That’s what the Bloodhound SSC’s attempt at breaking the world record for land speed will produce in greenhouse gases, claims its engineering lead, James Painter, who also said that driving just 16km in the car uses the same amount of energy that the whole of the Singapore Grand Prix uses in 20 minutes.
While Painter told TechRadar that it “sounds like we’re burning an awful lot of fuel”, they’re not actually planning on doing many runs of the Bloodhound SSC; only enough to equal those 3.5 lactating cows.
The team behind the Bloodhound SSC, based in Bristol, England, found success with their previous Thrust SSC car, which broke the land speed record in 1997 with a 1200km/h run – 210km/h more than the previous record-breaker.
Eyeing up 1600km/h as their next target, the team plans on setting the record in 2013 with this new build, which has two propulsion devices and three engines. One of them is a rocket the team created themselves, with the second being an EJ200 jet engine – together, they produce around 133,000 horse power, or 180 F1 engines’ power. A third engine supplies the rocket with around 50kg of fuel a second, from the back of the car. As Painter says, “essentially we’ve got a Formula One engine as a fuel pump!” [Bloodhound SSC via TechRadar and TechRadar]