175 MPH Student-Built EV Smashes Speed Record

An anonymous reader writes "A team of Brigham Young University students recently smashed the world land speed record for electric vehicles by hitting a top speed of 175 miles per hour in their self-built electric car. The car, named 'Electric Blue,' reached high speeds thanks to lithium iron phosphate batteries and its streamlined design, which is capped by a tail fin for speed and agility."

Comments

Re:Cmon

[cirby]

Pretty much every major technical advance you can think of in internal combustion cars that made them faster and cheaper came from people racing them.

Of course, they've been getting more expensive over the last couple of decades - but a huge chunk of that cost has been the addition of things that cars don't really need to run - safety, electronic gadgets, emissions controls. And even with that, most modern "sporty" family cars will leave all but the hottest 1970s era sports or muscle cars in the dust, especially when handling is considered.

If we made new cars to 1970s safety standards, without mileage and pollution controls, they'd be insanely fast, much lighter, and about 1/2 the price.

The side effects of that can be left as an exercise for the reader.