Drayson Racing Technologies will attempt to conquer the FIA World Electric Land Speed Record in a few weeks (June 25, 2013) at the RAF Elvington base in Yorkshire, UK. This is an attempt for the books as it’s been nearly four decades since the last record was broken. The current record for battery powered top speed is 175 mph, set back in 1974 in the United States by Battery Box General Electric .
According to Drayson Racing: “The attempt will be made in the sub-1000kg class by entrepreneur, racing driver and former UK science minister Lord Drayson who will drive a low-drag version of the Drayson B12 69/EV electric Le-Mans Prototype flat-out along Elvington’s 1.86-mile runway.”
The Drayson Racing Technologies record car is based on a carbon Lola LMP1 chassis holding a 640 kW, (850 Bhp) power unit. There are 4 Axial-Flux Motors (2 per rear wheel) with integrated transmission. This is a single speed transmission and independent drive. Juice is stored in a 30 kWh battery in a carbon battery cell. It’s a structural component.
“It is not the outright speed that is impressive about this record attempt, but the engineering challenge of accelerating a 1000kg electric vehicle to such a high speed and sustaining that speed over a measured mile, before stopping safely all within a relatively short distance then turning round and doing it again within an hour. It’s a tremendous technical challenge but we believe it’s about time someone moved this record on to demonstrate just how far EV technology has come.” – – Lord Drayson, CEO and co-founder of Drayson Racing Technologies
Drayson Racing Technologies hopes that using a 20kW Qualco mmHalo wireless charging system will speed up charging and give them the edge on their one hour (timed) record attempt.
Check out our 0 to 60 mph video attempt in a Nissan GT-R and BMW M6!
We’ll keep an eye on this record attempt!
