Light Start – VW Pikes Peak, tickets to space, Leica wristwatches, and DB FighterZ for Switch
Brett Venter
VW’s EV blasts up Pikes Peak in less than eight minutes
If you’re Volkswagen, you’ve got to be feeling pretty good about yourself right now. The VW Motorsport team has taken their ID R Pikes Peak electric race car and climbed, well, Pikes Peak — setting a new record in the process. The EV managed the ascent in under eight minutes, at an average speed of about 145km/h. The climb, which is considered a challenge by many car manufacturers, is iconic and historically tough on standard fuel engines because of the altitude. For an EV, though, the atmosphere isn’t much of an obstacle. To give you an idea of the differences between an EV and a fuel car, the current natural engine record is held by Sébastien Loeb, who was using the Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak in 2013. That time is about 16 seconds slower than VW’s electric race car just managed.
Soon you might be able to book tickets to space with Amazon Blue Origin
So you want to go to space, do you? We don’t blame you, we’ve been looking at what’s happening on the ground too and space is looking mighty tempting. You might be in luck there, as Blue Origin, the space company owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, might be taking passengers on its sub-orbital New Shepard capsule. How soon? How does 2019 sound? For ticket sales anyway. That’s the word according to Blue Origin’s Rob Meyerson, who said that they will lock down pricing once they’re sure that the whole arrangement is as safe and as stable as rocket flight can be. We imagine there’s a considerable waiver you have to sign, regardless. As ever, though, folks are willing to speculate on the price, with most estimates putting a ticket to space between R670,000 and R3.36 million.
Not content with just making amazing cameras, Leica’s coming for your wrists as well
Camera company Leica has been getting around, mostly with the assistance of various licensing deals (say hello, Huawei) but here’s something a little different. The German company is turning its engineering skills to making wristwatches next, by taking all the work in-house no less. They’re keeping the same attention to detail they’re known for with their cameras and they’re also keeping the same minimalist naming schemes: The first two wristwatches are known simply as the L1 and the L2. That’s not much of a name for the mechanical devices, which will go on sale later this year, but it’s normal for the company. Nothing is known about pricing, except that it’ll come in under R160,000 for the L1. There will be 400 of each made for the first year — talk about exclusive. Might want to get your order in sooner rather than later.
Dragon Ball FighterZ for Switch dated, pre-order bonus incoming
Dragon Ball FighterZ is a fantastic fighting title, perhaps the best to launch on consoles in recent years, and there’s a Switch edition incoming. That was announced at E3 this year but a release date… wasn’t. That’s changed, with a 27 September date being announced for Japan and the Americas. Odds are we’re going to see the same release date here, simply because the game’s going to be region-free. Even if it’s released later here in SA, you can still arrange to buy it on another regions online store if you want it badly enough. But a pre-order might be a better idea. Pre-orders of the game will be getting a copy of SNES-era fighter Dragon Ball Z: Super Butoden — a clunky-but-still-serviceable piece of DBZ gaming history. Split-screen combat, beam battles, and some of the oddest voice acting (the Japanese version of the SNES classic will be released for this one) you’ve ever heard await you.
