175 MPH Student-Built EV Smashes Speed Record 164
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."
Cmon (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Cmon (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Don't you read Wikipedia? (Score:2, Insightful)
In the 1890s, electric cars were competitive with conventional petrol-engined vehicles in speed and range, manufacturers even began to address the problems of recharging by introducing removable battery packs. Given the cost of a non horse-powered vehicle then, cheap didn't enter the equation, but they were certainly fast enough It's all here [wikipedia.org]. The fastest car in 1899, at 100km/h (62mph) was La Jamais Contente [wikipedia.org], driven by Camille Jenatzy, a Belgian racing car driver.
In the early 1900s, London had a large fleet of electric taxis.
Baby steps?
Thanks to the fantasy of "cheap oil", electric vehicles became uncompetitive. We're only taking interest again because "conventional" fuel is becoming dearer.