Quote:
Originally Posted by avitet
You got it right and just for reference wind resistance cubes with each 1 mph increase. to put this in perspective it takes roughly 500 whp to get a 3rd or 4th gen camaro to hit 200 with out tkeing into account rolling resistance which squares with speed.
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Close - wind resistance is a square function of velocity as in v^2. Rolling resistance is only a function of the normal force (with no exponents), which is just the force exerted vertically on the tires due to the mass of the vehicle. The only thing that might increase rolling resistance would be any sort of downforce a car might produce at speed. Otherwise, once a car is rolling and neglecting things like a tire's size change, the rolling resistance is the same at any speed.
As for a 'wall' at 150 mph - I wouldn't think of it as a wall necessarily, but I'd imagine that the forces get to be big enough that a car can take off and act like an airplane without the right aero work. There's really no need for any production vehicle to worry about these kinds of speeds unless you're talking Corvette, Camaro, Mustang, and few others. Joe Schmoe probably doesn't care, but lift forces big enough to counteract gravity = big lawsuit.
Ryan