Green GT's All-Electric Supercar Unveiled 196
Mike writes "Swiss auto company Green GT recently released the first details on a svelte all-electric supercar that is being heralded as the most powerful electric race car ever built. Designed with the 2011 Le Mans race in mind, the Twenty-4 will boast a sleek carbon fiber chassis and twin 100-kw electric motors totaling 400 hp — enough to push the vehicle from 0-60 mph in 4 seconds flat, and to a top speed of 171 mph. GreenGT's head engineer Christophe Schwartz has stated that 'The GreenGT Twenty-4 design study could become our 2011 Le Mans Prototype electric racer, or it could even become an electric road-going supercar. There is a possibility to do both!'"
Re:24 hour charge?? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's been a while since I watched that race, but from memory I think Le Mans pit stops aren't the 4-second in-n-out with four fresh tyres and a full tank that you get in Formula 1. They last a bit longer than that.
Re:Why not say the torque rating? (Score:3, Insightful)
Side note: 0-60 mph in 4 seconds flat. Ummm ... doesn't the Tesla Roadster do it in sub 4 and its a consumer vehicle ... just a thought
Yes, and the Wrightspeed X1, based on the Ariel Atom, does it in just over 3 sec.
Then again, straight acceleration isn't the most important thing in an endurance race. Audi has been cleaning up the big endurance races of late with their diesel engine, not by being the fastest, but by good team strategy and needing fewer pitstops for fillups.
Re:Heat Problems? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which none of those scoops would do.....
So again I ask....?
Re:Racecars? (Score:3, Insightful)
What would you call "an industrial scale"? I've been reading over market research on electric vehicle forecasts for a business, and they're all over the board. However, it's safe to say that almost everyone is calling for them to be in at least "sizable" numbers by 2015. The most extreme forecast I've come across is Wintergreen's, which is, if I recall the numbers correctly, 32.7 million shipped by 2015. I find that number a bit hard to believe, but on the other hand, when there's perhaps three dozen marques planning to build them in 5 to 6 figure quantities per year within the next few years, some of the lower-end figures are equally hard to believe as well. I tend to favor an 8 million shipped by 2015 scenario.
Still a fairly small percentage of global sales, but a relevant number.
Re:Racecars? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, currently there's a lot of stigma about 100% electrical cars. Many people (potential customers) believe that completely electric vehicles must necessarily have at least one of the following weaknesses due to limitations with electric engines in cars:
A.) Too slow
B.) Incapable of driving very far
C.) Requiring too much time to refuel
D.) Too fragile
I would think that making one that can compete well at the 24 hours of Le Mans would go a long way toward changing those perceptions.
That's still a lot of power... (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if you halve the power to 100kW (say the car only goes 50% power on average), those are quite big numbers. Who wants to be sitting in the car while 36MW flows into it?
The transfer is unlikely to be 100% efficient so there will be waste heat generated. 1MW of waste heat is no funny.
If you're going to use supercapacitors or batteries or fuel cells, you'd be charging/filling them outside the car, and then plugging them into the car and hoping they don't blow up in the process (it's still easier to make safer than pumping megawatts of electricity into the car).
Re:settled by Wolfram (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:24 hour charge?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:24 hour charge?? (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm not sure I get your question. What's wrong with having batteries charged up and swapping batteries out? It's not as if the gasoline/petrol and diesel folks are refining their stuff from sweet crude barrels onsite. They most likely are going to have a massive set they just swap out.
Aside from swapping batteries out, there's also liquid battery tech, where the charged and uncharged separates out. They could simply pump out the old and in with the new charged liquid. The problem there though is the movement of the liquid during the race as you turn and hit race curbs and get rear ended and what not that occurs during a race.
The problem isn't how they are going to do it, it's are they going to compete with any methodology they come up with. There were reasons Audi, which themselves or their engines have dominated most recent LeMans, went to diesel--power density over gasoline is one of them. The electric car may win out on engine reliability and easier to swap out parts, but the traditional vehicles will have fewer pit stops for fuel.
The other issue that people seem to ignore is that LeMans isn't exactly a level playing field to begin with. LeMans took action against the Weinkel engine users and manufacturers. That engine is superior in power to weight ratio, which means more fuel can be carried compared to similar horsepower but traditional engines, and in fuel economy because of the weight difference. Additionally, I also believe it was a more efficient engine still even if pulling the same weight.
Anyways, LeMans handicapped anyone using the Weinkel years ago. So even if the electric whoops the high compression diesels, the electrics still will not have gone up against the best.