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You can apply to attempt to break the world record for fastest blindfolded driver [w/video]

The Guinness-certified world record for "fastest speed for a car driven blindfolded" is 186.12 miles per hour, set by Mike Newman in a Porsche GT2 last year at Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground in England. Then earlier this year, Newman said he'd go for the 200 mph mark - something he might want to talk to fellow Bruntingthorpe speed demons Vmax200 about. UK firm Extreme Motorsport, which seems to have been set up solely to set blindfold driving and riding records, wants to wrest the record from Newman using a Ferrari 458 Challenge and the even longer runway at Elvington Airfield in York, England.
Strangely, it appears the terms "legally blind" and "blindfolded" equate to the same thing. The Guinness record and Extreme Sports say "blindfolded," but Newman and the man who held the record before him, Turkish pop singer Metin Sentürk, are legally blind and neither of them wore blindfolds during their record attempts.
No matter - the real point is that Extreme Motorsport is casting about for a driver to set a new record. The could-be-shady part is that Extreme is pretty vague about what's involved; they'll provide the car or the motorcycle, but you have to "choose a charity and pledge to give them all the funds you raise above the entrance fee and for any other personal expenses you may need to participate in the challenge." Extreme doesn't give any indication of how much that entrance fee might be.

LaFerrari XX to pack 1,050 hp

With 949 horsepower on tap, it would be hard to imagine Ferrari getting much more juice out of the 6.3-liter V12 hybrid powering its LaFerrari. But apparently, it's possible, as reports suggest that the forthcoming LaFerrari XX will pack somewhere closer to 1,050 hp.
This according to Top Gear, which reports that the successor to the Enzo-based FXX and the subsequent 599XX will be revealed next month in Abu Dhabi at the company's year-end Finale Mondiali extravaganza - the same event where, in years past, Ferrari has presented such extreme machines as the 458 Challenge Evoluzione, the aforementioned 599XX and the FXX Evoluzione.
When the subject of a LaFerrari XX first came up several months ago, Antonello Coletta - head of the department responsible for the XX program - said he couldn't picture the track version of the company's flagship hybrid hypercar being much faster or more powerful than the existing version. But where there's a will, there's a way. TG reports that the extra hundred horses have been corralled in the V12 and not in the electric motor, which will reportedly carry over essentially unchanged from the road-going model.

EV cost burden pushing automakers to their limits, says Stellantis' CEO Tavares

DETROIT — Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said external pressure on automakers to quickly shift to electric vehicles potentially threatens jobs and vehicle quality as producers struggle with EVs' higher costs. Governments and investors want car manufacturers to speed up the transition to electric vehicles, but the costs are "beyond the limits" of what the auto industry can sustain, Tavares said in an interview at the Reuters Next conference released Wednesday. "What has been decided is to impose on the automotive industry electrification that brings 50% additional costs against a conventional vehicle," he said. "There is no way we can transfer 50% of additional costs to the final consumer because most parts of the middle class will not be able to pay." Automakers could charge higher prices and sell fewer cars, or accept lower profit margins, Tavares said. Those paths both lead to cutbacks. Union leaders in Europe and North America have warned tens of thousands of jobs could be lost. Automakers need time for testing and ensuring that new technology will work, Tavares said. Pushing to speed that process up "is just going to be counter productive. It will lead to quality problems. It will lead to all sorts of problems," he said. Tavares said Stellantis is aiming to avoid cuts by boosting productivity at a pace far faster than industry norm. "Over the next five years we have to digest 10% productivity a year ... in an industry which is used to delivering 2 to 3% productivity" improvement, he said. "The future will tell us who is going to be able to digest this, and who will fail," Tavares said. "We are putting the industry on the limits." Electric vehicle costs are expected to fall, and analysts project that battery electric vehicles and combustion vehicles could reach cost parity during the second half of this decade. Like other automakers that earn profits from combustion vehicles, Stellantis is under pressure from both establishment automakers such as GM, Ford, VW and Hyundai, as well as start-ups such as Tesla and Rivian. The latter electric vehicle companies are far smaller in terms of vehicle sales and employment. But investors have given Tesla and Rivian higher market valuations than the owner of the highly profitable Jeep and Ram brands. That investor pressure is compounded by government policies aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The European Union, California and other jurisdictions have set goals to end sales of combustion vehicles by 2035.