The Batmobile

In order to satisfy their desire to make the Batmobile a realistically plausible vehicle while still allowing it to have the kind of mobility, functionality and battle-readiness necessary for it to be Batman's transport of choice, Nolan and Goyer decided that the unit would have needed to start life as a military design. Working with that as their primary parameter, the design team came up with the new vehicle, calling it "The Tumbler", rather than the Batmobile, to signify that the design (and thus its name) had originated prior to Wayne. Within the world of the film, we find that the Tumbler is a Wayne Enterprises product for the United States government, who wanted a bullet resistant, all-terrain vehicle capable of forcing open heavily guarded enemy lines and moving at high speed to make rampless jumps over rivers, carrying tow-cables for bridging. Although the bridge never worked out and the entire project was canceled, the Tumbler worked perfectly, and Bruce finds use for it as his Batmobile. It has been speculated that the Tumbler is meant to look like the Batmobile in Frank Miller the dark night returns, itself more akin to an armoured tank than a car.

Although more than one unit was built and not all the units were fully functional, four mostly-working Tumblers were built for the film. Driveable versions were powered by 5.7 litre(350 in³) chevorlet "LS-1" V8 engines producing 330 horsepower in their factory configurations, giving the vehicle the capability to accelerate from a standstill to sixty miles per hour in about six seconds; one stand-in Tumbler featured a working jet engine, while another had working flaps.