The Urchin

Some ideas for a purpose-built luxury sport-performance armored vehicle...sort of inspired by the tv show "Knight Rider" and the stories by JR Mooneyham about his real life super car "Shadow Fast".

It's a hybrid diesel electric that utilizes 2 piston-less rotary engines (also known as a Wankel engine) because of it's reduce mass for same power output. 400 horses with 1/3rd the weight of a classical piston engine. It also has 3 types of batteries, a small lead acid battery, a large lithium ion battery, and a medium nickel cadmium battery. The three different batteries vary in performance. The lead acid is used to rapid bursts of acceleration but has low range, the nickel cadmium battery is used for cruising on the highway, and the lithium ion battery is used for regenerative breaking in the city.

It has an internal CPU and several visual display system all networked together into a wireless network which includes the super computer network in owner's home.

It has some standard defensive and offensive gadgets like strobing lights, a fog emitter, tire spikes, a type of viscous fluid that makes the road virtually frictionless sort of like an oil slick, a rocket launcher with 3 rockets, and a device that releases confetti-like debris which reacts with the air in the atmosphere to become sticky to bind to the glass of windshields. Some of the debris are in vary sizes and shaped in certain ways to make them fall at different speeds. All of these substances are bio degradable and are tested to pose no long term ill effects on the surrounding environment.

The external chassis is bullet resistant up to standard 9mm rounds but there is an internal chassie that can resist high velocity ammunition from a 50 caliber riffle at point blank range. The external chassie is impacted by the round and causes it to disintegrate into smaller flak which spreads out allowing more surface area of the internal chassie to resist penetration. The materials are layers of carbon fullerene nanotube fiber woven into sheets similar to kevlar sandwiched between 2 layers of ceramic tiles designed to shatter and absorb impacts but stop bullets.

The internal frame of the car body is also imbued with fullerene carbon nanotubes of lengths as long as 2 meters forming a compact mesh sandwiched into a rigid thin titanium frame.

The windows are more bullet resistant than the armor. The tempered glass plates are sandwiched in 4 alternating layers of fullerene transparent sheets.

The doors have reactive armor plates designed to detect the impact of an RPG, mortar, or tank shell and explode outward to neutralize the force.

The floor of the car is also designed to withstand a 50 kilogram explosive device. The interior space of the car for passengers is air tight when the doors are shut to safeguard against chemical and biological attacks. There is also a system of Lysol disinfecting sprayers that can allow the car to clean itself. In the passenger space, there are biological and chemical weapon suits and re-breather equipment to allow the passengers to move from the vehicle to a decontamination area minimizing the risk of exposure.

The tires can allow the vehicle to drive for 100 miles with a hole in them the size of a grape fruit. There is also a liquid resin that reacts with the oxygen in the atmosphere to harden and heal any small punctures. The rims also have a mechanism inside them that can keep re-pressurize the tire automatically if gas inside is lost.

The fuel tank has an extra layer of armor around it and instead of filling the hard canister with fuel there is a special sack that contains the fuel which is contained inside the hard body tank. This sack is designed to eliminate the dangerous bubble of fumes which can explode if sparked or hit with a tracer round.

The two exhaust systems (one in the tail and one on the hood) are designed to allow the car to drive while floating in water. That is correct, the Urchin is the first amphibious armored private road-legal vehicle.