Peugeot EX1 Sets Electric Car Lap Record At Nuerburgring 241
Posted
by
timothy
from the zippidee-hoo-ha dept.
from the zippidee-hoo-ha dept.
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."
Re:Charge time. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Why Not? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
Wow, that's really slow! 9 minutes is barely beating Ford Focus. For comparison, Mini Cooper S does it in 8:52 [wikipedia.org]. I thought electric cars can be just as fast. What gives?
Re:85.9? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just smile and ask them how they like spending $9 a gallon for gas for their 4 cylinder micros.