Peugeot EX1 Sets Electric Car Lap Record At Nuerburgring

liqs8143 writes "Peugeot EX1, the all-electric concept car, now holds the electric car lap record at Germany's Nürburgring circuit. The car was unveiled at the 2010 Paris Motor Show, and has already broken half a dozen speed records up till now. Despite wet weather, the EX1 broke the existing record with a time of 9 minutes, 1.338 seconds, beating the previous record set by a modified MINI E electric car by almost 50 seconds. The 340 horsepower EX1 averaged an impressive 85.9 miles per hour during the lap."

Comments

Metric?

[Anonymous Coward]

German circuit and a French car. Can we get the speed in a civilized km/h?

Re:Metric?

[alexandre_ganso]

Why is this modded negative? Disagreeing is not reason for modding. The guy has a point.

And slashdout could realize they america is not the universe. Not even the center of it.

Re:Metric?

[Anonymous Coward]

That car suck. 85.9 miles per hour is not enough to fire the flux capacitor...

Re:Metric?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this modded negative? Disagreeing is not reason for modding. The guy has a point.

And slashdout could realize they america is not the universe. Not even the center of it.

Slashdot just figures that metric folks are smart enough to make the conversion in their heads, unlike Americans.

Re:Metric?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this modded negative? Disagreeing is not reason for modding.

It's the redditization of the internet. Soon everywhere will be like this.

Re:Metric?

[PopeRatzo]

German circuit and a French car. Can we get the speed in a civilized km/h?

When you win a world war, then you get to set the standards.

Re:Metric?

[tsa]

For all Americans out there: The Nürburgring lies in Germany. Germany is a country in Europe. And Europe is the capital of Amsterdam.

Re:Metric?

[tsa]

Oh, you did that all on your own, did you? All those Canadians and Britons were just there for show, weren't they? And I'm glad that your standards on treating criminals, on healthcare, on environmental care and political elections are not catching on here in Europe.

Re:Metric?

[peppepz]

All those Canadians and Britons were just there for show, weren't they?

...and Soviets...

Re:Metric?

[dingfelder]

No he doesn't have a point.
The article was written by an american, for an american website. (autoblog.com)

Should the americans switch to metric? yes.
But until they do, you are welcome to translate the units yourself if you are not happy about them.

Re:Metric?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't complain. They could have given the speed in "miles per time to drink a pint of bier"

Re:Metric?

[bourdux]

85.9 miles = 138.24265 km, courtesy of Google :) Had to look it up too.

Re:Metric?

[davester666]

And Toronto is the center of the universe.

Re:Metric?

[Anonymous Coward]

And slashdout could realize they america is not the universe. Not even the center of it.

You would think so, but I have been told before that Slashdot is a US site and to get over it.

Re:Metric?

[Deus.1.01]

Heh, my lecturer said the same when i asked if there was any point in going through the chapter of unit conversion in our physics programming textbox(that is we program implementation of physics not...rewrite the laws of nature).

"Nah, its obvious for us."

Though the American text book was pretty reasonable, and dealt with metrics for the most part.

(for the sake of humility I'm gonna mention that i had to retake that course)

Re:Metric?

[tehcyder]

German circuit and a French car. Can we get the speed in a civilized km/h?

When you win a world war, then you get to set the standards.

I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

Re:Metric?

[Vectormatic]

Pretty much, if Hitler hadnt bitten of more then he could chew on the east-front, chances are they could have conquered britain, and where would the americans be in the european war without their largest aircraft carrier?

on topic, this performance is rather pathetic, 9:50 around the ring rather sucks. German ring specialist sabine schmitz did a 10:08 in a ford transit diesel.

Re:Metric?

[PopeRatzo]

All those Canadians and Britons were just there for show, weren't they?

Did you read my original comment? I said "Win a world war and you get to set the standards".

Last time I checked, when the war was won, Britain and Canada were on Imperial units.

And no Britain wasn't only "for show". They were good for morale and the US troops found them entertaining. And they did that thing in Bletchley, which was somewhat helpful.

Re:Metric?

[tsa]

You conventiently ignored the rest of my comment. Luckily you haven't set any standards, even after the war, because Europe and the rest of the world soon went their own ways again. Hell, even your scientists use SI units now, to keep on par with the rest of the world. Yes, we were very grateful when you freed us from Hitler, but lately the US have turned into arrogant bastards and terrorists, and you will have to worry soon about the rest of the world blindly following your policies.

Re:Metric?

[PopeRatzo]

Don't get too upset, I was only joking. It was a personal troll for a friend of mine here on Slashdot who happens to be British.

Heck, when I play racing games, I always set my display to km. When I read Shakespeare, I measure his work in pentameters.

I'm a real metric guy.

And I have tons of respect for the British. I think that thing with the teeth gives your face character, though you must have to floss with sailing rope. And I'm a big fan of Hammer films.

So what do you say, can we be friends now?

Re:Metric?

[tsa]

OK, we're friends. I was a bit upset because your remark came over as quite arrogant.

Re:Metric?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the fact that it is posted as AC and is needlessly calling MPH uncivilized mean spiritedly.

Add that to the fact that if you RTFA, you'll see that they copy the text from there, like EVERY OTHER ARTICLE on Slashdot.

Charge time.

[dadelbunts]

I wonder how many laps it got in before it had to be charged.

Re:Charge time.

[jo_ham]

Oh I don't know, but it's hardly a negative - how many laps can a petrol engined vehicle that does 10 mpg before you have to refill it?

At full tilt, a Merc SLR can drain its tank in about 20 minutes, as shown by Top Gear during one of their challenges, and funnily enough they then *didn't* show the production team pushing it towards a garage by hand with a "oh dear, just look what happened" voice over, unlike their "unbiased" footage of them pushing the Tesla Roadster back into the garage by hand after testing it on the track, even though the computer logs in the car showed that it never went below 10-15% charge and would have been able to easily drive under its own power back to a charge point.

Sure, it will still take longer to recharge an electric vehicle right now compared to refilling a tank of combustible hydrocarbons, but a high-capacity power feed and improving charge systems will narrow that down all the time.

Re:Charge time.

[phantomcircuit]

You can fill up the gas tank in about a minute. You cant really do that with a battery pack.

Re:Charge time.

[dadelbunts]

The problem is for a gasoline car you can do 4 tires and fuel in under 20 seconds. Just gassing a car even in a non pit setting takes what, 3-4 minutes max? How long does it take to charge a battery on these cars. Of course it is a negative because RIGHT NOW they charge slower than molasses. Charge time of future systems is meaningless as we are not talking about them. "Sport" electric cars are nothing but smoked glass and mirrors. Until we have the technology to make a viable electric sports car they should be left to what they do best, econobox grocery getter. Which is nothing to be ashamed of.

Re:Charge time.

[Noughmad]

You can swap the battery pack in a minute

There was quite some talk about cars with swappable batteries, where did all that go anyway?

Re:Charge time.

[Anonymous Coward]

It didn't go away, launching this year in Israel and Denmark, and after that, hopefully elsewhere.

Re:Charge time.

[rubycodez]

no recharge needed, but after three laps the long extension cord pulled out of outlet

Re:Charge time.

[Anonymous Coward]

You should watch the trip through France, where Jeremy's GT40 is constantly being ridiculed for stopping at petrol stations at rather short intervals.
The loving does go both ways, no doubt about it.

Re:Charge time.

[Brett Buck]

Oh I don't know, but it's hardly a negative - how many laps can a petrol engined vehicle that does 10 mpg before you have to refill it?

          Around 20, which is probably longer than the tires would last (at least with good traction).

Re:Charge time.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is for a gasoline car you can do 4 tires and fuel in under 20 seconds. Just gassing a car even in a non pit setting takes what, 3-4 minutes max? How long does it take to charge a battery on these cars. Of course it is a negative because RIGHT NOW they charge slower than molasses. Charge time of future systems is meaningless as we are not talking about them. "Sport" electric cars are nothing but smoked glass and mirrors. Until we have the technology to make a viable electric sports car they should be left to what they do best, econobox grocery getter. Which is nothing to be ashamed of.

For actual racing, swapping the battery pack has potential to be not only faster, but also a lot safer than refuelling. The battery holder could even be a tube, push in new battery from one side of the car, forcing the old battery out from the other side. Machine-assisted at pit, that could be done in about a second, *click*whomp*clack*, counting the time to attach and remove the battery injector. I could even see that happening without the car actually stopping, with a moving rig, when tires aren't in need of changing.

Re:Charge time.

[$pace6host]

Better Place says they've had their battery swap system do changes in under 40 seconds. The video on their site shows it happening in just over 1 minute. Not bad for the first gen (wow, that robot moves slow), but they're stuck in that place where they have the idea, and have invested in the technology, but need to get all the players on board or they'll get nowhere. Unless car manufacturers get on board, it won't matter how many swap stations they build. Unless they have swap stations, no car manufacturers want to join. Right now, they've opened one in Israel, but only some demo vehicles can use it so far, since the Renault Fluence Z.E that is supposed to be the flagship battery swap electric vehicle isn't on sale yet (or wasn't in March when that was written). It will be interesting to see what happens. I like the idea of charging my car's battery at home most of the time, but having the option to swap it at a road-side station if I want to go on a long trip. We're a lot of infrastructure away from that day, though.

Re:Charge time.

[vlm]

The problem is for a gasoline car you can do 4 tires and fuel in under 20 seconds. Just gassing a car even in a non pit setting takes what, 3-4 minutes max? How long does it take to charge a battery on these cars.

I'm not seeing a problem here. The whole point of organized hyper-promoted racing is to provide a list of weird rules for the racers to follow. Restriction plates in the carburetors (ancient carbs? Well, throttle bodies anyway), total fuel burned limitations per race, strange rules about weight and dimensions, etc.

Simply add a couple more rules.

Furthermore you can dump electricity into lithium cells VERY quickly if you want, its just that you may only get 5 charges out of them, and they may possibly explode while charging. Both scenarios are fully compatible with hyper-promoted mass marketed "entertainment"

Until we have the technology to make a viable electric sports car they should be left to what they do best, econobox grocery getter. Which is nothing to be ashamed of.

It is possible electric racing may never be popular beyond drag racing / sprint cars / exotic stuff. For example, no one wants to race SUVs or pickup trucks, that would be about as fast paced and exciting as watching hippos mating, but that doesn't seem to have impacted their sales...

Re:Charge time.

[Arlet]

You don't have to push the Mercedes to the garage, but you can carry a can of fuel back to the car.

Re:Charge time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gassing up a car usually takes most people far more than 4 minutes if you look at the total time involved. Many commuters may have to make some sort of detour to get gas and get back on course, wait in lines to fill up and deal with making payment. Some even drive an additional distance in hopes of finding a lower price.

The sports car thing has its limitations of course, but realistic electric cars will lean towards smaller sleeker lighter designs anyway. And if they can dump/recover charge rapidly enough, some of the energy spent with acceleration bursts may actually be recovered later during dynamic braking (motor as generator). Stop and go, uphill and downhill, and other varied driving may actually impose a bigger efficiency penalty on gasoline powered vehicles.

It's too bad were not set up to dock small cars on fast rail carriers for the intermediate part of longer trips.

Re:Charge time.

[jo_ham]

Just like you can roll out an extension cable if you're in a track setup and have the pit/workshop buildings nearby, or bring out a high-capacity charge unit - essentially a big battery on wheels with an inverter on it to juice the car enough to be able to drive it to a filling station.

Re:Charge time.

[Joce640k]

You can fill up the gas tank in about a minute. You cant really do that with a battery pack.

For a race car you could use ultracapacitors instead of batteries. How much current can your charge cable handle...?

Re:Charge time.

[jo_ham]

I at a university working alongside people who work in this field all the time - batteries, fuel cells, hydrogen storage techniques, improved motor efficiency, increased energy densities etc.

I guess I could just be totally guessing in the dark though. In fact, I'll bet you're right!

I also follow several chemistry journals, although my interest area is transition metals rather than the sort of physical chem going on with batteries and so on, but it is amusing that your only course for "refuting" my argument is to allude to me being a small child, and not even from the pseudo-anonymous position of someone with a user account.

Anonymous Coward: the refuge of those who don't have a strong enough argument to actually put any weight behind it. It could also be that you're too scared to actually appear stupid on your user account. Shame, we'll never know eh?

Re:Charge time.

[Kjella]

That seems like a tricky solution for consumers, what happens when you take your brand new EV for a battery change and you get the oldest battery in their rotation? My guess is your range goes way down and the risk it'll go defective way up. You could of course make all batteries the manufacturer's responsibility, but then you'd probably pay a high yearly fee for replacements.

Re:Charge time.

[houghi]

What they could do is place swap stations where tank stations are. First the cities. Then the places around the cities for commuters. Then further away.

Not sure if this will give the car another 100+ years as gasoline is running out, or if we will be forced to look to travel less and be closer to where we work, without forgetting the ability to have free time.

Re:Charge time.

[Anonymous Coward]

About 3 or so.

The more important thing is that the extra weight needed to increase range scales much slower for gas cars than electric. So, that SLR can be made to do 6 laps easily, where it would be difficult to double the range of an electric vehicle.

At the same time, if you look at cars that have lap times in the 9 min range, they aren't the totally fuel guzzling ultra-high performance super cars. In other words, for performance, this ultra high tech electric concept car is worse than many, many production gas vehicles.

So, while interesting, and potentially valuable research, it also shows how far pure electrics have to go before they anywhere near competitive with gasoline vehicles.

Re:Charge time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Renault is using/proposing a battery leasing scheme to make this work.

Re:Charge time.

[flibbajobber]

For a race car you could use ultracapacitors instead of batteries. How much current can your charge cable handle...?

Not realistic with current capacitor tech. At best, caps can currently store about 1/5th of the capacity of a battery of similar mass. The best production ultracaps are around 30Wh/kg, whereas LiPo batteries are well over 100Wh/kg, and can exceed 200Wh/kg for certain variants.

Re:Charge time.

[Joce640k]

Can you use LiPo batteries in cars? I thought they exploded if you rupture them.

Re:Charge time.

[mdarksbane]

Let's just say it's really, *really* important if you're buying an electric car to use as a normal sports car - that is, to drive it around like a normal car six days out of the week, and thrash it at a track day on the seventh. I don't have a fancy pit crew or a mechanic who can swap out my gear box in five minutes, but I *can* fill my gas tank back up in a couple minutes and drive home from the track.

So it was a little important when road-testing a Tesla, whose entire point is to be an electric sports car.

Re:Charge time.

[splashbot]

Not if a Billion Chinese used the oil before you did. But there will always be electricity. Were past peak oil now, but probably another 15-20 years away from people not laughing this argument off.

Re:Charge time.

[filthpickle]

nat gas....we haves it

Re:Charge time.

[Charcharodon]

You could have some fun with recharging by mandating the ultra caps as battery packs and then have some pick up points on the track to add enough juice in the them for say a lap or two. It would add an interesting twist to the race.

Re:Charge time.

[fractoid]

I wonder how many laps it got in before it had to be charged.

Probably not many, if it's optimised for the best single lap it can do. As per your title of 'charge time', though, remember that charge rate and discharge rate are linked, so if it can flatten itself in 15 minutes then it can probably be charged back to full in less than 30.

Re:Charge time.

[fractoid]

So do gas tanks.

Re:Charge time.

[fractoid]

If a petrol car runs out of petrol, it is OUT. It stops. If an electric car is getting low you can usually still limp a few kilometers, if you keep the current low enough that the voltage doesn't drop too low.

Re:Charge time.

[Locomorto]

For the curious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7PRHu6pN9k

Re:Charge time.

[adolf]

For example, no one wants to race SUVs or pickup trucks

Nascar Camping World Truck Series

Baja 500

Dakar Rally

Mint 400

And so on, and so forth, et cetera, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

"No one," indeed.

Re:Charge time.

[jo_ham]

Yes, and the point was to demonstrate what the car was like and the film very strongly implied that the car's batteries went flat after just a short time out on the track and that it needed to be pushed back into the garage when in fact it had plenty of juice left in it.

Now, Top Gear is famed for its acerbic presenters and humourous takes on things (I am a fan of the show), but the treatment of the Tesla was not handled in the same way as the jokey downsides to owning a fuel guzzler (like Clarkson's GT40 on one of the challenges), or the SLR. They set out to deceive the viewer over exactly what happened, and while they have argued that it was just a more visual demonstration of "electric cars have a charging problem", the fact remains that after a video shoot out on the track they *didn't* fully discharge it - maybe they should have stayed out there longer until it really did run out of juice, but I'm sure the film crew had places to go, like home, because it was the end of the day.

I am not downplaying the issues with electric vehicles right now, one of which is that it takes longer to recharge one than it does to refuel a petrol or diesel car, just that the Top Gear team went beyond the usual light hearted stuff and stuck a big old dishonest fork into the Tesla.

That is, Clarkson could have driven the car 50 miles in any direction from the track on the charge it had left when they pushed it back into the garage because it "had run out". To this day, the Top Gear producers are questioning Tesla's accounts of the truth in the lawsuits they launched, which I find amusing for a crew that were caught red handed faking the car's total loss of battery charge because they got to the end of the day's filming and it hadn't run out, yet still had that part of the script to film.

Re:Charge time.

[bytesex]

That's because the show's main presenter has a (very eloquently) stated aversion to anything on public roads other than four-wheeled gas-guzzlers. Because it fits in his carefully crafted image. Women, cyclists, motorbikes, pedestrians and whatnot need to all fuck off and make room for his Clarksonness as he's underway to the filming of yet another cartoonish piece of amusing rubbish-for-boys-who-won't-grow-up. And like it is with the protection of any other brand: number two is always the most dangerous. That's why electric cars get a very special 'treatment'.

Re:Charge time.

[vlm]

For example, no one wants to race SUVs or pickup trucks

Nascar Camping World Truck Series

Baja 500

Dakar Rally

Mint 400

And so on, and so forth, et cetera, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

"No one," indeed.

Fair enough. I once saw two guys racing riding lawnmowers, also. Lets agree that there's approximately one million NASCAR fans for each pickup truck racing fan, and for me that rounds down to "no one" and for you it is a significant subset of humanity. No problemo.

Dakar is ultra customized dune buggies, not Tahoes and Suburbans, right? Also Dakar is (or at least used to be) completely insane, like automotive gladiatorial combat rather than racing. Almost like survival research labs with a "starting line and finishing line" theme. Real American Racing (probably a TM somewhere) is hillbillies driving in an oval 200 times, the Dakar experience is not even recognizable as "car racing" to the average American...

Re:Charge time.

[Vectormatic]

you forgot caravans

Re:Charge time.

[GameboyRMH]

Post of the fucking day! YOU = WIN

Re:Charge time.

[GameboyRMH]

Some electric racing motorcycles actually do have quick-swap batteries like that - but not with the moving change rig of course :P

Re:Charge time.

[GameboyRMH]

It is possible electric racing may never be popular beyond drag racing / sprint cars / exotic stuff. For example, no one wants to race SUVs or pickup trucks, that would be about as fast paced and exciting as watching hippos mating, but that doesn't seem to have impacted their sales...

Haha no. You're going to see WRC cars switch to electric within the next 10 years, because electric cars will just perform better. They'll use 1 pack per run at first but that's OK. Eventually all racing will switch to electric and there will be no going back to ICEs unless someone invents a fuel with better energy density than the future's super-batteries.

Also racing modified pickups off-road is lots of fun :D

Re:Charge time.

[CaptSlaq]

just a few posts above you there was a statement saying "The US isn't the center of the universe". Yet the implication here is that Americans are the primary fan of automotive sports.

For more "conventional" truck racing, I submit the following:

http://www.formulatruck.com.br/

http://www.torcseries.com/

http://www.wsorr.com/

Sadly, the former isn't carried in the states that I've seen. The latter two have some ESPN coverage.

And to complain that "they're not racing Tahoes and Suburbans" is a straw man: The major NASCAR stuff isn't anything you can walk in and purchase either. To call it "stock car" racing these days is a misnomer at best, and an outright lie at worst. The CLOSEST that I know of that you can get to "stock car" racing is either local tracks (mostly ovals, unfortunately),GT class in the Rolex series, some Rally stuff (which ARE heavily modified factory vehicles), or some of the dedicated series, like the SCCA's Spec Miata or the Porsche SuperCup. None of these have a huge following in the states.

I can't speak as to why NASCAR has the following it does here. I suspect it's just one of those serendipity things that was "right time/right place". Not bad for a bunch of moonshiners-cum-hoonagains.

Oh, and yes, there is organized lawn tractor racing. If you'd quit being so negative, I'm certain that if you have any inclination to motorized competition, you'd find something that you'd think was hilarious.

Apologies for being so far off-topic. :)

Re:Charge time.

[GameboyRMH]

The trucks used in those have little in common with the offroad-incapable soccer mom SUVs you can buy off the showroom floor, so it's not a fair comparison.

Re:Charge time.

[GameboyRMH]

Who needs all this custom stuff? Add a beefy/dual alternator system and inverter to the track's service truck. Problem solved.

Re:Charge time.

[GameboyRMH]

Only a tiny handful of sports cars ever touch a track, and many are horribly unfit to do so from the factory, so I don't know if that's really an important capability. Usually some rich douchebag having a midlife crisis or a 1:1 scale Malibu Barbie just wants a fashion accessory.

Re:Charge time.

[Migraineman]

and anything diesel. I'm pretty sure Clarkson called diesel "Satan's Fuel." (and if he didn't, he would.)

Re:Charge time.

[mjwalshe]

well not safely any how - that is the problem a small garage/gas station can fuel 60 cars an hour easily imagine what is involved in charging 60 cars in an hour

Re:Charge time.

[mjwalshe]

as would you if you have ever ridden a bike behind a smoking diesel - diesel's have some nasty particulates that petrol doesn't.

I think TG have said that a Hydrogen fuel cell is the best candidate to replace petrol.

Re:Charge time.

[Cytotoxic]

Giant slot car racing! Even better, full scale slots!

Re:Charge time.

[demonbug]

I am not downplaying the issues with electric vehicles right now, one of which is that it takes longer to recharge one than it does to refuel a petrol or diesel car, just that the Top Gear team went beyond the usual light hearted stuff and stuck a big old dishonest fork into the Tesla.

I disagree. For most of the test, they really played up how great it was to drive, and what a wonderful car it was. They then balanced that (perhaps overly dramatically) with the one big negative - the range. As good as the car is, it has the same drawback that all electric-only cars currently have - a limited range, and a long charging time. You can either live within that range limitation, or you can't; if you can't, it doesn't matter how good the car is otherwise.

No, they didn't actually run it out of power. But that's beside the point. Saying that the fact that it didn't actually run out of power proves that it had plenty of range is ridiculous; they knew the approximate range they could expect (they had Tesla calculate it beforehand), and obviously managed their shots within that budget to make sure they didn't actually run it all the way down before getting everything they wanted.

I have to say, the first time I saw the episode I came away thinking they had a pretty positive view of the Tesla. When I read about Tesla's lawsuit, I barely remembered the episode and was a little upset at Top Gear's alleged falsifications about the car. When I went back to watch it again, I really think Tesla overreacted; the episode was generally pretty positive about the car, with the exception of the range issue - claiming it could have gone another few laps really completely misses the (legitimate) point that was being made.

Re:Charge time.

[jo_ham]

It wasn't just a few more laps though - it had 50 miles worth of charge left in it (albeit not at track speeds). They could have made the point without resorting to outright deception at the end of what I also believe was a pretty positive review up to that point. They just wanted to set the record straight, and instead the production team called Tesla's trustworthiness into question in the wake of the lawsuit, which is sort of like Justin Bieber telling you that you make crappy overly-commercial music given they way they set out to shoot that video.

Re:Charge time.

[adolf]

Ah, well that's your problem right there: You think that NASCAR is racing. :)

Throw away that metric altogether, and you'll find a whole world full of really great stuff including, no surprise, trucks.

Re:Charge time.

[Migraineman]

I'd suggest Butanol is a better gasoline/petrol replacement. It's the "B" in the A.B.E. process. It's an alcohol, but is largely compatible with gasoline in both the engine and the distribution infrastructure. It has a slightly lower energy density than gasoline, but it's pretty straightforward to manufacture from biomass. It would certainly present a less catastrophic cut-over than hydrogen.

And yes, I've ridden my Honda VT700C behind the most egregious smoke-belchers on the road. Twisting your right wrist generally clears the problem. Mercedes has some wonderful diesels in the production line. I wish Subaru would get off their collective ass and put the boxer diesel into full production, dammit. Subaru has been promising this since 2007, but I can't buy one in the States yet.

Re:Charge time.

[Chris Gunn]

Tested by a Japanese taxi company (6 taxis + 1 battery swap station?) I read they want to do a second trial.

Re:Charge time.

[mdarksbane]

Because the downside of the Tesla is that if you misjudge your "one more lap" estimation you can't get home until the next morning... If you misjudge on a GT-40, you look like an idiot while you wait for someone to drive you to a petrol station. It was a dramatization of a very real problem.

Re:Charge time.

[mdarksbane]

Most people never take their SUV off the road, either. That doesn't mean that a review shouldn't include whether this SUV can be used that way or not.

Re:Charge time.

[jo_ham]

Nonsense. The Tesla charges to 100% from flat in 3.5 hours on a 240v/90A circuit, so even if you only have access to a domestic socket (240v/13A) you can charge it enough to get home, assuming you're not hundreds of miles away (and if you are, then forward planning really should be included, since if you're at the track with an electric car, you're going to have to charge it when you're done).

On a domestic UK socket you can put about 5 to 10% charge into it in an hour or so - enough for about 25-30 miles.

The lack of planning on the part of the owner is not the car's fault, like running out of petrol when the filling stations are closed is not the fault of the petrol design.

Re:Charge time.

[mjwalshe]

Ah yes biomass not exactly a good solution the farmers have there hands out (AGAIN!) for a masive subsidy which has some nasty implications for poor people and the cost of food. I was on a MTB on a rather steep hill - I would have said Motorbike if was on an IC powered vehicle :-)

Re:Charge time.

[mdarksbane]

You are seriously claiming that taking 1-2 hours to charge enough to get home is not a significant design negative compared to less than five minutes fill up at a gas station?

It may or may not be a deal killer, but it is still a significant difference.

Also, petrol stations close?

Re:Charge time.

[jo_ham]

I'm not saying it's not a disadvantage - it clearly is a downside, but in the Top Gear instance, they did the full shoot for the day and the car still had 20% charge - enough to drive it 50 miles on normal roads.

And my point is that if you have such a vehicle you plan accordingly (ie, if you want to drive it home afterwards, leave enough charge in it, or arrange enough time to put some charge into it before you go. If you're far enough from the track that you need a significant proportion of the charge to get there then similarly, you need to plan for that. Until we get much faster charging, or systems that enable a hybrid energy storage mode (battery coupled to a super capacitor anyone?), this is something that you have to take into account. Just as you have to if you drive a V12 twin turbo monster while petrol is £5 per gallon. It may take a while to charge up, but power-per-pound/dollar is way ahead of petrol. Perhaps for the cost of the fuel used by the petrol car you could rent a trailer to get the car to the track, or perhaps simply pocket the cash and use it for a nice dinner nearby while you wait for your Tesla to charge up while you do so you can both make the trip home?

85.9?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm inclined to wonder if the track is either particularly long, or particularly tortuous, or the constraints imposed by the rules especially arduous. While getting good range out of electric vehicles turns out to be a nasty piece of work, electric motors are practically god's gift to short-range high-speed work. Electric motors achieve their highest torque at stall, so you acceleration is limited mostly by your tires or the desire to not melt any power busses. Such motors can also be used for braking, again limited largely by your tires or desire not to melt anything.

Unless the track is particularly hairy, where the increased mass of a battery pack on wheels would be an issue, or the rules substantially constrain the mass of batteries carried, I would expect electrics to utterly terminate internal combustion units in closed course exercises where cost is a very limited object and endurance measured in minutes isn't a big deal.

Re:85.9?

[jimicus]

You've never heard of the Nürburgring, have you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nürburgring

"...is widely considered the toughest, most dangerous, and most demanding purpose-built racing circuit in the world."

Re:85.9?

[Zakabog]

Particularly long? I think it's 12 miles, lots of sharp turns, some good high speed straights. Electric cars are limited by the low top speeds, and I'm sure the extra weight from the batteries doesn't help either.

Re:85.9?

[MROD]

You may find the Wikipedia page on the Nurburgring useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCrburgring You're obviously not a great follower of international motor sport or the sport's history. (And have obviously not played Gran Tourismo 5 on the PS3 :-))

Re:85.9?

[MoonBuggy]

"Particularly hairy" is a fairly apt description of the Nürburgring, actually, and I believe these figures are from realistic production models rather than something designed purely for ten minutes on the track. Sure, it's mainly marketing, but they are making a more-or-less fair comparison between the EV and its internal combustion counterpart - if they were just chasing impressive figures they could take any old piece of crap, give it far more batteries than it's rated for, and show off the straight line speed.

Re:85.9?

[Anonymous Coward]

Power to weight is still not in electric's favour over anything but the very shortest tasks. The Nurburgring is also a pretty long course, almost 21 km with 154 turns.

Re:85.9?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, it's the Nurburgring Nordschleife.........

20.8km of the most grueling racing track in the world. The lap time of this car was faster than a VW Lupo GTi set in 2009 which I think is pretty good. It is right on the tailpipe of a Range Rover Sport!

The Radical SR8 LM that holds the producation car record on the lap falls short of 120mph around this track.

Re:85.9?

[Anonymous Coward]

For all the billions of people outside Burma, Liberia and the Greatest Country that is still stuck in the 19th century, 85.9 mph translate to 138 km/h.

Re:85.9?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's American. They like driving around in ovals.
Good turning on a car? What's that? Just put a big engine in it.

Re:85.9?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have heard of Nuremberg! That's where they tried all those Nazis! But what I haven't heard of is this Paris Muppet Show! WTF?!? Is it Jim Hensen's puppets speaking French?!? Miss Piggy actually speaking proper French?!

Are we dealing with Nazi Muppets?

WTF did I do with my reading glasses ....

Re:85.9?

[Ceriel Nosforit]

And, faster than a van driven by a certain woman.

Re:85.9?

[MM-tng]

I have been there. It is totally awsome :). My boss had an old Manta I could borrow from him. I had a reeaaally good time. To bad all the motor cycles crash all the time. We had 6 crashed bikes in one day. Track closed guys sweeping sand over the oil spill. Guys limping with plastic parts along the track. It"s crazy

Re:85.9?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm inclined to wonder if the track is either particularly long,...

...with a time of 9 minutes and 1.338 seconds, [...] averaged an impressive 85.9 miles per hour...

Oh come on. I thought basic maths was a prerequisite for Slashdotters.

Re:85.9?

[DWMorse]

Given the last 2 weeks of Sony's fiasco, I hope people are smart enough to avoid the PS3! =P

Re:85.9?

[Velex]

Go play Gran Turismo 4. That should answer all of your questions.

Re:85.9?

[Attila Dimedici]

Jeremy Clarkson of the BBC show Top Gear was ecstatic to get around the Nurburgring track in 10 minutes in a diesel Jaguar. So, I would say that, yes it is a particularly tortuous track.

Re:85.9?

[Anubis IV]

Hey, some of us Americans, even ones like me who grew up in the South, have both heard of the Nürburgring and would prefer watching cars zip around it rather than on a NASCAR track any day. I can't stand NASCAR (*pauses for a moment to listen for approaching angry mobs*), and I'm not particularly enamored with racing in general, but even with my limited awareness of the world of racing, I've still heard of the Nürburgring, have seen the track layout, and know its reputation.

I know the world likes to paint Americans in stereotypes, and we definitely do have plenty of people here that fit some of them quite well, but dismissing us (or most any other group, for that matter) as a mere stereotype is almost always a mistake.

Re:85.9?

[nojayuk]

The most gruelling racing track in the world is probably the Mountain Course in the Isle of Man, sixty miles of road up and down the side of a mountain and then passing through a series of villages and over hump-back bridges. It's a rare year that doesn't end in at least one fatality during the motorbike Time Trial (TT) races in June or the Manx GP in the autumn -- in 2010 four riders died.

There's now a race for electric motorbikes included in the TT series, and a $10,000 prize for the first bike to achieve a 100mph lap. Last year the winning bike managed 96mph and might have broken the 100mph barrier if the rider hadn't been over-conservative regarding the bike's batteries and their capacity.

Re:85.9?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! Give this guy a break. He's probably American and he doesn't even know that French actually make cars. Some of them even think a car needs to have at least a V8 (and some of them would think V8 is some juice brand).

Re:85.9?

[hb253]

To be honest, the French make barely adequate cars, sort of like the Italians. Not that GM is anything special, but they are finally beginning to improve.

People like powerful V8's for the same reason they love powerful V6's or 4's, or Wankel's. I am partial to my flat 6.

Re:85.9?

[Charcharodon]

Go to Europe some time. As much as they like to play the cool card they have just as many hicks, urban trash, and all around loosers just like good ol U S of A.

Just smile and ask them how they like spending $9 a gallon for gas for their 4 cylinder micros.

Re:85.9?

[Anonymous Coward]

Further evidence in demonstration of his anti-American ignorance, the race track at Laguna Seca has one of the most difficult turns of any racing circuit in the world. Of course though, the ignorant always like to bash NASCAR by setting up a false dichotomy that racing on an oval circuit can't coexist with other forms of racing.

Re:85.9?

[segfaultcoredump]

To which Sabine Schmitz stated "I could do that in a transit van..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQJKQjXpGQA

(she almost did it...)

Re:85.9?

[Waccoon]

I'm not sure what's worse about Slashdot... the fact that the link you provided is broken, or the fact that when I tried to click on it, Slashdot unfolded the thread with JavaScript instead of actually, you know, letting me click the link.

Re:85.9?

[GameboyRMH]

I thought they just settled for ovals when there was no action at the drag strip.

Re:85.9?

[TheThiefMaster]

We wouldn't understand what you meant by "$9 a gallon for gas", as not only do we not use gallons, the "gallon" the old people know here is a different size to yours; we don't use dollars (and the exchange rate has varied quite a lot over the past couple of years (between 1.3 and 2.1 USD per GBP, currently ~1.6)); and we call it petrol, not "gas". Google says the prices I've seen work out at between 8.3 and 9.0 USD/US gallon at current exchange rate.
My car averages around 400 miles on £70 (aka a full tank) of fuel at the moment, you? That works out about 35 British mpg or about 29 American mpg. That's mostly motorway driving (aka >70mph). It would be better if I drove better.

Not going to disagree on the amount of "urban trash" we have though.

Re:85.9?

[TheThiefMaster]

Nah we just like to bash NASCAR.

Re:85.9?

[j-turkey]

We wouldn't understand what you meant by "$9 a gallon for gas", as not only do we not use gallons, the "gallon" the old people know here is a different size to yours; we don't use dollars (and the exchange rate has varied quite a lot over the past couple of years (between 1.3 and 2.1 USD per GBP, currently ~1.6)); and we call it petrol, not "gas". Google says the prices I've seen work out at between 8.3 and 9.0 USD/US gallon at current exchange rate. My car averages around 400 miles on £70 (aka a full tank) of fuel at the moment, you? That works out about 35 British mpg or about 29 American mpg. That's mostly motorway driving (aka >70mph). It would be better if I drove better.

Not going to disagree on the amount of "urban trash" we have though.

So...how do you like paying (the equivalent of) $9 USD for a gallon (or for 3.78 liters) of petrol?

On a side note - I find your post to be a bit silly. It's not like Britons are unable to understand the concept of US Dollars and US gallons and have never experienced and kind of currency or measurement conversion.

Re:85.9?

[TheThiefMaster]

I just meant that without looking up the conversions for a USD or US gallon we would have no clue what you meant. Without calculating it I have no idea how much $9 is worth. I know our pound is stronger than pretty much everything, so it's worth less than £9, but how much less? Would it buy a takeaway meal? Or only an apple?

Re:85.9?

[b0bby]

The TT in "Isle of Man TT" stands for "Tourist Trophy". It's certainly one of the worlds great races.

Re:85.9?

[Smauler]

You must be a few years younger than me. I'm 33, and when I first started driving, all petrol stations measured in gallons. However, as you previously said... that's even more confusing, since our gallons were different to America's. Unless we'd been forced to change to litres by Europe, we wouldn't have.

Even now, most people understand mpg. No one I know intuitively understands or uses l/km. I mean, we still use miles for everything anyway (we got an exemption for miles and pints and a couple of other things from Europe, but know that these excemptions are under threat).

$9 is about £6, btw... without looking... hope I'm not way off (I did just check... it's more like £5.50). My current car unfortunately has been doing about 200 miles to a tank. It's a little 1.8 litre. It doesn't help that I drive it like a lunatic though, or that it's an Integra type R. Yep, you heard that right... I'm using about 25 pence (about 40 cents) for every mile I drive, just on fuel, with a 1.8 litre car (note to Americans - that's just over 100 cubic inches... had to look that one up, because despite using gallons for fuel, I've never ever dealt with cubic inches)

As a little aside... I'm also an HGV driver. One of my runs is about 375 miles, and that uses almost £250 of diesel daily.

Re:85.9?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

It would also be completely impossible to arrange the TT today if not for the amount of sheer history and racing heritage associated with it. If someone made a serious official proposal for a new, similar race under similar conditions today they would be laughed out of the room and possibly persecuted for extreme negligence of all safety rules and regulations.

The sheer and utter madness is why the TT is so great and the recently-released TT3D movie looks to capture it really well.

Re:85.9?

[TheThiefMaster]

I passed my driving test in 2002, and hadn't been driving long then. Petrol prices didn't matter to me before that :P

I vaguely understand miles per gallon (I can recognise a typical mpg, good, poor, what's better than another, etc), but I can't calculate anything useful with them, because I have no idea how much a gallon is.
I get 400 miles on £70 of fuel, roughly 55 litres. What's that in mpg? Couldn't tell you without looking up the gallonlitre conversion (or as I did in my earlier post, just asked Google to do the maths for me). Miles per litre would be more useful really, but I tend to think about journeys in cost rather than volume of fuel.

Re:85.9?

[demonbug]

Hey! Give this guy a break. He's probably American and he doesn't even know that French actually make cars.

You can't really blame him, the French surrendered the U.S. car market to the rest of the world back in the '70s or so... obviously if they made decent cars, they'd be on sale here ;)

Re:85.9?

[j-turkey]

...Integra type R. Yep, you heard that right... I'm using about 25 pence (about 40 cents) for every mile I drive, just on fuel, with a 1.8 litre car (note to Americans - that's just over 100 cubic inches... had to look that one up, because despite using gallons for fuel, I've never ever dealt with cubic inches)

Most Americans understand liters/cc in displacement. Generally old people, drivers of classic American iron, and die-hard American car people use CI. I still have to run a conversion in my head when I hear engine displacement in cubic inches (I believe it's 16.39). Maybe I've been driving European and Asian cars for too long. We do still use SAE HP units though, but I'm pretty sure that's the same in the EU (unlike the metric PS). The reality is that I have a pretty good idea where the commonalities are from watching a lot of Top Gear.

Also, nice ride. There aren't a lot of real Type R's in the US. In the late 90's, there were a lot of fake Type R's running around (GS-R's with fart-can exhausts, massive wings, and R stickers all over them). Now, I only tend to see real ones at the track.

Re:85.9?

[Charcharodon]

100 cubic inches....sounds like the size engine they stick on motorcycles these days. Actually nearly everyone talks in CCs these days.

My truck a Toyota Tacoma, the equivalent to your Hi-Lux has a 2.7L engine. I wish I could get the diesel version you guys have available(twice the mileage), but the politicians in charge of such things are gits and keep blocking them from coming to market over here. I also have a 1000cc Yamaha FZ1 (Fazer). Top speed on that bad boy is around 180mph or about 300kph.

I did get a kick out of driving in Europe and England while living there for 3 years. Some of the most competent/polite drivers (England and Germany) you'll ever meet.

The US is very much like England is at the moment which is still in transition itself, thought farther along.

More and more things are metric with a Standard conversion marked on it. (Rather than a stadard with a metric conversion.) The only real hold outs are home/building construction, weights, and road speeds/distances. Most every consumer item now is metric, China is forcing that one along.

I give it another 20 years and the US will finally be 100% metric for all new things. Personally I say about damn time. Studying engineering in school it sucked having to learn standard and metric and having to deal with the constant conversions.

Re:85.9?

[Smauler]

Cheers - it was a bargain, but is a little well used and tired. £3000, 175,000(!) miles. It had a couple of tiny rust bubbles ahead of rear wheels, which I had resprayed, and I'm slightly concerned with the gearbox. If that's fucked, hopefully I can get it done under "fit for use" consumer laws we have here for free, since I got it from a dealership. The rest seems solid enough, though it's got a different tyre in each corner, 3 of which are budgets :P, but I'm driving like a maniac to wear them out quick so I can change them (at least that's my excuse). I work at a tyre wholesaler, so I get tyres cheap, and the ones on the type-r are tiny little things (195 55 15), so pretty cheap even for branded.

The Type-R was the only Integra sold in the UK, so we don't have the same problem with fake ones. There are lots of Japanese imports too, but I'm guessing most of these are genuine R's... you don't transport a car half way around the world if it's not the real deal generally. We still use bhp here too... actually, metric power I hardly have a clue about... I know one of the widely used units is pretty close to bhp anyway.

Re:85.9?

[Smauler]

UK gallons are about 4.5 litres iirc.... so 55 litres is about 12 gallons, and 400/12 = 33.3mpg, off the top of my head. Miles per litre would be a very strange unit, since you're mixing metric and imperial units in one calculation. I know it would make sense for us in the UK, but it would be useless to literally everyone else in the world. That being said, our mpg unit is pretty much useless to everone else in the world too, since our gallon is quite a bit different to the US gallon.

Re:85.9?

[j-turkey]

Sounds like you have better consumer protection than we do. Some states here require a 30-day warranty, but more often than not; it's caveat emptor. Anyway, as long as you pass the MOT, right? (We don't have anything like that here. The closest thing we have to MOT is a safety inspection, where they check to make sure that all of the lights are working and your tires and brake pads aren't worn. Some states also check emissions - but that's it.)

Nordschleife presumably

[mazesc]

I guess the article refers to the Nordschleife layout? 9 minutes would be awful around the GP layout, but it would be great around the combined layout ... (Nürburgring)

As the article is only shiny pictures and almost no information it is hard to tell.

Re:Nordschleife presumably

[hidannik]

It's the Nordschleife. http://www.plugincars.com/fastest-ev-nurburgring-peugeot-ex1-107128.html

Re:Nordschleife presumably

[Brett Buck]

You can see a picture of the car on the carousel section from the Nordschleife

Re:Nordschleife presumably

[mazesc]

Yes, but it could also be the combined layout. It is unlikely because Nordschleife is driven usually, but you can't be sure because of that.

Re:Nordschleife presumably

[Anonymous Coward]

If it comes to testing a road car it has to be the Nordschleife. Not much point in taking a car round the F1 circuit, and I don't think it is open to the public. Come to think of it I may go next weekend.

Video

[Rayeh]

Not the entire lap unfortunately. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAPdMC0y9Wk

It's both long and arduous

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

The lap time should have given it away - 9 minutes!

The nurburgring remains as an example of the old school racing circuits from the previous century - long and dangerous.

They've built a more modern circuit around the pits, but the old long configuration (nordschliefe) is still used for endurance events with various vehicles (GT cars, motorcycles etc)

Have a look at the track map here

They stopped running F1 there due to safety concerns (no run-off and thin track).

On topic of this EV, I have to say it's closer to a motorcycle than a car...

Re:It's both long and arduous

[GameboyRMH]

If you want to try the track for free, you can get a Nurburgring addon for Racer (you'll need a wheel or at least an analog gamepad to play)

One of my favorite cars to drive around there is a fictional Le Mans-style car, can't remember the name of it, I remember it's white, has a metric shit-ton of torque and sounds MEAN...I'll reply to myself with the name and hopefully links when I get home.

85 MPH ?? INDY 19118 BEAT THAT !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back 100 years and you are on to something there !! Way to go FRANCE !! Now go surrender or whatever you normally do at step 2 !!

Why Not?

[pavon]

If we are talking race cars here, then there is no reason they couldn't design the battery pack to be swapped out as quickly as they change tires. Pretty much everything on a race car is custom designed for fast pit-stops.

That isn't the best approach for consumer cars for many reasons. But it also isn't a problem for consumer cars if they hold a full day's travel with margin. Given the driving patterns of people, current electric car technology could already replace more than half the sedans on the road today.

Re:Why Not?

[dadelbunts]

But what do sedans have to do with ring times?

Re:Why Not?

[Luckyo]

Nothing. What does actually charging a battery pack on a race car instead of simply swapping in a fully charged one do with sedans?

Re:Why Not?

[pavon]

They don't. That's the point. You wouldn't compare a stock sedan to race cars, so why compare consumer electric cars to race cars. If you were designing an electric race car for a long range race you would give it swappable batteries. If you are designing a consumer car you can ignore criteria that are important for racing but not consumer cars (like fast charge time).

Until we have the technology to make a viable electric sports car they should be left to what they do best, econobox grocery getter.

The needs of a sports car aren't even close to that of a race car. Sports cars are just used as commuter cars by people that want something that looks cool and is fun to drive. Electric cars can easily meet the driving demands of that market given their high torque.

Re:Why Not?

[Anonymous Coward]

People who don't understand the importance of the research that goes into race cars and the impact it had, the impact is has and the impact it will have on production cars should do some readings.

Competition is good for the consumer and having car companies fight on the Nurburgring is *the* ultimate form of competition. This drives technology in ways you can't even realize.

Just one example: perforated disk brakes where found "by chance" by Porsche (?) when trying to lower the weight of their race cars. They then noticed the cooling of the disk was also faster. This technology is common in a lot of "regular" cars nowadays.

There are hundreds of example like this in the car industry.

Whatever gain is made regarding ring times impacts in one way or another joe six-pack's family sedan.

Re:Why Not?

[dadelbunts]

This isnt a race car tho. It doesnt compete in any races. Its a fancy thing to show that electric cars arent too slow. It clocked in slightly ahead of a 2002 VW Lupo GTI. Congratulations you are still slower than weird family station wagons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCrburgring_lap_times#Production_vehicles

Re:Why Not?

[AVee]

So Peugeot managed to build a car that looks like a batmobile, but is barely faster than a 12 year old hot-hatch. An actually 3 seconds slower then a 1990 Lotus Esprit Turbo SE, so in terms of being a proper sports car they are still 22 years behind petrol cars. Still, you have to start somewhere...

Re:Why Not?

[Sique]

If you are designing a consumer car you can ignore criteria that are important for racing but not consumer cars (like fast charge time).

I beg to differ. I need a fast charge time in a consumer car. My parents live 400 mls from my home, my brother about 600 mls, and the other grandma of my children about 500 mls. There are no direct flights, and flying with changing planes takes about 5 hrs. to each of the places, and it is expensive (about 800 € for the family last time I checked). So it's either going by train or by car. And then it pays to have a car that can be refilled in less than one hour, or to have a car that can go the whole distance without recharging. And to have a car just for hauling home the shopping bags is too expensive. Until then an electric car is completely useless for me.

Re:Why Not?

[tehcyder]

If you are designing a consumer car you can ignore criteria that are important for racing but not consumer cars (like fast charge time).

I beg to differ. I need a fast charge time in a consumer car. My parents live 400 mls from my home, my brother about 600 mls, and the other grandma of my children about 500 mls. There are no direct flights, and flying with changing planes takes about 5 hrs. to each of the places, and it is expensive (about 800 € for the family last time I checked). So it's either going by train or by car. And then it pays to have a car that can be refilled in less than one hour, or to have a car that can go the whole distance without recharging. And to have a car just for hauling home the shopping bags is too expensive. Until then an electric car is completely useless for me.

Oddly enough 99.9% of people don't do regular 500+ mile trips. But because you do, let's forget the whole idea of electric cars for now, shall we?

Re:Why Not?

[tehcyder]

So Peugeot managed to build a car that looks like a batmobile, but is barely faster than a 12 year old hot-hatch. An actually 3 seconds slower then a 1990 Lotus Esprit Turbo SE, so in terms of being a proper sports car they are still 22 years behind petrol cars. Still, you have to start somewhere...

Thing is, a 12 year old hot hatch is more than fast enough for most people on public roads.

Re:Why Not?

[Vectormatic]

If we are talking race cars here, then there is no reason they couldn't design the battery pack to be swapped out as quickly as they change tires.

i doubt it, in a race car (or any car for that matter), you want the weight as much in board and down low as possible, if possible smack in the middle of the wheels, an inch above the road, that doesnt make for very easy access during a pit stop.

The only way i see a F1 pitstop style battery change if with the battery back right at the back of the car, and while some weight over the rear wheels is good for grip, this will really give an unbalanced car

Re:Why Not?

[GameboyRMH]

Fair enough. Your needs are quite special, you need to drive extremely long distances. If you have a car with a 10 gallon tank that gets 30mpg, you'd need two full tanks (with probably two gas stops in practice) to get to your brother's house. That's no small amount of energy. But that's actually much more environmentally friendly than flying so I'll encourage you to keep driving your ICE car.

Re:Why Not?

[Sique]

I don't do them too often, but a few times per year. But for me they were the argument to buy a car in the first place, because just for the short trips, the car would have been too expensive. The savings I get from the long distance trips together with the convenience for the short ones were argument enough to go shopping for a car.

None of the properties alone, e.g. being very handy for the weekly shopping or being an agreable means to go long distances if necessary would have done it. Only because it can both, has seduced me to buy a car. And that's not solved by having two cars, one for short trips and another one for long distances - because then I would have to pay for two cars. So yes, I want a car with short recharge times, otherwise I won't need it enough to buy one.

Re:Why Not?

[Sique]

My car has a 20 gallon tank, so it's one filling per single trip.

Re:Why Not?

[GameboyRMH]

Just one example: perforated disk brakes where found "by chance" by Porsche (?) when trying to lower the weight of their race cars. They then noticed the cooling of the disk was also faster. This technology is common in a lot of "regular" cars nowadays.

Do you mean vented or cross-drilled discs? Because vented discs are common but cross-drilled discs are only used on high-end sports cars and supercars. You definitely won't find those on joe six-pack's family sedan.

Re:Why Not?

[mjwalshe]

um depends where you live the USA is quite sparsely populated compared to central Europe so doing regular long runs is not an unreasonable requirement.

Re:Why Not?

[Cytotoxic]

These guys will be happy to rent you a minivan for the trip. Or any other vehicle for that matter. At 4 weeks per year you could rent for far less than your TCO on keeping the vehicle yourself.

And no, I didn't go that route. I own my cars and only rent when flying. Doesn't mean it isn't financially more sensible if you don't really need a car for daily life.

Re:Why Not?

[Smauler]

My 13 year old hot hatch has had its stock brethren do the nurburgring in 8:43.... the Integra Type R. Here is a youtube vid of a slightly modded one doing it in 8:44. Here is a nice list. What's interesting to note is that the only car less powerful but quicker on that list is the Exige, and that's over 350kg lighter, and 1 second faster.

Re:Why Not?

[Sique]

You don't understand the argument :) If I have to pay extra for long trips with a rental car, it doesn't look attractive for me to buy an electric car. If I only had the car for long trips, it would actually make sense to rent it. The charme lies in the fact that I have a car for weekly short trips which can do long distances at no extra charge. A gasoline powered car is just more useful than an electric one. It will change if I can recharge the electric one as fast as an gasoline powered one. I wouldn't mind shorter distances of 200 or 300 mls per charge, if the recharge was faster though. Super has about 12 kWh/kg, which amounts to about 36 kWh/gallon. A tank pump can fill up with 10 gallons/min, so a recharge for 300 mls takes about one minute and will charge my car with 360 kWh or about 6 kWh/s. This amounts to a charging power of 21600 kW -- if I charge the car with 110 V, there will be a current of 20 kA!

A version for Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey... I'm an American. Do they have a version of this track that's just a straight line with no curves?

9 min not very impressive ..

[deischi]

.. compared to the results of some production vehicles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCrburgring_lap_times) but the car sure looks fabulous, and they probably can do faster with better weather.

Re:9 min not very impressive ..

[tsa]

We are not talking about production vehicles here. 9 minutes is impressive for an electric car.

Re:9 min not very impressive ..

[Spacelord]

Those were exactly my thoughts. 9 minutes for a 340bhp car? That seems terribly slow. Even my 15 year old E36 M3 GT (295bhp) does better than that.

My guess is that the weight of the batteries is holding it back. This shows one of the biggest drawbacks of electrical cars: batteries make them way too heavy, so unless battery capacity increases drastically, the handling is going to be poor.

For what it's worth: the energy density of a battery is about 20 times less than that of gasoline. Now an electrical engine does make up for some of that because it runs more efficient than a combustion engine, but not 20 times more efficient.

Re:9 min not very impressive ..

[dave420]

Sorry, are you making a guess as to the efficiency of the design of this car based on it's performance by one driver on one course on one day? Surely not. I had you pegged for a rational person.

Re:9 min not very impressive ..

[Spacelord]

Well, seeing that Peugeot boasts about it and that it was a record breaking attempt and that it was without a doubt performed by a professional driver, yes I consider that 9 minute time to be representative and I find it rather underwhelming. I'm sure they could still shave off a few seconds if they tried, but it's not as if they could beat it down to sub 8 minutes, which is where the real performance cars start.

To give you a comparison: someone I know personally and who is a good-but-not-incredibly-talented amateur driver does 7:56 bridge-to-gantry (*) on tourist days with a stock 225bhp Renault R26R, which translates roughly to 8:18 for the full lap

As for the efficiency, it's well known (**) that batteries can store a lot less energy per kg than the energy content of 1kg of gasoline. Simply put: to store the equivalent energy of 1 kg of gasoline, you (roughtly) need 20kg of battery. So I would say it's not an unreasonable guess that weight is an issue with this car.

(*) On Tourist days you can't use the full length of the straight so times are usually measured from the bridge at the end of the straight to the gantry at the beginning of the straight. Bridge to gantry times are give or take 22 seconds shorter than a full lap time.
(**) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

Re:9 min not very impressive ..

[Anonymous Coward]

The question really is whether they used the "short" version of the track (used by F1) or the long version (used by DTM). If it's the short version, then indeed, 9 minutes is not impressive. If it is the long version - you know, that 27 km monster - then 9 minutes is VERY impressive.

Re:9 min not very impressive ..

[Laurence0]

Agreed, I've seen a 90BHP MX-5 (small engine, mk1) go round in a hair under 10 minutes. You'd think more than 3 times the power would gain you a little more time than that! That was driven by an amateur driver on her first (or possibly second) trip to the 'ring as well.

Re:9 min not very impressive ..

[mjwalshe]

well was Sabine driving :-)

Exact one

[mycorner99]

Its having exact length not particularly long.

F1 championship

[tsa]

I wonder when a Formula 1 championship will be organized for electric cars only. I hope very soon - that will get the technology development going much faster.

Re:F1 championship

[Anonymous Coward]

F1? I'd be glad to see any electric vehicle racing, even as just an exhibition on one of those guess the time shows.

Re:F1 championship

[HornWumpus]

What's stopping you. You will need to pick a new name or Bernie will be cross.

Re:F1 championship

[hb253]

That should be a hoot, cars going slower each lap with only the sound of scrubbing tires. When do tickets on sale? I'll be sure not to buy them.

Part of the glory of racing is the mechanical symphony of combustion engines..

Re:F1 championship

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Part of the glory of racing is the mechanical symphony of combustion engines..
Ah yes, the halcyon days of the 1995 season when v8, v10, and v12 powered cars competed against each other instead of rev limited 2.4l v8s.

Re:F1 championship

[tsa]

Man, I remember in the 1980s when they pulled 1000 horsepowers from a 1.5 l engine. Those were the days!

Re:F1 championship

[zyzko]

F1 hasn't been a technology leader for a long time - the rules to make cars cheaper severily limit the technology - no turbocharging, the most efficient consumer cars today are turbocharged, no "too advanced" electronics, tires are sub-par quality to make the races more interesting, I could continue the list forever. Yes, there are reasons for these rules and they are mainly a) to keep costs down and b) make the series more interesting for the viewer. Bringing elecronic cars to F1 could maybe advance the technology for first few years in consumer cars, but after that they would have to limit research for the same reasons they do now.

Re:F1 championship

[tsa]

Well, let's then make a rally championship for electric cars! Is more fun to watch, too.

Re:F1 championship

[sincewhen]

There is currently talk of changing the engines in F1 to 1.8L 4 cylinder turbos to make the sport more "green".
There is resistance from some teams, and speculation that as an alternative there will be an electric vehicle support class racing at F1 events.

Re:F1 championship

[Anonymous Coward]

Get out of here...I want V10s again. F1 needs NOISE. The cars today have too large a disconnect to be very applicable to road cars. Let them be what they are, Grand Prix cars.

Re:F1 championship

[GameboyRMH]

F1 is still running V10s right now AFAIK...

Re:F1 championship

[quenda]

I wonder when a Formula 1 championship will be organized for electric cars only

They'd have to eliminate the battery weight to get best speed. Maybe run live rails along the track surface.
And some sort of groove between the rails to guide the cars so they stay in contact with the power rails. It could work.

Re:F1 championship

[Smauler]

Interestingly, they're going back to smaller turbocharged engines from 2013, along with a host of other regulation changes.

Re:F1 championship

[demonbug]

Nope, this year they are running 2.4L V8s (at least, Red Bull and McLaren are).

And I thought EVs were about getting rid of oil...

[SpaceCracker]

Wasn't the EV trend supposed to help us reduce emissions and loosen our dependence on expensive oil?
Who cares about EVs in race tracks. That's the place to hear engines roaring and smell rubber burning...

Not FWD?

[Aranykai]

Very impressive feat. I'm just amazed its no FWD, being a Peugeot and all.

Re:Not FWD?

[Anonymous Coward]

This (in the 100% electric section, flash app warning) claims it has two 125kW motors on both front and rear axels, unless I'm mistaken, making it 4WD, yes?

I've never been a car guy, so feel free to correct.

Re:Not FWD?

[NoseyNick]

If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?

Code.

Re:And I thought EVs were about getting rid of oil

[__aarzwb9394]

This kind of exercise isn't only done for the research, it's also done to get the attention of those whose response to electric cars is:

"Electric Cars are for teh Faggz."

These tactics work, fast car marketing is aimed at men thinking with their testes.

Need cheaper iron phosphates

[BlueParrot]

As I understand it the Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries pretty much solve the major issues with EV cars.They're fast charging ( 10 min or so ) , long lifespan ( 10+ years ), can output a tremendous amount of power, and have a wide operating temperature range. The issue at the moment seems to be that the price is too steep for them to be economically used in cars.

Anybody know more than wikipedia on what is being done to get them down in price? It seems to me that if those can be made more cheaply then you've basically cracked the entire problem with EV cars.

Re:Need cheaper iron phosphates

[GrahamCox]

The only thing that will get them down in price is more volume. It's starting to happen, but it's still at the very start of the ramp. There's only been one commercial manufacturer until recently - the fact there are now two is a great sign. Costs are no longer ridiculous - I'm seeing around $2 per kWh at present, which is half what it was only a year ago. When it's down to $1 I think that could well be the tipping-point, due to the psychology of nice round numbers. $2 is still "economically viable" though, if you do the maths.

LiFePO4 has actually a slightly lower energy-density (78kWh/kg) than other lithium chemistries, but it's worth it for the much greater safety and other benefits you mentioned. I'm not sure about 10 minute charge times though, that seems optimistic. Most data sheets I've seen suggest charging at 0.5C, which translates into two hours in most cases.

Re:Need cheaper iron phosphates

[GrahamCox]

Of course I mean 78 Wh/kg, not kWh - that would be a remarkable breakthrough!

Re:Need cheaper iron phosphates

[Anonymous Coward]

batteries don't have to be able to output lots of power. That's where supercapacitors come in.

Rarely, if ever, you want to go WOT for more than 15 seconds or so, in normal circumstances (go round a lap, see exactly what percentage of the lap you are full throttle)

Re:Need cheaper iron phosphates

[Anonymous Coward]

I purchase a 48v 20AH LiFePO4 pack years ago for about $500. It was Chinese made and if they continue production, the price will surely go down. There are not perfect. Like Lithium Nanos, they require a BMS while the more practical Lithium Manganese (Sony Konion) cells do not. The burst power is not that good either. I can burst 2 maybe 3C from my pack which is 40-60 AMPS. This is plenty enough for my application but if we are talking about high power motorsports, Peugeot should look into A123 (Lithium Nanos).

Check out the White Zombie and Killacycle for some demos of a legitimate 90C battery pack. watch?v=akximCGuLm8

Re:Need cheaper iron phosphates

[Bacon Bits]

As I understand it the Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries pretty much solve the major issues with EV cars.They're fast charging ( 10 min or so ) , long lifespan ( 10+ years ), can output a tremendous amount of power, and have a wide operating temperature range. The issue at the moment seems to be that the price is too steep for them to be economically used in cars.

So, they solve all the issues, except the issue of price. And the issue of weight (and it has a lower power density, currently, ~14% according to Wikipedia).

That's really not "all the issues" then, is it?

Re:Need cheaper iron phosphates

[Anonymous Coward]

Batteries inherently have either high power or long life, if you charge/discharge them fast they also degrade fast.

A similar relation can be seen for power v. energy, you can have either or.

Lithium Iron Phosphate is generally very stable and but better chemistries are available for either peak power or high energy densities. As for price, they are not more expensive than any other well performing chemistry.

Re:Need cheaper iron phosphates

[Anonymous Coward]

LiFePO4 hobby batteries are currently getting to the point where they're not much more expensive than Li-polymer ones (most common incarnation of "standard" Li-ion chemistry, i.e. LiCoO2). But, compared to good ol' NiMH, any Lithium chemistry seems to be too expensive for most electric car manufacturers... and probably also perceived as a little bit too dangerous (although LiFePO4 is better than LiCoO2 in this aspect).

Re:Need cheaper iron phosphates

[Lonewolf666]

I think you missed a few decimal points in the price. Last time I checked prices for LiFePO4 in Germany, the cheapest offers I found (at litrade.de) were around 400 Euros/kWh for large batteries > 40AH. Assuming those were daylight robbery prices, $200 per kWh may be barely credible if you buy directly from the factory. But not $2 per kWh.

On the other hand, the data sheets gave the energy density of those batteries at 80-100 Wh/kg and allowed charging currents of 1C to 3C (Thundersky). So the technology seems actually a tad better than in your numbers.

Re:Need cheaper iron phosphates

[Anonymous Coward]

Cost of batteries is NOT the big problem with electric cars.

The real problem is that we still have to GENERATE the electricity...and most electricity is still produced by fossil fuels.

It is much more efficient to convert fossil fuel directly to mechanical energy in a traditional gas-powered car, than it is to convert fuel to mechanical energy at a power plant, and then to electricity, and lose a large fraction of the energy in transmission/conversion/charging, and then finally convert it to mechanical energy in the car.

The ONLY way that electrical cars can "win" over combustion engines, is if we can produce most of our electricity using alternate energy sources (wind, water, solar, etc).

If you charge your electric car from your own personal wind turbine or water turbine or solar array, kudos. Otherwise if you drive an electric car today, you are almost certainly wasting more energy than your neighbor with a gas car.

Re:Need cheaper iron phosphates

[GrahamCox]

D'oh, you're right, I was getting the kWh and Wh confused there too. I'm seeing a price of AU$78 for a single Thundersky 60Ah cell in quantity, which is 180Wh (2.3Wh per dollar, AU$ are slightly above US$). The energy density of this cell is 78Whr/kg and is a very common cell in many pack configurations. You can get better densities than this, but the raw chemistry has to be packaged so this is the practical density when you put it in a plastic case and add terminals and so on. Even allowing for the poor efficiency of IC, this is still just 3% of petrol. (Though the weight saving in the vehicle as a whole would further improve this). 3C charging is the absolute maximum on these cells, giving ~20 minutes, 0.5C appears to be recommended, and 3C is hard to achieve using domestic supplies - even a smallish 60Ah pack would need 180A at the rated voltage, which is going to exceed the current available from a domestic socket at anything over 17V assuming no losses in the charger. Most packs have voltages much higher than that. The most I can charge at from a domestic socket on my hypothetical 60Ah 72V pack is 0.72C.

Re:Need cheaper iron phosphates

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not too expensive. Even at retail you can get them at lower prices per KWH than the car companies quote for wholesale prices. Of course you can only get them that way from a country with the least vested interest in the automotive status quo: China.

When china takes over the market for batteries and the u.s., Japan, Korea, Germany, etc. whine about jobs and market share, I will just laugh and repeat "burn baby burn."

crazy

[idji]

350 hp=253kW=the energy produced by 1,265 humans sprinting!!!! When are we humans gonna wake up and realize that spending 350 hp to move a human from point A & B is simply irresponsible to the world and future generations, who will curse us for wasting the world's energy resources.

Re:crazy

[Dilligent]

so what... its an electric engine, thereby you can run it at much lower power outputs and in contrast to an ICE it still runs at near-perfect efficiency...

Re:crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

But you also move *way* faster than a human.
And since the cost for speed goes up exponentially, it's understandable again.
Meaning: You can't just add up those 1265 humans and say that's how fast it should go.

Also, human movement is not very efficient.

Anyway... It's not like we are short of sunlight anytime in the non-interstellar-space-travel future. If we really need more than we can put solar collectors in deserts (comparison: 400x400km of solar-thermal power plants is all humanity uses right now), we can use satellites. And if we really manage to need every single photon coming from the sun, we will have long gone to other stars.

Re:crazy

[alendit]

While may be a valid point about resource waste, kW (or hp) are not the right unit of measurement for energy (PROTIP: Joule is).

Besides, it's hard to compare the energy used by electromotors and humans, because a human can't live neither from nuclear energy, nor from coal. Since electrical motors can have incredibly high efficiency, its doesn't HAVE to be a waste to have powerful electrical cars.

Re:crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, if the energy comes from somewhere sensible, it really doesn't matter.
Oh, and it's not like you run a car engine flat-out all the time - if you drive carefully, the actual average energy usage over a normal journey is going to be way lower.

Re:crazy

[Spacelord]

So I guess we should all drive golf carts then?

Re:crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that the point raised is that the problem is not the technology, but what lazy people we became expect from it.

Re:crazy

[gTsiros]

There are motorcycles, mopeds and small engine motorcycles, not to mention public transit.

think about something else rather than your convenience for a change.

i read sometime/someplace about some dude (paraphrasing) "i will not give up one comfort that i have left, therefore i will go o doing 100miles each working day to and fro work".

comfort. that's what he was after. no, we are not here to "live comfortably". we are here to give effort and make this god forsaken place at least livable.

Re:crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe propel yourself under your own damn power. Heard of a bicycle?

Re:crazy

[Bacon Bits]

I don't know, given the gas prices of today and level of unemployment in the West it might be cheaper to hire 1,265 humans to pull my car.

Re:crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Except you don't have to necessarily use all that power all the time.

Brief larger inefficiencies can sometimes be better than longer smaller inefficiencies.

Don't assume smaller numbers is automatically better, if it takes you longer to get to speed, or more power to maintain that speed, you're wasting tons.

Re:crazy

[BlackPignouf]

Or you know, the power delivered by 350 horses!
Yep, definitely too much!
I agree this is overkill, just like almost 100% of every car on earth, even the "small ones".

Re:crazy

[Spacelord]

Seriously, fuck narrow minded people like you who only see the bad side of personal transportation.

What you need to realize is that the availability of cheap energy and the development of personal transportation have contributed more than anything to the progress of Western civilization in the 20th century and the corresponding rise in life expectancy. In only 100 years, life expectancy in the US has risen from 47 to 76. Personal transportation is what enables a modern society to work, and without it it would collapse.

It's also not about one dude not wanting to give up his comfort, you have to look at the bigger picture. All the alternatives you mention are never going to be a suitable alternative for everyone. For instance, public transit is already near its peak capacity in my country (Belgium), yet it only supports 10-15% of the daily traffic, depending on whose figures you believe. Physically it's simply impossible to make trains and busses go from every place to every other place, on a reasonable time and at a reasonable cost. And mopeds and motorcycles? Are you kidding me? They are dangerous, uncomfortable and not all that environmentally friendly either.

Either way, at the end of the day, people are going to choose the mode of transportation that works best for them and you can't blame them if in most cases that happens to be a car.

Is this sustainable in the long term? No, it's not because eventually we will run out of oil, and we WILL need real alternatives. However, I believe that this problem will resolve itself economically. In the future oil prices will continue to rise, and at some point in time it will get so expensive that the alternatives become more attractive, and they will gain traction. That is when people will start to switch, not sooner. Until then ... let everyone use what works best for them.

Another thing I strongly believe in is that we shouldn't just focus on changing our mode of transportation, but we should also focus on making transportation less needed. For instance, I have a 90km one way daily commute. I could just as easily do most of my work from home or from a satelite office closer to home, all I need is a laptop and a network connection, but my employer insists that everyone works centralized and that my physical presence is required. There are many people just like me. Work on changing that mentality, and you will not only do good for the environment but you will also actually improve people's lives.

Re:crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

kW is a unit of power, not energy. So please, to make a proper comparison, multiply the average power (not maximum) used by the car with the time it takes for the car to reach destination. Do the same for the human. Once you have done that please come back and repost.

Re:crazy

[idji]

You are one of the few repliers who understood my concern. We humans have raped the planet in the last 200 years, and still no-one seems to get it. Maybe if the Mississippi wipes Louisiana off the map tomorrow, people might start to wake up - we still didn't get the last two "Mother Earth" "messages" to that city (no, I am not a techno-Gaian!)
The shortterm (i.e. today) solution is to cut our own carbon footprint dramatically - and the personal car is step number one, where VAST energy savings are to be made.
Even "green" cars, hybrids etc, still use 100's of hp to simply move humans. Electrobikes are even much better requiring only 200W, instead of >100kW for a car. If someone invents an electrobike that can take a person weathersafe 15 km, we have an awesome solution.

Re:crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we should use our feets

Re:crazy

[LC Trucido]

No, just sprint everywhere.

Re:crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a race track, so technically, 340hp to go from point A to point A. Does that enrage you less, or more?

Re:crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I think he wants us all to sprint everywhere we need to go.

Re:crazy

[Smauler]

Working from home increases energy usage in most cases. This is due solely to having to heat or cool many small residences rather than one large workplace, for a large proportion of the year. Honestly, although it seems anti-intuitive, working from home is _not_ a good thing overall enviromentally. It may improve people's lives, and it may reduce particulate emission in city centres, but overall it's a bad thing environmentally.

Re:crazy

[Spacelord]

Yes, I've heard of that study too, but I don't completely buy it. First of all, it depends a lot on the length of the commute. For instance, I am pretty sure that the energy I burn on my 180km roundtrip could warm my apartment all day and then some.
It also depends on the thermal insulation of your home. New houses here have to comply with strict standards with regards to insulation these days and I only have to compare my heating bill of my new appartment with the old one to see that it helps a lot.
Then there's the local climate, we have a moderate climate and I really only need to turn on the heating in the coldest winter months. Most homes don't even have air conditioning here, so that's no issue in the summer.
Finally, heating and cooling are two things that are much less dependent on dirty fossil fuels than cars. Most homes here are still heated with gas, which, while still a fossil fuel, burns a lot cleaner than petrol or diesel in a combustion engine. It's also much easier to switch to energy efficient electric heat pumps for both cooling and heating than it is to switch to electric cars.

Sure, it's fast...

[Jawnn]

...but it's, well, you know... French.

Re:Sure, it's fast...

[xMrFishx]

Surely better for fleeing in then...until it goes flat.

Re:Sure, it's fast...

[Anonymous Coward]

The channel is only 30km wide so it's okay even for an electric car.

88 mph

[Anonymous Coward]

If my calculations are correct... when this sucker averages 88 mph, you're going to see some serious shit!

Formula 1 is partly electric

[mangu]

Formula 1 had KERS (kinectic energy recovery system) as an option in 2009 and a required feature in all 2011 cars. This is, essentially, a regenerative braking system. It charges a battery during braking and gets an 80 HP boost from an electric motor during acceleration.

Re:Formula 1 is partly electric

[tiptone]

Don't forget the Porsche team using the Williams KERS system which stores the energy in a flywheel, which for some reason scares the shit out of me...

Re: human movement is not very efficient

[QuasiSteve]

Skipping is Magnificent!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YsJ186p17U#t=0m20s

Re:And I thought EVs were about getting rid of oil

[Spacelord]

It's still for "faggz" though. 9 minutes around the Nordschleife with a custom made 340bhp car?
Wake me up when they can do a sub 8 minute time. There are combustion engined cars with the aerodynamics of a brick that can do that.

Re:85 MPH ?? INDY 19118 BEAT THAT !!

[Gordonjcp]

Indy Car racing is just heavy cars going at normal road speeds around an oval track. Have you had a look at the Nurburgring?

ATTENTION SLASHDOT JANITORS: FIX YOUR BROKEN WEBSITE. Non-ASCII characters used to work, now they don't. You have a regression. Fix it.

Not for rent

[Haxx]

  In many rental situations, if you rent an apartment , electric cars aren't an option.

Re:Not for rent

[Anonymous Coward]

I love broad, sweeping comments like this one. "Many" in what context? My sister rents an apartment in Los Angeles, and the 4 units share a driveway with a 3-car garage out back. No one pays for electricity. I would love to surprise her with an EV conversion or even one of those Neighborhood Electric Vehicles to take to The Grove or the Farmers Market. So yeah, if you think all apartments come in tall buildings on Central Park West, sure EVs may seem inappropriate. Luckily, some of us get out and know that's not always the case.

Re:Not for rent

[CastrTroy]

Up here in Canada most rental unit parking spots have electricity for the purpose of plugging in the block heater. I'm sure most parking garages could be easily retrofitted to have charging cables put in. And I'm sure the person who owned the building would happily tack an extra fee onto your rent for the convenience of charging your car. They probably charge for the parking spot anyway.

It could probably be even faster

[Anonymous Coward]

If it weren't saddled with those ridiculous doors, it would probably be even faster. I would imagine that the dropping the door sill height to accommodate the seats swinging out compromises their ability to stiffen the car at the sides, never mind the necessity of beefing up the "door" hinges to support the driver's weight.

Of course we have to give them credit for making a concept car that doesn't merely run, but goes like hell. Still, I'd like to see what they can do with a more conventional car.

huh?

[kharchenko]

Wow, that's really slow! 9 minutes is barely beating Ford Focus. For comparison, Mini Cooper S does it in 8:52. I thought electric cars can be just as fast. What gives?

Re:huh?

[Chibo]

I think you missed the part about it being in the wet.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. That's very slow. This car has 340 HP, the white zombie, fastest street legal electric, has 500, and could blow this away. The Peugeot can beat records that have only been run by toy electric cars.

But no, electrics are not faster than gas. The best gas will beat the best electric, but the electric will do it for 1/50th the cost in fuel and be a close 2nd.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that's really slow! 9 minutes is barely beating Ford Focus. For comparison, Mini Cooper S does it in 8:52. I thought electric cars can be just as fast. What gives?

The article says the time was set during 'wet weather'. That's a bit vague, but surely it would have been quite a bit quicker on a 100% dry track?

Re:huh?

[GameboyRMH]

I don't know if the White Zombie has the range (and it's certainly not set up to turn any corners). But IIRC he says that he can charge it back up after a drag run in just a couple of minutes so it obviously has a pretty decent capacity.

Re:huh?

[BCGlorfindel]

Maybe not. Having more HP out of an electric car isn't the limiting factor in good lap times. It might be great for drag racing, but when it adds an enormous amount of weight, it destroys lap times. When Top Gear was running test laps with Tesla's electric Lotus it was terrible for lap times because it was just too heavy to corner well, even though it could beat a gas Lotus on a drag strip.

that's Ok....

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure the roads here in Michigan are much to deteriorated to avg. any more than 35 mpg.

Sabine Schmitz + Ford Transit Diesel on Top Gear

[Anonymous Coward]

Sabine Schmitz managed to do a lap of the Nürburgring driving a diesel Ford Transit van in 10 minutes 8 seconds on Top Gear. Makes the previous record of 9 minutes 50 seconds for an electric car look pretty unimpressive.

The Nuerburgring?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the Nuerburgring?

Not very fast for the Nurbergring

[Anonymous Coward]

My time, going round in a 2l Subaru Legacy Estate (i.e. the smallest engine they make, and a station wagon too), in the rain with my snow tyres on and my wife and 1yr old child on board, was 15 mins 20. And that was on the first (and only) lap. And it is our only car, so I had to be careful. So if they have made a special sports car and have multiple tries and the fastest possible engine, and could practise as many times as they like, and they aren't risking the lives of their whole family, then 9 minutes is not a very good time at all. They've nothing to celebrate here. I've been a passenger round more quickly than that in a friend's TVR.

And rightly so

[Anonymous Coward]

In the meantime, I've been busy posting comments all over the BBC News site that they keep misspelling words like "color", and that their obsession with changing abbreviations like "NASA" into words like "Nasa" makes their entire country look silly.

I've scrolled down this page, and almost all of the comments so far are petty crap like this - most of them should probably be moderated as off-topic.

Maybe they are 350 smaller electrical horses,

[Anonymous Coward]

the kind you put under Christmas tree and run on batteries.

Wonder what the boys of Top Gear would say?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure they wouldn't be kind words...

DBM Energy news

[Chris Gunn]

The most promising battery tech I know of is from DBM Energy of Germany.

Just recently they've had government testing of their new car battery prototype, as well as testing by the independent firm Dekra.

http://www.allcarselectric.com/blog/1058119_its-official-dbm-energys-electric-car-battery-is-real

http://green.autoblog.com/2011/04/05/dbm-energy-record-breaking-kolibri-battery-passes-government-tests/

This is reassuring as their claims are seemed so extreme:

"Mr. Hoffmann also cites estimates that the mass-production cost of a 98.8 kWh version of the pack would range from 800 to 1,000 euros, or from about $1,100 to $1,400, which is thousands below current costs."

http://rumors.automobilemag.com/cars-computers-best-buy-sell-electric-vehicles-45795.html