" car, so the wild-looking engine might not be what motivates the running/driving ones.Even so, the Mad Max meets Fast and Furious vibe this new Batmobile gives off is a solid hint that this will be a movie that appeals to car enthusiasts on a deeper level. This reboot, the umpteenth since the 1989 Tim Burton movie, focuses on a more youthful Bruce Wayne/Batman with a greater focus on his detective work. There's surely going to be a lot of fighting, and given the unique direction that this Batmobile's design takes, we hope that there will be a lot of driving, too.Update: This post, which originally published on March 4, 2020, has been updated with the latest trailer for "The Batman".

There is a legitimate debate to be had over whether Autopilot, Tesla's lane-centering and adaptive cruise control driver assists isn't as safe or capable as it claims. But as with many things Tesla, things can easily get muddy, and not just because the pioneering automotive automaker evaporated its PR team years ago. Take, for example, The Dawn Project founded by Dan O'Dowd, who also owns Green Hills Software, which technically competes with Tesla's software. O'Dowd himself has kicked off a congressional bid vowing to rid the world of the "scourge" that is Autopilot, and recently released a video showing a Tesla running Autopilot running over a child mannequin to "prove" the system's failings.Of course this gambit went viral, not least because it inspired Tesla's cult-like owners to use their own children—or try and borrow other children, and we're not joking—to disprove The Dawn Project's claims. Now, Tesla is declaring the original video is defamatory and demanding that the clip be removed, since it "misrepresents" the safety and capabilities of Autopilot and FSD (the step-above, still-not-yet-in-production Full Self Driving feature Tesla is real-world testing using its customers). As regular followers of Tesla's ups and downs are surely aware, there is mounting evidence that the Autopilot software isn't as perfect as Tesla and CEO Elon Musk claim it is. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is currently investigating the feature after several instances of Teslas crashing into stationary vehicles or objects roadside, namely emergency vehicles.The Video In QuestionOne video shows a Tesla Model 3 with FSD Beta 10.12.2 running over a child-sized mannequin in a crosswalk; the Tesla never slows down, even once it hits it. Another clip has better production value and is taken at Willow Springs International Raceway using a similar child-like mannequin, which is summarily mowed down by a Tesla in the same manner as in the other video.Initially, the response from Tesla's overzealous fans with small children of their own was to march those kids in front of their moving cars to "prove" that FSD and Autopilot work as intended. Fortunately, no children were sacrificed at the altar of Tesla's public relations, but YouTube did step in to remove many of those videos, leaving for the originals made by The Dawn Project.Now Tesla, according to a letter attained by the Washington Post, is demanding that The Dawn Project and Dan O'Dowd remove those videos because of their defamatory nature that have disparaged "Tesla's commercial interests" of Tesla's Full Self Driving technology. Dinna Eskin, senior director and deputy general counsel at Tesla, also demands in the letter that O'Dowd and The Dawn Project "immediately cease and desist further dissemination of all defamatory information, issue a formal public retraction within 24 hours and provide Tesla with the below demanded documentation."Many of the complaints or concerns aired by O'Dowd and his project are seemingly legitimate or possible to make in good faith, though it seems best to leave such investigation to the unbiased experts at NHTSA, which, again, has begun investigating other safety issues surrounding Tesla's Autopilot. While not every bad messenger needs to have a squeaky clean background, it's tough to paper over the obvious conflicts of interest between O'Dowd and software related to driver assistance features and, well, Tesla.Who is Dan O'Dowd?Dan O'Dowd is a software engineer who graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in 1976. He then went on to work on embedded development tools for early microprocessors used in Mattel's handheld electronic games of the late 1970s. O'Dowd also worked with National Semiconductor (who is now owned by Texas Instruments) to design the NS32000 32-bit microprocessor used in 1980s personal computers such as the IBM RT PC, the BBC Micro, and others. His company, Green Hills Software, was founded in 1982 and its claim to fame was being the "first and only" software company to develop an operating system (OS) that meet the NSA's certification for EAL 6+ High Robustness, meaning that it's incredibly difficult to attack this OS no matter how well funded and "hostile" your hacker is.Green Hills also states that it developed the OS for the Boeing 787, the Lockheed Martin F-35 multirole fighters, Boeing B1-B bomber, and Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle manufactured by Lockheed Martin and operated by NASA (which, coincidentally, has a glass cockpit derived from the 787's). Green Hills is also the Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) software supplier for the 2022 BMW iX EV crossover, which raises yet another, if slightly tangential conflict of interest here.O'Dowd also had a brief run as a Democratic primary candidate for California's Senator Seat (eventually won by Alex Padilla) and his campaign message was all about cybersecurity and Tesla's FSD and Autopilot safety. It was roughly around this time that The Dawn Project launched but it was a full-page New York Times ad back in January 2022 that got the attention of the general public. In that paid ad, The Dawn Project led with "Don't Be A Tesla Crash Test Dummy" and then laid out a case for why Autopilot and FSD were "unsafe at any speed." It and O'Dowd then began several video campaigns demonstrating the failures of Autopilot and FSD with child mannequins as was demonstrated above.Again, while Tesla may have a case against O'Dowd and O'Dowd might be merely asking fair safety related questions, the situation here is, frankly, a bit of a mess. To answer the obvious question here, which is whether or not a Tesla will indiscriminately flatten children should it meet them in a roadway while its Autopilot or FSD features are active, a lot more investigation needs to take place. We'll need more scientific endeavors than possibly biased social media clips of mannequins (or real children) being aimed at by moving Teslas. So, while it might seem like Tesla has a brewing problem here, so far, there isn't much to go on. That could change should anything come from the separate investigation being conducted by NHTSA and any corrective actions it recommends. But for now, can we think of the poor mannequins? Oh, and while Tesla has no PR team to reach out to, we assume (based on its cease and desist letter to O'Dowd) the automaker would prefer you not try and replicate The Dawn Project's, uh, project.

Acura has many great names in its arsenal, both used and unused. It recently brought back the iconic Integra nameplate, for example, and its history kicked off with the, um, legendary Legend. For the name of its upcoming electric SUV, its first-ever all-electric product, Acura is mining its past—but is digging up a weird fossil indeed: ZDX.What Is an Acura ZDX?The ZDX name is somewhat cool-sounding—at least amongst Acura's "_DX" SUV monikers, including the RDX and MDX—that was previously applied to a single-generation flop, a fastback-styled SUV introduced for 2010 that sold so poorly it lasted only through the 2013 model year.Now, depending on your point of view, the ZDX was either severely misunderstood and unfairly maligned for its beaky schnoz (Acura's grille de jour in the naughts), or it deserved to be killed with fire. Proving that not much in life is fair, the original ZDX largely mimicked the coupe-SUV format laid down by the BMW X6 that had arrived two years prior.Like that Bimmer, the Acura was based on a conventional SUV (an X5 in that case, and the Acura MDX family hauler here) but sported a lower, more hunched profile for some extra visual pizazz and less cargo space. It also came with Acura's torque-vectoring Super Handling All-Wheel Drive (SH-AWD), though only a middling V-6 engine. BMW's X6, which could be had with powerful V-8 engines, survived and thrived, even spawning a smaller X4 variant and similar competitors from Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and Infiniti. The ZDX did not.The ZDX Is BackAcura's ZDX is now being given a second lease on life, with the name officially destined for the brand's new electric SUV. In announcing the name, Acura referred to the upcoming EV SUV as a "performance" model, and added that it will incorporate styling from from the Precision EV concept. While the Precision EV concept connection doesn't specifically rule out a fastback roofline, we should point out that that show car has a fairly normal overall shape; it similarly eschews any funky detailing like the old ZDX's pointy grille, though it is festooned with LED lights.Even greater performance will be available via a promised Type S variant, which in Acura-speak is the name applied to the highest-performance version of a given model. There are TLX and MDX Type S versions available today, and the sold-out, now-discontinued NSX supercar capped its run with a Type S variant.We also know the ZDX will be a 2024 model, set to debut either sometime next year or early in '24 in full production guise. It will borrow GM's Ultium motor and battery technology at first—just like the mechanically related Honda Prologue due around the same time—with subsequent electric Acura's utilizing a new global e:Architecture that also will see collaboration with General Motors.Ironically, the original ZDX was fairly wild-looking, though one of its biggest letdowns was its lackluster powertrain. If Acura were to translate the old ZDX's visual drama into this decade while delivering satisfying electric punch and appropriate dynamic zest, we think the ZDX name could stick this time around.