I don’t need to explain the reasons why Cannonballing has become irrelevant. From a beginning it was a careless, mostly pointless endeavour. But now it’s even more apparent that it focuses on the wrong things.
If cannonball is to become a glorious, useful endeavour, it should focus on
1. Reliability
2. Fuel efficiency and range.
Cannonball should stick to -5mph of the speed limit. There should be five drivers, preferably 3 or 4 inside the car at the same time. Tanks should be modified to carry 100 L of gasoline to standardize the effort.
EVs should also try to have a standard capacity. Though I understand this is harder.
I think that a cannonball based on those two points would actually serve an engineering/ innovation purpose, rather than just a cheap, meaningless thrill.
I understand cannonball times have continued to fall, which is an interesting metric in and of itself... However, isolating the amount of variables to determine whether a cannonball run nowadays serves a purpose is harder when focusing on outright speed since it is carried out in public roads that have traffic, police, construction areas, and multiple climates. So, a cannonball time during the summer time, or during a pandemic, or whatever is just a pointless collection of numbers.