The "leaf spring" backbone was cited as a great advance. I couldn't picture it when I heard the piece, and wondered about controlling the flex in it. Agreed that it looks very, er, schizophrenic.

I don't know whether I or the reporter garbled things. What I heard was it weighs roughly 300-350 pounds and they were aiming for comparable HP numbers. But they also said they were trying for 200 MPH on the salt flats. Something didn't add up in my seat-of-the-pants figuring (even recognizing HP requirements rise really quickly above 150 MPH or so...).

It's great that he has the freedom to (roughly) "think outside the box, and then throw the box away" and the way the organization backing him is funded (through licenses of the patents he creates, etc.) is interesting, but it's clearly a boutique project. Kinda like the $20k+ ball gowns that NPR had a segment on a few weeks ago - http://www.npr.org/2...isplay-at-the-met

Cheers,
Scott.