TechStuff Races with McLaren

it turns out, in many other industries. As it turns out, you know, in order to have a vibrant company, UM one must diversify, and diversify they have. They have. They have branched out quite a bit beyond just the the I hesitate to use the word humble beginnings because Formula one racing, as it turns out, is an incredibly expensive endeavor. But they they've brenched out from their very focused approach

on racing in general into lots of different stuff. And we have to mention at the very top of this show that some of the stuff we're gonna be talking about uh is very very specific to cars UM and very specific to automotive racing. Two things that while Lauren and I are experts on oh yes, well, of course there are other people in this office who I hesitate to even admit it, but they are even bigger experts, specifically Scott Benjamin, who is a walking the automotive encyclopedia.

He very much is. And he and Ben Ben ben Bowen that is do a terrific show called Car Stuff, which we have mentioned and uh and Ben has in fact been on Tech Stuff a couple of times alongside Jonathan and uh. Yeah. So if you are very interested in the really down and dirty specifics of Formula one racing or other forms of racing, then go check out their podcasts and videos at car Stuff show dot com. You can find a whole wealth of information there, because yeah,

those those kids are crazy. It got to a point where I was getting a little confused about the different designations for vehicles, which we will talk about a bit in this show. And I actually Scott sits next to me, well peek behind the curtain at how stuff works. He's literally on my right side, and I would just turn to an us at Scott, I don't understand what makes the difference between this kind of car and that kind of car, and he says, well, you know, Jonathan, that

is what they're banking on. So, but they they are very good at explaining what all the little intricacies are. So McLaren group, what is it? Well, actually, it's it's kind of a big company that has a bunch of divisions that are all operating like independent companies. Right, So it's a conglomerate. Uh, And it's innovative in lots of fields of these days. Besides the race cars and even road cars, cars that if you private sector, if you happen to have a million dollars MILLI chu. They also

do work in health, energy, entertainment, and transportation. So I guess transportation technically would be if you have a million bucks and you're ready to drop it on a two door uh former what what used to be a race car but has been modified to be a road car. Yeah. The reason that I was so eager to do an episode on this company is that I just find it so fascinating that a group of people who do really technical Formula one racing stuff also occasionally make cartoons or

food products. Yeah. Yeah, that that does definitely raise some eyebrows, right, So we wanted to see what exactly this company was all about. And for those who are wondering what this has to do with tech, Formula one racing, really, any kind of automotive racing where you have very specific parameters set for what your car can and cannot do, tends to really focus on very technical aspects, particularly Formula one, uh, certainly.

And also as they have developed all of these technologies, they've started getting into other sectors of censor and data crunching that are really fascinating. So let's go all the way back to the beginning. What is this How did McLaren begin? Okay, so it is in fact named after a person. If you do not follow racing, you may not be familiar with Bruce McLaren, who was a New Zealander who became very interested in automotive racing when he was just a kid. And uh he became a competitive

driver and impressed the racing world with a skill. Became the youngest driver to win a championship race in nineteen fifty nine, which was the US Grand Prix, and he won it at the age of twenty two. Not too long after that, he decided that he wanted to form his own racing group and that team would become the tiny kernel, the little oyster pearl at the at the center of what the McLaren group is today exactly, and so he competed primarily in Formula one racing is a

type of open wheeled, single seat automotive races. It tends to be more popular in Europe than in the United States. There are US races as well, but they usually include courses that go on public roads which are closed for the duration of the races. You don't really want to have regular road traffic, no, no, but it means that the cars have to be able to take those turns

and be able to hug the road. There in fact designed so that, you know how an airplane wing is designed, so it generates lift a Formula one race cars kind

of the opposite way. It has a downward force applied from the from its design, so admits like it makes it hug the road better because when you're going two hundred and twenty miles per hour, you kind of need a little bit of Imagine going down peach Tree at two hundred and twenty miles per hour, I mean that's sometimes I get up to like forty I feel like I'm about to die. Yeah, so it really does require

a special type of vehicle. He also raised another sporting events like the twenty four hour Laments, which is more of a that's obviously an endurance race, not not a speed race like a like a Formula one. Current rules state that you have to have three drivers and swap them out yeah the course of the race. A couple of people in the history of Lamonts have attempted to do the whole thing by themselves, uh as an only one driver. But again, listen to car stuff if you

want to hear more about long car races. Now. In nineteen sixty three, Bruce McLaren began to form a new racing team originally known as the Bruce McLaren Motor Racing and the team entered the history books by being the first group to construct a car around a carbon fiber monica k that's how Scott pronounces it. I would say mona cooke because I think of it as French. But this is essentially a type of frame where the skin of the frame itself gives support to the overall structure.

So it's as opposed to having like struts or columns that keep the frame in place. The actual skin of the frame can do it now. Uh, so that will become more important a little bit later. But the racing team really focused on any kind of element that would give a vehicle more speed and control given the limitations

and requirements of whatever type of racing was involved. Right, Formula one, as we have said, specifically has a lot of requirements you have to meet, and in fact, it's it's a long standing tradition in all forms of racing that engineers will look at the rules that racing, uh the racing of board has come up with and find

ways to skirt around them. Yeah, it's it's kind of like Fay logic and certain points, it's it's like, well, you said literally this thing, and so we will do literally this thing, but kind of the way we want to exactly, Yeah, the whole Yeah, exactly the either the Fay logic or if you didn't lay out your wish exactly right with the Genie and the Dudgeons of Dragons game. So yeah, as it turns out, well will specifically call out one car where McLaren was able to to, you know,

take advantage of a little loophole. Now, if we want to look at the earliest vehicles, that they were interested in. Way back in nineteen sixty five, McLaren and a guy named Robin Heard collaborated to design race car called the M one B, which would help McLaren take second place in the Canadian Grand Prix UH. In nineteen sixty seven, McLaren Racing Limited produced a car called the M six

A that won five of six major races. So, even though it was a young company, because of the experience of the driver and the experience of the engineers involved, they were really competitive early early on. And keep in mind, these Formula one racing cars are like crazy expensive. You know, we talked about a million for that sports car. That's nothing compared to a Formula one car. So the following year, that same car, the M six A, would win four

of the six races. In in in nineteen sixty nine, it would win eleven races and was it was painted Papaya Aren't Yeah. That would later become known as McLaren Orange and was adopted as the official call the company. Yeah, So if you ever see an orange Formula one car

pass you by, it's probably from McLaren. Nineteen sixty eight, McLaren wins a major race driving a McLaren Ford vehicle called the M seven A, which you know, if you've ever seen like those designations of one car name and then another car name, it usually means one company was responsible for building the body of the car and another was responsible for the engine. In this case, it was a McLaren design on top of a Ford engine, yes,

the Cosworth DFV. The McLaren team begins to design a grand tour vehicle with the I had to compete in can am races. Now that's Canadian American races that used to be held in North America. They are they've been morphed into other types of races since then. Uh. That particular vehicle was called the McLaren M six G t GT for a Grand Tourer and McLaren himself would tweak it so that it could have a road car based on its design, because race cars are not strictly speaking legal. Yeah,

so he wanted to have a street legal vehicle. Essentially, he wanted to have a race car he could drive on the road. So really it was all about finding what he needed to tweak too, so that the car he loved to drive on the racetrack would be the one to make it safe enough, yes, yes, for not only himself but other passers by exactly. Uh so, yeah,

this was this was an interesting little quirk of his personality. Unfortunately, in nineteen seventy Bruce McLaren died in a car accident while testing that new vehicle, that new road car, and uh obviously huge tragedy. The McLaren group stuck together and

continued to uh to to build cars. Um. Bruce McClaren was one of, but not the only race driver that they worked with, So they continued to work with other drivers and in nineteen seventy one they built the M six team that was an indie race car yea, indeed, being kind of similar to Formula one in that it's open wheel, single seater car. But but the indie cars race of course around tracks, yes, yeah, so like those long oval tracks like the Indianapolis, the most famous race.

So if you ever wonder what the big differences are between an indie car and a Formula one car, and you see them and they look kind of similar, just know that they're probably there's probably a few hundred thousand dollars more worth of technology in a Formula one car than an indie car. Just because they have more to deal with. Yeah, they have to go on those surface streets. And so I think of like the Formula one cars as you know, like like Kit from Night Rider. It's

got this crazy amount of technology. Probably no machine guns or smoke, you know, bombs or anything like that, probably because they're usually looking out for weight. So I guess, and you know, someone really dastardly. Right, You've got some sort of snidely whiplash character on there. But now the

cars don't need that. They need, you know, they obviously need to worry about weight and speed and power and all that kind of stuff, but they don't have to have the same kind of levels of crazy technology that the Formula one cars do. Now in nine, we're skipping ahead a whole decade. John Bernard designs the MP four Slash one Formula one car. Now this is the car that featured the carbon fiber design we talked about a

little bit earlier in the show. So during the race on Italy's Monza racetrack, driver John Watson crashed his MP four Slash one while going a hundred forty miles per hour. That's two per hour in case you were wondering. So the car was destroyed, totally destroyed, but that carbon fiber

frame stayed intact and Watson walked away from the crash. Yeah, Bernard's design would go on to be the basis for car models all over the world to this success and key being the driver a lot exactly once people saw wow, this thing was really effective and and and kept this this driver safe. Uh, everyone wanted to adopt it because it was carbon fiber. And we did a whole episode on carbon fiber, so go back and listen to it

if you don't remember. But super lightweight and super strong. Now, in nine, that's when McLaren Group would create a new company called McLaren Cars, and this would be their company

to focus on purely street legal sporting cars. Would be a while before they would introduce their first one, but yeah, they started saying, well, we've got all this experience and developing race cars, but you know, race cars they have a very limited use, and we have to build a new one essentially every year because and I mean really every two weeks. I mean you're you're improving them at such a rapid pace that you're continually putting new stuff in there. And although you can get a lot of

money from sponsorships and advertisement and stuff like that. It's a little bit less of a pure business deal than

perhaps just selling fancy cars to fancy people. Also that year they would create McLaren Electronic Systems, which was a branch of the company to develop and implement electronic fuel injection systems for their race cars, which would also eventually start creating all kinds of sensors and transmitters and computer systems for monitoring and analyzing the minutia of their race cars inner workings, which would allow for their racing teams to do that continual tweaking and improvement even in the

middle of a racing season, you know, so that you can see what's going on in your car live, minute by minute and and improve it once it gets back to the shop. And see, this kind of technology is the stuff that ends up spilling out into the consumer

market eventually. So you get you you know, you you have a very specific need in the racing world because you are you are performing at the peak right You're going up against other people who are just as as well equipped as you are, and you need every advantage you can get. So there's this drive to innovate technology. Well, that technology fortunately has the added benefit of helping the rest of us out once it filters into the consumer market.

So that's another reason why this is an important company. Well in, McLaren Automotive produces the McLaren F one supercar, which was the first road car from McLaren apart from the two prototype McLaren M six GT vehicles that were produced back when Bruce McLaren was still alive. So this is the first time they actually had a road car

that was available for UH affluent people to purchase. It was designed by Gordon Murray and Peter Stevens, and it would set the record for the world's fastest production car in h at the top speed a top advertised speed of two d forty miles per hour, which is three kilometers per hour. Uh I say advertise speed because there were people who got it faster than that. Oh okay. The the interior of this car was a little bit strange.

The driver's seat was kind of in the middle and the two passenger seats were to either side but set a bit back behind it. Yeah, so you're you know, I think of it like imagine you're driving an X Wing but you've got two passengers sitting like to your left and right just a little bit back. Uh, because it does seem like I mean, I'm it's unusual for we Americans to look at cars that are driven around in England where the driver's side is on the right side is just left, but putting it right in the

middle totally bizarro world. I'm sure it had to do with weight specifications and balance or something I try not to question. It may have just been the limited space inside what used to be Again, like like McLaren was known for taking these these designs that were used in race cars where usually you had a single seat it was just a single seated car, and then to adopt that and and change it into a road car meant that you had to have at least a two seater.

You could not do a single seat car. So this might have been part of that about, you know, kind of shifting things around so it technically is a three person car. It did feature an engine that was made by bmw UM and a specialized version of it, the F one GTR would win the Laman's race with the Lamans, which we talked about earlier. There were only sixty four of the F one built, and only nine of the G t R. Yes. So when we say that they produced a sports car, we're talking about this. This is

these are handbuilt cars. Yeah. This isn't like a Detroit auto manufacturing line where you've got the huge line of vehicles where you've got ten thousand and you know we're talking these are like boutique cars. That's part of the reason why they are what I would call prohibitively expensive, because I certainly would be prohibited from affording one. In Mercedes would begin to build the engines for McLaren race vehicles,

which that arrangement continues today. So we've seen a lot of different engines so far, talking about Ford and BMW, but Mercedes has become the the exclusive provider of engines. Actually they for a while they were real buddy buddy, he will talk about that in a second McLaren engine is purchased by a new management team and renamed McLaren Performance Technologies, which would again be acquired by another company

called Lenamar in two thousand three. Its new role is to design, develop and test prototype operation for original equipment manufacturing. So this is o e M. You may have heard that term before. O E M It's used in all sorts of industries, not just the automotive industry. We're talking about everything. Essentially, what O E M companies do is they build the stuff that goes into other companies stuff.

So if you ever hear of O E M for like a smartphone, that might be a company that just makes the screen or maybe it just makes the batter which components, Yeah, exactly, so that's what that's what now McLaren Engine does or McLaren Performance Technologies. It's also really confusing if you look up McLaren and you start looking at all these different companies. Some of them now no

longer have really any connection to the original McLaren group. Um, but they do still bear the McLaren name, and at one point they were part of McLaren Group, So that gets a little confusing too. Also, most of them have the word technology in the name somewhere. Yeah, a little sort of like living in Atlanta and all the peach trees, Yes,

a little bit. Uh. Also, Adrian Newi and Neil Oatlely designed the McLaren MP four thirteen Formula One car, and driver Mika Hackenan would win the Driver's World Championship in that car and I'm sure I'm mispronounced his name. Scott actually was working with with Chrysler at the time. And uh, and we'll talk about how that has plays a part because he actually heard all about this. He was telling

me stories. It was fantastic. So McClaren begins building the McClaren Technology Center formerly known as the Paragon Technology Center. And it's on a huge site. It's got a five hundred thousand square meters which is about five point four million square feet out in the UK countryside. Yeah, and uh, it's pretty it's very pretty. Well. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a couple of years down

on the timeline. Um. But first, in the year two thousand, Diamler Chrysler would purchase of the McLaren group YEP, and the other sixty percent of the company was owned by a pair of owners who agreed to vote as a unit on any issue the company faced. But that got a little more complicated. Those two owners each sold half of their share, so think of that as they each sold fifteen percent to a holding company which also agreed to vote in a block with the two owners, so

all three of those owners would vote together. They still represent six of the overall ownership of the company, and then over time all of the owners would buy shares back from Daimler until there was a complete separation between McLaren and Mercedes, which is also owned by daime Ler. By that time, by the way, dame Ler and Chrysler would have split up. So what we're trying to say here is that corporate relationships, especially in the automotive world,

are complicated. Yeah, would get to a point where I was trying to have this conversation again with Scott. He was just curious because once he heard that we were going to do this, he had lots of questions. Uh and he and I said, you know Diamler Chrysler, So, oh, you just mean Dameler now, Oh yeah, I guess I do write that in my notes. So what does this

all mean? Well, it means that McLaren would have to start paying for engines from Mercedes rather than having them provided because they were all part of the same big family. So that changed the bottom line for McLaren Group as far as developing race cars. But otherwise they've kept on with this relationship when Mercedes still purchasing their engines from them.

In two thousand and four, McLaren Group creates McLaren Applied Technologies, and according to their website, they are built on decades of success in Formula one and they're driven by relentless desire to win. Applying our knowledge, expertise and experience, we deliver real measurable results across industries from motorsport and automotive to energy and healthcare, at which point you might say, huh, but yeah, when you think about it again, with Formula one,

it was all about we need to gather data. Yeah, it's it's sensory sensory technologies and big data crunching exactly. You have to be able to get all the information into analyze it and to say, are here's how we performed, where are we lagging behind, How can we perform better?

What what is within our control? And it just meant that that the whole company got really, really good at this whole gather gathering of data and then the analysis of data and then making action points where you could actually, you know, turn that into something you could do about it. Twe can change and improve, right, Yeah, so they decided, hey, you know what, we could probably use the same kind

of approach and other industry lots of stuff. Yeah. Some of that lots of stuff includes things like data management, virtualization, uh and simulation. And they've done some work in the energy sector, helping companies become more energy efficient, looking at how they operate and finding ways that they could do that better. And they've also worked with healthcare companies to find ways to examine patient data to create more personalized,

customized care. For example, one of their first projects was helping to create a cardiac implant sensor that's been used in hospitals to monitor recovering in critically ill patients. They've also paired up with English rugby teams, among lots of other teams to help them perfect their their training and their in game actions. Uh. And London's Heathrow Airport takes advice from them on more efficiently taxiing airplanes around the

twer mac um. I guess that's the idea. Yeah, but um yeah, yeah, they they do all of this from this finished headquarters that that ex paragon. I think Paragon was one of those working titles of IT. UM that really does look by all reports like Q should be at the helm of it uh and and and that is in fact, yes, called the McLaren Technology Center. Uh. Supposedly, the entire glass encased building is kept within one degree of twenty two degrees celsius, which is about seventy two

degrees fahrenheit, and is completely odorless. Um. It's it's largely underground um. And they generate enough energy on site to keep themselves going when the grid goes down. No wires are visible in any of the offices, and it only costs some three hundred million pounds or like you know, five hundred million dollars in today's exchange rate, just a building,

so not no big Yeah. If you ever want to get a look at what goes on there, just stick around because we're gonna tell you about a particular show that gives you a real insiders look at what goes on. Yeah. We'll also try to remember to a post out to social like I think Wired or maybe the Verge or maybe both have have done photo essays out there and

it really is forgeous events space. Yeah. So then in two eight um the Engine Control Unit, which is the electronic car brain and coordinating software system that McLaren had been developing for years, became standard issue for all Formula One teams. And engine makers. Uh. This this gadget is not quite open source, but individual teams are in fact allowed to fine tune the software for their own particular

breaking and torque systems. UM and yeah, I find it extra fascinating that they continually have this technology that they developed for their own purposes that winds up getting passed

out to everyone else because it's the best. Um. Like I said earlier, it's so good that based on the monitoring and analytics that they take there, they're so in depth that about every two weeks, five to ten percent of their racing cars are brand new based on tweaks that they make from from everything from the aerodynamic surfaces to the suspension. And that's coming directly from the managing director of McClaren Electronic Systems, whose name is Peter van Mennon.

So uh, pretty legit source that I would say, five to the racing cars brand new every two weeks. Wow, that's a lot of a lot of revision right there. Yeah. Uh. Now, moving forward to two thousand nine, McLaren unveils the design for the McLaren twelve Sea sports car, originally called the McLaren MP four Dash twelve C. So you know, the twelve Sea is much more. I guess spoken tripping lee

on the tongue. It's a two door sports car with an acceleration of zero to sixty two miles pur or a hundred kilometers an hour in three point one second. That's got some pep. Advertised top speed is two hundred seven miles per hour or three hundred thirty three kilometers per hour. Again, people have driven it faster than that

because you know, if you really got to get somewhere. Uh. In the McLaren group are the McLaren team introduced the McLaren MP four Dash to five, which has a few interesting features, including event that the driver could cover up just by moving his left leg. This is one of

those face logic rules kind of things right here. Yeah, So the lot the rule that Lauren is referring to is a rule that says that the cars are not allowed to have any kind of moving aerodynamic device, like you couldn't have a flap that moves on your Formula one racing cards against the rules. But there's nothing against the rules stating that you couldn't design something in your car where if the driver were to move. So, for example, let's say that you're going going on a really long

straightaway on one of these Formula one uh routes. Remember this is on public roads, where the Formula one driver can just casually move the left leg to cover up the vent, thus changing the airflow direction and giving you more stability on those long runs, so you can really build up speed, and then when you start turning, you can move your leg away when you don't need it as much because you're moving at a slower speed. There's nothing against the rules about that. If it's just the

driver who's moving, not the car, then it's fine. Yeah. So this is one of those loopholes the engineers were able to exploit. Yeah, really cool little story. Uh. As I read about this, I could just imagine engineers just getting really devious. I like to imagine that they're spending the evening, like just chatting in a pub sipping some guinness, and then someone's like, hey, you know what, just get cobblin face on. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well. In eleven, McLaren

builds the McLaren Production Center opposite the technology center. This builds the road cars for McLaren as opposed to the racing cars. Uh. And keep in mind also this whole road car thing still a handmade process. If you've ever heard about the luxury cars that come out of England like Bentley's, these are things that are literally built by hand and if if two parts are not quite working together, they will go back and by hand and file one down. Yeah.

I mean, it is incredibly precise. And it's also why they're usually such low production runs, because you can't build that many that way. Um, this is where we get into one of the more bizarre parts of our story.

McLaren Animation Media Company partners with Store to produce a cartoon series called Tuned, which features Tuned as t O O N E D but but but a pun Yes obviously on tuning a vehicle which It features two of their F one drivers, Jensen Button and Lewis Hamilton's, and also a comedian named Alexander Armstrong who's playing a character known as Professor m and the purpose of the show is to leverage the McLaren brand and get more support

for the company, as well as create new merchandising opportunities. Here's here's kind of like a typical episode has the two characters Jensen and Lewis sort of competing against each other. They had this this camaraderie. It's kind of a kind of a one upping sort of relationship. And meanwhile, Professor m is basically telling them not to everything happen, not to blow everything up. It's essentially que come on, double

O seven is essentially the role. By the way, if you want to watch any of these, they are up online. You can watch I think all of season one and s's and two and maybe some of season three. Um, and it's fairly entertaining stuff. They tend to be pretty short, like three or four minutes per episode. Uh so you

can blast through a couple of them easy. So check that out if you have an already just to kind of And this is where you can really get a look at the fictional world and the technology center, which makes it look like it's part James Bond parts Transformers. I'm not sure. Well, I mean maybe other than the Transformers. I'm not sure how far off that really is. Yeah, don't more true to life. If McLaren would like to invite us to come and check out who works for McLaren,

let us know, Yeah, we will. We will happily take you up on that. They also in two thousand twelve unveiled the McLaren P one car, which is a plug in hybrid sports car. So this is a partially electric vehicle. It has an electric motor, also has an engine, and um calling it a hybrid sports vehicle is probably being a little you know, um modest. Yeah. Also, if you want to buy one, I hope you have one point three five million dollars aside, because that's about how much

it costs. Um. By the way, that's how much the base vehicle costs. From what I understand, most people end up who actually purchased one of these end up putting in so many options that the average price is closer to one point six to one point eight million dollars. I don't even understand that amount of money. That's awesome. That's that's more than I figure I'll ever ever see

in your life. Yeah. Around the same time, I suppose, leading up to McLaren began to incorporate lots of the monitoring tech used by their racing teams and partnerships with the British Olympic teams. Like in rowing, they have wireless sensors to measure what's up with the paddles and the boats. And the athletes in real time during courses. The same

thing for cycling. Yeah, this is where Jonathan would normally go off on a tangent about how the the advantages some athletes might have with their equipment is perhaps give them an unfair edge beyond just their athletic ability. Oh but that's that's I mean, I think the Olympic sports at this point are just as finicky as Formula one, because you know, people are trying to inch that that that just extra millisecond, that that hundreds of a second

advantage to break that. Yeah. People, the athletes are so good these days that it really does come down to perfecting your technique. I just want to see them all in the same rowboat, same style rowboats, so everyone's on a level playing field. That's what I want to see. But that's a different podcast that doesn't even involve tech stuff. Uh In McLaren tested their P one on the Nerva Ring, which is a kind of performance car yardstick track in Germany.

It spans like thirteen miles a k a kilometers, has a hundred and fifty four turns in it, and is used in the industry for kind of privately timed bragging rights UH, they claim. McLaren claims that the P one did a lap in under seven minutes, thirteen miles and under seven minutes, which would officially put it in league with the Porsche nine eighteen Spider, which is one of the P one's direct competitors. It's another hybrid sports vehicle,

a million dollar range UH two thousand fourteen. McClaren partners with Specialized, which is a bicycle brand, and unveils the S Works McLaren Tarmac bicycle, which wasn't the first bicycle that McClaren worked on. Mark Cavendish roade on an S Works McLaren Venge bicycle to win the Tour de France UH and the u c I Road World Championship. It's

a limited run. Only two fifty of these UH Tarmac bicycles are being made and McLaren uses sensors on bicyclists to study exactly how the athlete and the bicycle worked together. They used that as a guide that information while designing the new bicycle, and they've built virtual models in run them in simulation and then they would go back and tweet the design of the bike and see if that

would improve the performance. They said that they were actually the first people to really consider a bicyclist and a bicycle as a as a performance unit. Yes, actual unit, as opposed to two separate things. And so I said, when you when you sign a car, you don't have to factor in the driver's weight or mass because it's it's negligible compared to the weight of the vehicle. With a bicycle, it's totally the opposite, because the athletes mass

is likely going to be greater than that of the bike. Yeah, it's certainly in the case of this bike. So that they were really it was really interesting that they took the same sort of philosophy of designing a car towards how do we make this bike the best bike in the world. I totally want one of these, by the way, but I doubt I own how much would it cost. They're they're priced at about twenty thousand dollars each. They

are custom fit and painted for each buyer. Good. I could get that McLaren orange on there, the yeah, yeah, and well they they also will include in the package a bunch of the sporting gear that you would need to use. Um and I mean, I mean it's it's gorgeous stuff. And and so high tech. Just the materials. The design incorporates a carbon fiber to reduce weight, and uh, these specialized ceramic coated ball bearings to reduce friction in

the hubs and the crank set. Yeah, it really is cool to see exactly how granular they've they've gotten with the design. They're looking at the tiniest developments that could impact performance. Meanwhile, on the racing side, McLaren has developed network systems to transmit data about their cars back to

their teams during races. They set up antenna around any given track or course and the team can use the data received to model how the engine is performing, how the tires are performing, that the fuel efficiency of the car in real time and use that to provide instructions to their crews and also of course save all of that stuff for further processing and improvements later on. This is it just blows my mind when I read about this.

The more I read about the more I think like, Wow, this sounds like it would not be out of place in a discussion about NASA, right, I Mean, that's that's how how exacting we're getting here. This year, McLaren also announced the McLaren six fifty s a new sports car based on the McLaren twelve see car, but it has some new parts to it, so it's depending upon whom

you ask. Some people call it a brand new car and some people say it's a modified twelve C. I guess it all depends upon your point of view in the community. Meanwhile, they recently signed up to be part of the UK's Your Life program, which is this uh STEM Science Technology Engineering and I always forget the end math thank you educational and or economic initiative that's meant to get kids interested in jobs in scientific fields, which

is pretty awesome. It is um I mean also especially for them, their engineers have to come from somewhere, that's true, Yeah, they have. They have a vested interest in promoting STEM.

They certainly do. And rumor has it from McLaren Applied Technologies Vice president Jeff McGrath, nonetheless, who said in a May interview with Verge that they will be teaming up with and I quote one of the best known consumer electronics companies in the world on wearable tech that will be made available to the public starting I watch anyone.

I I just wild guess that's gonna be Apple. I mean, I mean it might not, yeah, like like it could be for a brand that will not have anything to do with McLaren, Like McLaren might not be the name for this product. But yeah, I mean see it makes sense because the more I looked into this company, particularly the style that they have, Oh yeah, they have such gorgeous design. It really reminded me a lot of Apple.

I mean if you look at the if you look at the McLaren headquarters and then you look at the Apple headquarters, uh, then you you can see that there's a lot of the design philosophies that overlap. Oh yeah, they would be very much at home hanging out together. I think so. Well, you might say that an iPhone just looks like it moves fast, and a McLaren car just looks like it would produce beautiful music, particularly if

that music is room broom. I will also try to remember to share that there was a video on that UM track of of that p one going around it and it is it is some sound. Yeah, it is some gorgeous sound. Well, we will definitely try and share

as much of this as we can. It was fun to look at a company that that really covered something that as much as I joked in the beginning, I really didn't know that much about I actually had to do a lot of research just to kind of make sure I was talking I knew what I was talking about, and it gave me a new appreciation for our buddies over at Car Stuff. Yeah. Again, if you have not checked out their show, you definitely need to do that

because it's a a great podcast. And also, I mean, they really do talk a lot about technologies during the course of their show, so especially if you enjoyed, say our Transmission episode a while back or anything like that, they go they go deep into that kind of stuff all the time, exactly. Yeah. And again, if you ever have a question about anything related to cars, Scott Benjamin is your man, trust me. Yeah, even if you do not sit next to him in an office. Yeah. Yeah.

So guys, if you have any other suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it is a company, a personality, just a particular kind of technology you've always wanted to know how it worked, let us know. Send us a message. Our email is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler,

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