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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."
German circuit and a French car. Can we get the speed in a civilized km/h?
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.
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."
"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.
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...
You can fill up the gas tank in about a minute. You cant really do that with a battery pack.
It's the Nordschleife. http://www.plugincars.com/fastest-ev-nurburgring-peugeot-ex1-107128.html
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.
.. 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.
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.
He's American. They like driving around in ovals.
Good turning on a car? What's that? Just put a big engine in it.
no recharge needed, but after three laps the long extension cord pulled out of outlet
And, faster than a van driven by a certain woman.
All rites reversed 2010
"Electric Cars are for teh Faggz."
These tactics work, fast car marketing is aimed at men thinking with their testes.
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.
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.
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...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
You don't have to push the Mercedes to the garage, but you can carry a can of fuel back to the car.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just smile and ask them how they like spending $9 a gallon for gas for their 4 cylinder micros.
So do gas tanks.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
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.
Kid-proof tablet..
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. :)