Green Options

Who said water and electricity don’t mix? At the Wye Island Marathon, the pairing of the two is celebrated as racers push more than 23 miles into 20 mph headwinds, 2 foot waves and rough chop, propelled only by DIY battery packs that can fail at any time.

This post is an excerpt of an article from Popular Mechanics. You can read the full post on their website. Written by Tyghe Trimble.

At the 8 ½-mile mark, Jim Campbell is at the head of the pack, in control of the race. The two-time defending champion has every reason to be confident—he knows the course inside and out, he owns the most time-tested vehicle and he still has a few tricks to pull out, including a parasail, which on this windy day could be a potent weapon. But when he grabs his remote control to adjust the speed, Campbell, his boat and its cargo—400 pounds of lead-acid batteries—suddenly stop.

“I think my nylon gear picked up static when rubbing against the plastic hull of the canoe and my electronics died,” he says. Campbell does the only thing he can—he whips out his emergency jumpers and charges 12 volts back into both of his motors. Then he adjusts his speed, dropping from about 4 knots (4.5 mph) to just less than 3 knots (3.3 mph). The race is no longer a sure win.

The GreenGT was designed specifically for kicking butt at the 24 hours of Le Mans.

With 400 hp and a top speed of 171 mph, the electric race car concept pushes 1,475 lb-ft of torque up to 100 mph then drops it to 590 lb-ft for high-speed traction. All this and it’s powered by two 30kW lithium-ion batteries charged by flexcell photovoltaic solar panels.

As we’ve reported over the last few weeks, sometimes electric-powered drag racing can break boundaries in exciting new ways. The electric motorbike that rockets from 0-60mph in under a second, and a 1972 Datsun that just happens to be the world’s (second) fastest elecric car spring to mind.

Sometimes though, EV face-offs on the drag track are just well…daft. Check out this hilarious footage of the recent Alternative Fuel Race 2009 in the UK featuring electric skateboards and battery-powered dune buggies.

First International Electric Motocross Sets Guinness World Records And Only Cost $100 To Power All 10 Dirt Bikes For 24 Hours.

History was made this past weekend at the 24 Hours of Electricross race when 10 teams, of over 50 competitors, raced for a full-24-hours-straight only stopping to change out batteries and riders.

This first ever endurance competition set two Guinness World Records: one for largest electric motorcycle race, and the other for the furthest distance traveled on an all-electric off-road motorcycle in 24 hours. In total, more than 4,000 miles were completed around the half-mile track.

Amazingly, only $100 of electricity was needed to power all ten motorcycles!

Think a Ferrari is fast? Watch one get schooled below.

Electric cars are no joke. Yes, it’s true that many EVs are small, ungainly-looking oddities, but the other end of the spectrum—the realm of high-performance supercars—might surprise you.

After re-discovering a 1972 electric datsun that can accelerate from 0-60 in 3 seconds, we decided that an important question hadn’t really been answered yet:  how do the electric cars we’ve been hearing so much about stack up in terms of performance?

Below, we’ve listed the world’s top 10 fastest electric cars, based on the best available information (and a little creative license). Note that our criteria does not take into account a variety of important factors like charging time, availability, and cost. All cars are simply ranked by the time it takes them to get from 0-60 mph.

Most of the machines shown here are either not available or otherwise out out of the realm of possibility for most, but then again, so are most high-performance gas-powerd cars.  And that doesn’t keep us from admiring them. Please keep in mind that this post is not intended to be the final word on this topic.

Btw, if you’re interested in joining the first mailing list dedicated to bulk purchasing electric cars, check it out (you can also get cheap solar there too).

“Racing is one of the few things that can foster innovation faster than war”, said GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz during a bloggers round-table discussion on the eve of this year’s Geneva motor show.

Describing some of the future challenges that will be faced by global manufacturers such as General Motors, Bob lamented the fact that auto racing – a sport with the potential to inspire significant innovation through competition – has become so tightly regulated in order to prevent teams from gaining significant advantages, that from a manufacturer’s perspective it provides little benefit beyond pure marketing.

Editors Note: This is an industry perspective guest post by Jo A. Borras, who works for the Florida-based high performance tuning company RENNtech.

A summer full of record gas prices has changed the automotive landscape forever, with changing consumer demands and buying habits forcing automakers to quickly bring more fuel-efficient vehicles to market ahead of larger, less-efficient trucks and SUVs.

These changes have also brought issues of energy conservation and environmental responsibility from the “back-burner” to the very forefront of future car design — but one question that has been largely ignored by the mainstream media is how these changes will affect car enthusiasts who usually care more about horsepower and acceleration than economy and emissions.

The top tier car racing sport has jumped the gun by adding green stripes to plain ol’ Bridgestone tires for their upcoming race.

Formula One racing announced that cars in the upcoming Japanese Grand Prix will have green striping on their tires to represent “going green.” Currently, there is nothing green about the hyper-horsepower vehicles nor the tires themselves, but the cars do have a remodel coming in the near-future.

Formula 1 teams are struggling to implement hybrid power-train technology following several development accidents in past weeks, revealing the challenge of harnessing a new technology at the cutting edge.

Following a freeze on engine development, Formula 1 teams are going hybrid from 2009 - additional power output can only be delivered by recovering kinetic energy under braking and releasing at again under acceleration. Whilst hybrid technology is widely proven in road cars, there are challenges in implementing a system that can fulfil the ultra competitive demands of Formula 1, with teams looking to build systems capable of delivering an additional 60 horsepower whilst weighing less than 35 kilograms.

Accidents

These challenges were aptly demonstrated recently after the Red Bull Formula 1 team factory was evacuated for 2 hours as fire crews dealt with a lithium battery explosion. Following this incident, a BMW team mechanic was hospitalised having received an electric shock from the body of a BMW hybrid Formula 1 car on its return to the pits following a test run.

And maybe hybrid technology is the key?

Today, twenty of the fastest cars on Earth will line up at the start of round 7 of the Formula 1 World Championship at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, to do battle for the biggest prize in world motor sport.

Capable of accelerating to 200 mph, and coming back to a complete standstill 12 seconds flat, a modern F1 car represents the pinnacle of automotive technology, precisely the reason that big name Japanese manufacturers Toyota and Honda have entered the sport as constructors in recent years.

Formula 1 has never been cheap - even the smallest teams have annual budgets in excess of $100 million to field two cars - but considering the resources available to the new Japanese teams, who are rumoured to have spent almost $2 billion between them on F1 in the past four years, one might expect a good chance of the Japanese national anthem being played when the constructors trophy is handed out this afternoon.

 

The X1 prototype: Faster Than Your Average Ferrari.

Most of the time I like to profile cars we might actually get the chance to drive, but it never hurts take a look at the forefront of technology. Enter the X1 prototype, an open-canopy electric vehicle that meets somewhere between go-cart and Indy-500 race car.

Think electric vehicles can’t hack it? They don’t all look like golf carts, and they sure as hell don’t all poke around under 65 mph: The X1 was just featured in a series of Mythbusters’ tests where it beat a Ferrari in a quarter-mile race (see MythBuster: Why Electric Vehicles Beat Gas in 5 Extreme Tests).