The Flux Capacitor Becomes World's Fastest Street-Legal Electric Car (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @10:00PM from the speed-racer dept.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Ars Technica: Jonny Smith now has the world's fastest street-legal electric car, called the Flux Capacitor. Previously, the Flux Capacitor was only Europe's fastest street-legal electric vehicle, with a less than 11 second, 1/4-mile time under it's belt. Now it can run the quarter-mile in 9.87 seconds, thanks to the extra 44 cells added to the existing 144-cell Hyperdrive Innovation lithium-ion battery pack. That has boosted the car from 370v to 400v and the range from about 30 miles (48km) to about 50 miles (80km). "The combination of big voltage, amps, and phenomenal grip gave us early ten-second quarter miles, and when we braved the RPM limit of the motors, we managed a nine [second run]," Smith told Ars Technica. "Despite all of this power and speed, the little Enfield still felt smooth, stable, and happy, which is unbelievable given that it was designed to do 40 miles an hour."

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Re:Fastest in what way? by bjorniac · 2016-07-19 23:05 · Score: 3, Insightful

I would hope one of the requirements to be a "street-legal" car is that it can turn, at the very least...
If we make a horrendous assumption of constant acceleration we can get a maximum on it's 0-60 time:
s=1/2 at^2, t=9.87s, s=400m gives a=8.21 m/s^2
60mph = 60*1600/3600 m/s= 26.67 m/s
t60 = 26.67/8.21 = 3.25 seconds.
So we can conservatively conclude this vehicle does 0-60 in under 3.25 seconds.
Someone with better knowledge of the acceleration/velocity curves of cars can probably correct me on this, but I'm assuming that acceleration reduces with velocity rather than increases, due to wind resistance etc. If this is right 3.25 should be considered a maximum - if the acceleration reduces above 60mph, say, then the car must accelerate to this velocity in even less time to get a quarter mile in 9.87s.
From the data given we can only conclude that its top speed is somewhat higher than 400m/9.87s = about 40m/s or 90mph, but of course that would assume instant acceleration to 90, in all likelihood its top speed is far higher.