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Long-range Electric Car World Speed Record Broken By Australian Students
New submitter is_this_gdog writes: The Sunswift solar car team from UNSW Australia has broken an international world speed record for the fastest long-range electric vehicle, averaging a speed of 107km/h (66mph) over 500km (310miles) from a single charge with their car, eVe. Solar panels were not used for this record (with solar, the car has a range of over 500 miles), the challenge was endurance speed with battery only. There are faster electric cars, and one or two with longer range if you go slow enough — Sunswift eVe is the first to officially do 500kms at highway speeds (pending official FIA approval). Pictures of the car are available here.
The body is obviously specially designed to be extremely aerodynamic -- the undercarriage of a typical car is largely missing -- which means it would not be comfortable / practical for normal usage. Also, the tires were extremely narrow to reduce friction. Wake me up when we have a breakthrough on battery technology that actually allows for practical long distance EVs at a reasonable price and/or can recharge in less than half an hour.
However with my current car I get about 450 miles per tank. at 66mph.
Now the issue is some times I need to drive for 8-10 hours. So I will need to fuel up mid way. The charge time for electric may still be an issue.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Yes, but there is also a 290% higher chance of hitting a kangaroo than on cooler continents, which could really slow you down. So I think it balances.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
While perhaps to be taken with a pinch of salt - http://www.teslamotors.com/en_... - with the larger battery - at 65MPH claims to get 261 miles.
To get a Tesla to 350 miles needs an extra 30kWh of battery - about 120kg at the same performance as the existing battery.
This will easily fit in the trunk.
Wow only 45 miles longer than a Tesla Model S that has been in production for a while now, that is truly a massive breakthrough
I guess because the air is warmer it's less dense, making this kind of record "easier"?
The record was set about 100k SW of Melbourne (Actually the Australian Automotive Research Centre near Anglesea) in Victoria, in Winter.
The temps there in the last week were around 12 Deg C (55 F)
So much for 'less dense' air
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I forgot to mention .. Pretty well at Sea level as well.
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No, but I certainly wouldn't try to do those 6-7 hour drives in a gasoline car without a break either. If you're going to stop for a bite midway, why not charge up while you're at it? And then you're not increasing the length of your trip.
Battery swaps might make this even less of an issue (a two minute pit stop rather than a thirty minute pit stop), but I'm a bit more skeptical about the practicality of those.
With the charging networks coming along, saying that EVs can't do big trips is (or will shortly be) false. The question is how inconvenient a big trip will be, and I'd argue that as long as your EV can drive longer than you'd want to before taking a break, it's practical.
I guess because the air is warmer it's less dense, making this kind of record "easier"?
The record was set about 100k SW of Melbourne (Actually the Australian Automotive Research Centre near Anglesea) in Victoria, in Winter.
The temps there in the last week were around 12 Deg C (55 F)
So much for 'less dense' air
I think he was talking cognitively less dense than from a US perspective. The people there are less dense. ;)
That's a bit odd, no? If I leave my home in Montreal at 9AM to drive to Toronto, I'll stop at noon for lunch. I imagine most people don't drive 6-7 hours without a break.
Driving an EV around town is all well and good, but until they can do big trips, they'll just be a curiosity.
Oh come on.. I'm no EV advocate, but they have their place and driving around town is that place. You just plug it in when you get home each time. For commuters, which is actually the BULK of the miles I put on my cars, and EV that can reliably do 200 miles on a charge in real world conditions and recharge over night would work for me just fine. I own two (soon to be three) vehicles, so why not have an EV in the stable if it was actually cost effective? I wouldn't mind. When hitting the long road, the EV would stay parked at home. I'd just use it as a commuter car.
The problem with EV's is only partially range and recharge times, their real problem is cost. They are REALLY expensive to buy and operate. So much so that a standard gasoline powered car works out to be cheaper for most of us overall.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
There may be an exception or two to be made, but its always good to stop on long travels, just for health reasons, and to keep the brain alert for driving.
I drive faster than 66 mph every day going to work and don't notice anyone but motorcyclists wearing helmets and nobody wearing fire suits... Lol.
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I think that is not really the case. The initial extra cost of the battery is so high, even after subsidies the break even period for an electric car compared to gas car is very long. If this issue is addressed, some people will be interested in buying these cars, with 80 to 100 mile range.
Once people start buying electric cars purely on economic grounds, a whole array of secondary services will come up to alleviate the range problem. Charging stations would expand the commute distance from 30 mile max one way to 60 mile max one way. Gas car rental companies will come up with subscription plans to give access to a gas car a few times a year. Even car makers might offer such deals. BMW already offers gas car loaner for a few times a year for the buyers of BMW i3. Towed range extender batteries might show up. Towed range extender diesel packs might show up. Franchises offering charged battery swaps can happen.
Free market is a bitch. It is thwarting electric cars right now despite many great things about electric cars. No timing belt replacement, no oil changes, clean and simple cars, without any serious tranmission issues. Motor replacement is an order of magnitude simpler than IC-engine-transmission replacement. But battery cost is too high and the free market is emphatically saying thumbs down. Once the battery cost problem is fixed, the very same free market will turn around in a dime and nothing can stop electric cars from peeling of a significant market share. But it will happen only if the cost issue is addressed. It will not happen before that time.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Battery swaps might make this even less of an issue (a two minute pit stop rather than a thirty minute pit stop), but I'm a bit more skeptical about the practicality of those.
Why?! We do it with propane tanks now and doing it with EV batteries makes MUCH more sense. Only problem is getting everyone to agree on a standard size/configuration to make the stations just like gas stations, minus the pumps.
I guess because the air is warmer it's less dense, making this kind of record "easier"?
The record was set about 100k SW of Melbourne (Actually the Australian Automotive Research Centre near Anglesea) in Victoria, in Winter.
The temps there in the last week were around 12 Deg C (55 F)
So much for 'less dense' air
mid winter?!?! thats what we've been havin for the last week in mid summer!!! (yay Canada) :)
A Tesla with an extra 1/2 battery pack would bust that record.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Fuck no. I just had my first meal since Monday, why do I need to break a mere car journey?
I've been reading through the comments and there seems to be so much vitriol aimed at electric vehicles. Sure, this isn't a practical car, but electric vehicles in general can be very practical. We have a petrol powered car at the moment but when it eventually dies (which won't be for some time given how reliable it is, go Mazda!) I would seriously consider an all electric simply because we rarely if ever do trips in our car that are longer than the range of the Nissan Leaf for instance. One tank of fuel lasts us about three weeks so we're averaging around 100 miles a week. We have a garage so we can keep an electric topped up (from roof mounted solar panels) and for the once or twice a year where we need the range of a petrol car I have no issue with nipping over to the nearest car rental place and grabbing whatever I fancy for the trip. The cost savings of switching to an electric will be substantial and we would never have to waste five minutes filling the car up every few weeks so that's a plus.
It only makes sense to make the switch when we're shopping for a new car but electrics have become easily practical for an every day car when you live in a city and the cost is dropping down to the affordable range. If we were in the country then I would more likely look to a hybrid but for our needs, lugging around a petrol motor just for the rare times we would have to travel more than 100 miles round trip makes no sense.
If none of the above applies to you and you tow your boat everywhere just in case, and you won't even start your vehicle unless you intend to do an 800 mile round trip, well then, buy a huge 4x4 and be happy with your choice.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Except this was done in southern Victoria, It is about 10C there on average at the moment.
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Tesla is just starting their expansion, sure, but the plan shows three superchargers between Montreal and Toronto alone...
They build them along popular routes, with the plan being to have them ever few hundred kilometers. They're programmed into the satnav, so planning a road trip shouldn't be any more complicated than plugging your destination address into the car and hitting the gas peddle, with the car routing you to superchargers as required.
You call that a car? wake me up when they achieve that while driving a converted humvee...
Battery swaps are unbelievably more complex to swap than switching a standardized propane tank. EV batteries (for long-range EVs) are massively larger and heavier than a propane tank, and in some cases are actually structural parts of the vehicle. Tesla designed an automated system that works for the Model S, which knows where the bolts are on the battery to remove it from the car as well as exactly how much to tighten the bolts. It'd probably also work on the Model X, which uses the same battery packs. But what about the Model S, which won't? Now you've got to handle two different kinds of battery packs, potentially different sizes and shapes, with bolts in different places... And then, handling it for other manufacturers? It's not hard to create a charge station adapter, but handling battery packs that are completely different sizes/shapes? No way. They'd have to standardize to a degree that would be a severe restriction in car design.
Propane tanks of a given size always deliver the same amount of propane. Batteries, not so. So I should drive in with my new EV, swap out the battery for one near its end of life that only delivers half as much charge and whose internal resistance has tripled? No thanks.
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Inspirational. You managed to elicit a dick waving competition from our fellow geeks in the US, all chanting "Tesla".
But Telsa isn't in the same league. It can't be. It's a mass produced product.
Sadly, they don't know what we know. We may be able to design the 1st one. But we can't build the next 1000 economically, unlike Tesla.
Please guys, devote some of they enthusiasm and energy to figure out how to manufacture the thing. Don't do the work for some Chinese company.
Show us how.