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.

That's great, but ...

[jschultz410]

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.

Re:That's great, but ...

[CaptainLard]

Right, because gas powered cars built specifically to break speed/efficiency records are so much more practical...oh wait, they're also worthless for everything but breaking records and look just like this one. Good thing some of that engineering knowledge transfers over to consumer vehicles.

And in case you missed it, several Tesla's have already made cross country road trips. It might take 30 min to charge but 3 years ago it took 12 hours. Why would you want to go to sleep now and miss all the exciting rapid development? Do you sleep through movies to watch the credits?