Peugeot EX1 Sets Electric Car Lap Record At Nuerburgring 241
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."
Metric? (Score:2, Funny)
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Why is this modded negative? Disagreeing is not reason for modding. The guy has a point.
And slashdout could realize they america is not the universe. Not even the center of it.
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For all Americans out there: The Nürburgring lies in Germany. Germany is a country in Europe. And Europe is the capital of Amsterdam.
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Oh, you did that all on your own, did you? All those Canadians and Britons were just there for show, weren't they? And I'm glad that your standards on treating criminals, on healthcare, on environmental care and political elections are not catching on here in Europe.
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All those Canadians and Britons were just there for show, weren't they?
...and Soviets...
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Pretty much, if Hitler hadnt bitten of more then he could chew on the east-front, chances are they could have conquered britain, and where would the americans be in the european war without their largest aircraft carrier?
on topic, this performance is rather pathetic, 9:50 around the ring rather sucks. German ring specialist sabine schmitz did a 10:08 in a ford transit diesel.
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Did you read my original comment? I said "Win a world war and you get to set the standards".
Last time I checked, when the war was won, Britain and Canada were on Imperial units.
And no Britain wasn't only "for show". They were good for morale and the US troops found them entertaining. And they did that thing in Bletchley, which was somewhat helpful.
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You conventiently ignored the rest of my comment. Luckily you haven't set any standards, even after the war, because Europe and the rest of the world soon went their own ways again. Hell, even your scientists use SI units now, to keep on par with the rest of the world. Yes, we were very grateful when you freed us from Hitler, but lately the US have turned into arrogant bastards and terrorists, and you will have to worry soon about the rest of the world blindly following your policies.
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Don't get too upset, I was only joking. It was a personal troll for a friend of mine here on Slashdot who happens to be British.
Heck, when I play racing games, I always set my display to km. When I read Shakespeare, I measure his work in pentameters.
I'm a real metric guy.
And I have tons of respect for the British. I think that thing with the teeth gives your face character, though you must have to floss with sailing rope. And I'm a big fan of Hammer films.
So what do you say, can we be friends now?
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When you win a world war, then you get to set the standards.
I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.
9 min not very impressive .. (Score:2)
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We are not talking about production vehicles here. 9 minutes is impressive for an electric car.
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Those were exactly my thoughts. 9 minutes for a 340bhp car? That seems terribly slow. Even my 15 year old E36 M3 GT (295bhp) does better than that.
My guess is that the weight of the batteries is holding it back. This shows one of the biggest drawbacks of electrical cars: batteries make them way too heavy, so unless battery capacity increases drastically, the handling is going to be poor.
For what it's worth: the energy density of a battery is about 20 times less than that of gasoline. Now an electrical engin
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Well, seeing that Peugeot boasts about it and that it was a record breaking attempt and that it was without a doubt performed by a professional driver, yes I consider that 9 minute time to be representative and I find it rather underwhelming. I'm sure they could still shave off a few seconds if they tried, but it's not as if they could beat it down to sub 8 minutes, which is where the real performance cars start.
To give you a comparison: someone I know personally and who is a good-but-not-incredibly-talente
F1 championship (Score:2)
I wonder when a Formula 1 championship will be organized for electric cars only. I hope very soon - that will get the technology development going much faster.
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Formula 1 is partly electric (Score:3)
Formula 1 had KERS (kinectic energy recovery system) as an option in 2009 and a required feature in all 2011 cars. This is, essentially, a regenerative braking system. It charges a battery during braking and gets an 80 HP boost from an electric motor during acceleration.
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That should be a hoot, cars going slower each lap with only the sound of scrubbing tires. When do tickets on sale? I'll be sure not to buy them.
Part of the glory of racing is the mechanical symphony of combustion engines..
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Ah yes, the halcyon days of the 1995 season when v8, v10, and v12 powered cars competed against each other instead of rev limited 2.4l v8s.
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Man, I remember in the 1980s when they pulled 1000 horsepowers from a 1.5 l engine. Those were the days!
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F1 hasn't been a technology leader for a long time - the rules to make cars cheaper severily limit the technology - no turbocharging, the most efficient consumer cars today are turbocharged, no "too advanced" electronics, tires are sub-par quality to make the races more interesting, I could continue the list forever. Yes, there are reasons for these rules and they are mainly a) to keep costs down and b) make the series more interesting for the viewer. Bringing elecronic cars to F1 could maybe advance the te
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Well, let's then make a rally championship for electric cars! Is more fun to watch, too.
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There is currently talk of changing the engines in F1 to 1.8L 4 cylinder turbos to make the sport more "green".
There is resistance from some teams, and speculation that as an alternative there will be an electric vehicle support class racing at F1 events.
Not FWD? (Score:2)
Very impressive feat. I'm just amazed its no FWD, being a Peugeot and all.
Need cheaper iron phosphates (Score:3)
As I understand it the Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries pretty much solve the major issues with EV cars.They're fast charging ( 10 min or so ) , long lifespan ( 10+ years ), can output a tremendous amount of power, and have a wide operating temperature range. The issue at the moment seems to be that the price is too steep for them to be economically used in cars.
Anybody know more than wikipedia on what is being done to get them down in price? It seems to me that if those can be made more cheaply then you've basically cracked the entire problem with EV cars.
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As I understand it the Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries pretty much solve the major issues with EV cars.They're fast charging ( 10 min or so ) , long lifespan ( 10+ years ), can output a tremendous amount of power, and have a wide operating temperature range. The issue at the moment seems to be that the price is too steep for them to be economically used in cars.
So, they solve all the issues, except the issue of price. And the issue of weight (and it has a lower power density, currently, ~14% according to Wikipedia).
That's really not "all the issues" then, is it?
crazy (Score:2)
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So I guess we should all drive golf carts then?
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There are motorcycles, mopeds and small engine motorcycles, not to mention public transit.
think about something else rather than your convenience for a change.
i read sometime/someplace about some dude (paraphrasing) "i will not give up one comfort that i have left, therefore i will go o doing 100miles each working day to and fro work".
comfort. that's what he was after. no, we are not here to "live comfortably". we are here to give effort and make this god forsaken place at least livable.
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Seriously, fuck narrow minded people like you who only see the bad side of personal transportation.
What you need to realize is that the availability of cheap energy and the development of personal transportation have contributed more than anything to the progress of Western civilization in the 20th century and the corresponding rise in life expectancy. In only 100 years, life expectancy in the US has risen from 47 to 76. Personal transportation is what enables a modern society to work, and without it it wou
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I don't know, given the gas prices of today and level of unemployment in the West it might be cheaper to hire 1,265 humans to pull my car.
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Or you know, the power delivered by 350 horses!
Yep, definitely too much!
I agree this is overkill, just like almost 100% of every car on earth, even the "small ones".
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The shortterm (i.e. today) solution is to cut our own carbon footprint dramatically - and the personal car is step number one, where VAST energy savings are to be ma
Sure, it's fast... (Score:2)
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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: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.
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You can fill up the gas tank in about a minute. You cant really do that with a battery pack.
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.
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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.
i doubt it, in a race car (or any car for that matter), you want the weight as much in board and down low as possible, if possible smack in the middle of the wheels, an inch above the road, that doesnt make for very easy access during a pit stop.
The only way i see a F1 pitstop style battery change if with the battery back right at the back of the car, and while some weight over the rear wheels is good for grip, this will really give an unbalanced car
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Nothing. What does actually charging a battery pack on a race car instead of simply swapping in a fully charged one do with sedans?
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They don't. That's the point. You wouldn't compare a stock sedan to race cars, so why compare consumer electric cars to race cars. If you were designing an electric race car for a long range race you would give it swappable batteries. If you are designing a consumer car you can ignore criteria that are important for racing but not consumer cars (like fast charge time).
Until we have the technology to make a viable electric sports car they should be left to what they do best, econobox grocery getter.
The needs of a sports car aren't even close to that of a race car. Sports cars are just used as commuter cars by people that want something t
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If you are designing a consumer car you can ignore criteria that are important for racing but not consumer cars (like fast charge time).
I beg to differ. I need a fast charge time in a consumer car. My parents live 400 mls from my home, my brother about 600 mls, and the other grandma of my children about 500 mls. There are no direct flights, and flying with changing planes takes about 5 hrs. to each of the places, and it is expensive (about 800 € for the family last time I checked). So it's either going by train or by car. And then it pays to have a car that can be refilled in less than one hour, or to have a car that can go the whole d
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If you are designing a consumer car you can ignore criteria that are important for racing but not consumer cars (like fast charge time).
I beg to differ. I need a fast charge time in a consumer car. My parents live 400 mls from my home, my brother about 600 mls, and the other grandma of my children about 500 mls. There are no direct flights, and flying with changing planes takes about 5 hrs. to each of the places, and it is expensive (about 800 € for the family last time I checked). So it's either going by train or by car. And then it pays to have a car that can be refilled in less than one hour, or to have a car that can go the whole distance without recharging. And to have a car just for hauling home the shopping bags is too expensive. Until then an electric car is completely useless for me.
Oddly enough 99.9% of people don't do regular 500+ mile trips. But because you do, let's forget the whole idea of electric cars for now, shall we?
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I don't do them too often, but a few times per year. But for me they were the argument to buy a car in the first place, because just for the short trips, the car would have been too expensive. The savings I get from the long distance trips together with the convenience for the short ones were argument enough to go shopping for a car.
None of the properties alone, e.g. being very handy for the weekly shopping or being an agreable means to go long distances if necessary would have done it. Only because it can
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Fair enough. Your needs are quite special, you need to drive extremely long distances. If you have a car with a 10 gallon tank that gets 30mpg, you'd need two full tanks (with probably two gas stops in practice) to get to your brother's house. That's no small amount of energy. But that's actually much more environmentally friendly than flying so I'll encourage you to keep driving your ICE car.
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My car has a 20 gallon tank, so it's one filling per single trip.
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Just one example: perforated disk brakes where found "by chance" by Porsche (?) when trying to lower the weight of their race cars. They then noticed the cooling of the disk was also faster. This technology is common in a lot of "regular" cars nowadays.
Do you mean vented or cross-drilled discs? Because vented discs are common but cross-drilled discs are only used on high-end sports cars and supercars. You definitely won't find those on joe six-pack's family sedan.
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So Peugeot managed to build a car that looks like a batmobile, but is barely faster than a 12 year old hot-hatch. An actually 3 seconds slower then a 1990 Lotus Esprit Turbo SE, so in terms of being a proper sports car they are still 22 years behind petrol cars. Still, you have to start somewhere...
Thing is, a 12 year old hot hatch is more than fast enough for most people on public roads.
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You can swap the battery pack in a minute
There was quite some talk about cars with swappable batteries, where did all that go anyway?
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You can fill up the gas tank in about a minute. You cant really do that with a battery pack.
For a race car you could use ultracapacitors instead of batteries. How much current can your charge cable handle...?
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For a race car you could use ultracapacitors instead of batteries. How much current can your charge cable handle...?
Not realistic with current capacitor tech. At best, caps can currently store about 1/5th of the capacity of a battery of similar mass. The best production ultracaps are around 30Wh/kg, whereas LiPo batteries are well over 100Wh/kg, and can exceed 200Wh/kg for certain variants.
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Can you use LiPo batteries in cars? I thought they exploded if you rupture them.
Re:Charge time. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Around 20, which is probably longer than the tires would last (at least with good traction).
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You don't have to push the Mercedes to the garage, but you can carry a can of fuel back to the car.
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Just like you can roll out an extension cable if you're in a track setup and have the pit/workshop buildings nearby, or bring out a high-capacity charge unit - essentially a big battery on wheels with an inverter on it to juice the car enough to be able to drive it to a filling station.
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Let's just say it's really, *really* important if you're buying an electric car to use as a normal sports car - that is, to drive it around like a normal car six days out of the week, and thrash it at a track day on the seventh. I don't have a fancy pit crew or a mechanic who can swap out my gear box in five minutes, but I *can* fill my gas tank back up in a couple minutes and drive home from the track.
So it was a little important when road-testing a Tesla, whose entire point is to be an electric sports car
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Yes, and the point was to demonstrate what the car was like and the film very strongly implied that the car's batteries went flat after just a short time out on the track and that it needed to be pushed back into the garage when in fact it had plenty of juice left in it.
Now, Top Gear is famed for its acerbic presenters and humourous takes on things (I am a fan of the show), but the treatment of the Tesla was not handled in the same way as the jokey downsides to owning a fuel guzzler (like Clarkson's GT40 on
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That's because the show's main presenter has a (very eloquently) stated aversion to anything on public roads other than four-wheeled gas-guzzlers. Because it fits in his carefully crafted image. Women, cyclists, motorbikes, pedestrians and whatnot need to all fuck off and make room for his Clarksonness as he's underway to the filming of yet another cartoonish piece of amusing rubbish-for-boys-who-won't-grow-up. And like it is with the protection of any other brand: number two is always the most dangerous
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you forgot caravans
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Post of the fucking day! YOU = WIN
Re:Charge time. (Score:5, Informative)
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That seems like a tricky solution for consumers, what happens when you take your brand new EV for a battery change and you get the oldest battery in their rotation? My guess is your range goes way down and the risk it'll go defective way up. You could of course make all batteries the manufacturer's responsibility, but then you'd probably pay a high yearly fee for replacements.
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The problem is for a gasoline car you can do 4 tires and fuel in under 20 seconds. Just gassing a car even in a non pit setting takes what, 3-4 minutes max? How long does it take to charge a battery on these cars.
I'm not seeing a problem here. The whole point of organized hyper-promoted racing is to provide a list of weird rules for the racers to follow. Restriction plates in the carburetors (ancient carbs? Well, throttle bodies anyway), total fuel burned limitations per race, strange rules about weight and dimensions, etc.
Simply add a couple more rules.
Furthermore you can dump electricity into lithium cells VERY quickly if you want, its just that you may only get 5 charges out of them, and they may possibly expl
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Nascar Camping World Truck Series [wikipedia.org]
Baja 500 [wikipedia.org]
Dakar Rally [wikipedia.org]
Mint 400 [wikipedia.org]
And so on, and so forth, et cetera, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.
"No one," indeed.
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Nascar Camping World Truck Series [wikipedia.org]
Baja 500 [wikipedia.org]
Dakar Rally [wikipedia.org]
Mint 400 [wikipedia.org]
And so on, and so forth, et cetera, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.
"No one," indeed.
Fair enough. I once saw two guys racing riding lawnmowers, also. Lets agree that there's approximately one million NASCAR fans for each pickup truck racing fan, and for me that rounds down to "no one" and for you it is a significant subset of humanity. No problemo.
Dakar is ultra customized dune buggies, not Tahoes and Suburbans, right? Also Dakar is (or at least used to be) completely insane, like automotive gladiatorial combat rather than racing. Almost like survival research labs with a "starting lin
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I at a university working alongside people who work in this field all the time - batteries, fuel cells, hydrogen storage techniques, improved motor efficiency, increased energy densities etc.
I guess I could just be totally guessing in the dark though. In fact, I'll bet you're right!
I also follow several chemistry journals, although my interest area is transition metals rather than the sort of physical chem going on with batteries and so on, but it is amusing that your only course for "refuting" my argument
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I wonder how many laps it got in before it had to be charged.
Probably not many, if it's optimised for the best single lap it can do. As per your title of 'charge time', though, remember that charge rate and discharge rate are linked, so if it can flatten itself in 15 minutes then it can probably be charged back to full in less than 30.
Re:85.9? (Score:5, Informative)
You've never heard of the Nürburgring, have you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N [wikipedia.org]ürburgring
"...is widely considered the toughest, most dangerous, and most demanding purpose-built racing circuit in the world."
Re:85.9? (Score:5, Funny)
He's American. They like driving around in ovals.
Good turning on a car? What's that? Just put a big engine in it.
Re:85.9? (Score:4, Informative)
Hey, some of us Americans, even ones like me who grew up in the South, have both heard of the Nürburgring and would prefer watching cars zip around it rather than on a NASCAR track any day. I can't stand NASCAR (*pauses for a moment to listen for approaching angry mobs*), and I'm not particularly enamored with racing in general, but even with my limited awareness of the world of racing, I've still heard of the Nürburgring, have seen the track layout, and know its reputation.
I know the world likes to paint Americans in stereotypes, and we definitely do have plenty of people here that fit some of them quite well, but dismissing us (or most any other group, for that matter) as a mere stereotype is almost always a mistake.
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.
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I'm not sure what's worse about Slashdot... the fact that the link you provided is broken, or the fact that when I tried to click on it, Slashdot unfolded the thread with JavaScript instead of actually, you know, letting me click the link.
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To be honest, the French make barely adequate cars, sort of like the Italians. Not that GM is anything special, but they are finally beginning to improve.
People like powerful V8's for the same reason they love powerful V6's or 4's, or Wankel's. I am partial to my flat 6.
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Particularly long? I think it's 12 miles, lots of sharp turns, some good high speed straights. Electric cars are limited by the low top speeds, and I'm sure the extra weight from the batteries doesn't help either.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
It's both long and arduous (Score:5, Informative)
The lap time should have given it away - 9 minutes!
The nurburgring remains as an example of the old school racing circuits from the previous century - long and dangerous.
They've built a more modern circuit around the pits, but the old long configuration (nordschliefe) is still used for endurance events with various vehicles (GT cars, motorcycles etc)
Have a look at the track map here [the-fastlane.co.uk]
They stopped running F1 there due to safety concerns (no run-off and thin track).
On topic of this EV, I have to say it's closer to a motorcycle than a car...
Re:85.9? (Score:4, Funny)
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To which Sabine Schmitz stated "I could do that in a transit van..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQJKQjXpGQA
(she almost did it...)
Re:85.9? (Score:4, Funny)
And, faster than a van driven by a certain woman.
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The most gruelling racing track in the world is probably the Mountain Course in the Isle of Man, sixty miles of road up and down the side of a mountain and then passing through a series of villages and over hump-back bridges. It's a rare year that doesn't end in at least one fatality during the motorbike Time Trial (TT) races in June or the Manx GP in the autumn -- in 2010 four riders died.
There's now a race for electric motorbikes included in the TT series, and a $10,000 prize for the first bike to achie
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It's the Nordschleife. http://www.plugincars.com/fastest-ev-nurburgring-peugeot-ex1-107128.html [plugincars.com]
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You can see a picture of the car on the carousel section from the Nordschleife
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"Electric Cars are for teh Faggz."
These tactics work, fast car marketing is aimed at men thinking with their testes.
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It's still for "faggz" though. 9 minutes around the Nordschleife with a custom made 340bhp car?
Wake me up when they can do a sub 8 minute time. There are combustion engined cars with the aerodynamics of a brick that can do that.
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Indy Car racing is just heavy cars going at normal road speeds around an oval track. Have you had a look at the Nurburgring?
ATTENTION SLASHDOT JANITORS: FIX YOUR BROKEN WEBSITE. Non-ASCII characters used to work, now they don't. You have a regression. Fix it.
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