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Electric Car Capable of 180mph
niclas_b writes "This electric car is pretty cool. It's not cheap and maybe not very practical. But very cool nevertheless." Might as well throw in a link to their homepage as well.
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Maybe it was Total Recall, not sure.
Who mediates your information?
Parallel parking that thing is gonna be a bitch. :)
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Because it's not in the KAZ article itself, pictures of the car are available here:
http://web.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~hiros/kaz/pict.html
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
The Spirit of Oklahoma electric car can go over 200mph. Granted, it's a formula race car built for speed and definitely can't carry 8 passengers, but it is faster...
Here are it's specs.
It doesn't suprise me that an electric car can hit high speeds, or have very short acceleration times. Electric motors have very good low speed torque. Basically they translate about 90% of the energy you dump into them to kinetic energy (try getting that out of a mechanical transmittion), so acceleration is pretty much dependant on what you can draw from the power source. Also, top speed is very dependant on areodynamics. I remember a vehicle from the 1930's in the Deutches (spelling) Museum in Munich that could do 70 miles an hour on a very low power engine (I seem to remeber about 50 hoursepower). It acompished this by having a very low drag coefficient (it was tear-drop shapped, and supposedly has the lowest drag coefficient of any car ever made). The electric vehicle in question here looks like it is pretty areodynamical, so I don't doubt the top speed claim. You should also take note that the high speed and acceleration probably have a very dramatic effect on the range (since drawing high current causes the battery to dump more of its energy into heat). For the same reason stop and go traffic probably kills the range since lots of current will be drawn starting and stopping the vehicle.
For use in the states I'ld be concerned that the time to charge wasn't listed, making it impractical for long distance travel (or stop and go traffic). Let's see some fuel cell cars that can be re-filled instead of re-charged (like a internal combustion car).
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
Running Performance 14.5 sec. (0-400m)
A quarter mile in only 14.5 seconds? Or am I reading that wrong?
Max Speed 311.67 km/h
Top speed, 193 MPH
Gross weight 2980 kg
Gross weight, 6,569 pounds!!!!! WHAT! That's 3 tons!
There's gas powered cars that weigh 1/4th that, have 15 second quarter miles (400km), and a top speed of 150 MPH (241 km/h). Is this some kind of cruel joke? Can't they put that engine and battery into a smaller frame and get an electric car good enough to compete in an actual race? That thing looks like a long minivan... If there was a cheaper version, with a MUCH better shape, I'm sure alot of people would buy it.
Speed never killed anyone. It's how they decided to stop that caused the problem. <rimshot /> But seriously, most "speed-related deaths" statistics you'll find are artificially inflated. The way the statistics are counted is that if anybody involved was speeding (ie, going at least 1 mph over the limit), then it's categorized as speed-related. That's ignoring any of the true factors, like being alcohol-related, or caused by that little brat in the backseat that wouldn't sit down, or the driver was just an idiot (reading the morning paper while driving counts as idiocy).
I keep looking at the photographs and can't shake the feeling that what we are really seeing is the class project for realistic computer graphics. The car is just too glossy and perfect looking, even inside.
Maybe I'm just getting paranoid, because of this Beetle
Speaking of performance electrics, don't forget NEDRA. Their current champion, "Current Eliminator IV", uses Dragster - 336V of batteries and did a standing quarter-mile in 8.801 seconds. I wonder what it sounded like - a two-tonne bumble-bee on crack..?
I second the previous comments about the need to keep wheel mass low - low sprung weight is a definite goal of performance cars. It's hard to call this thing a car, it's more like a bus, since it seats 8 and weighs 3 tonnes...
(this is not a
And seriously, whats with the 8 wheel design?
To begin with, as the page explains, it means no dive or squat during braking or acceleration. It also means smooth cornering. It means, as your other respondent mentions, 8 motors with power evenly distributed to each wheel. It means that the car can lose wheels and continue to operate normally. It means the vehicle prototype can be adapted into limousines, trucks, buses, and other large vehicles.
Basically, it's completely kickass, and you call it "laughable" because it's not what you're used to. Good job, man.
Don't try that "protecting the children" shit you people use to keep the tits and bad words off my TV. --Seanbaby
Meanwhile, the direct injection electronically controlled turbo diesel just goes on getting more and more efficient, and cleaner. And smaller. And lighter. And more reliable.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.