Students from the University of Stuttgart built an electric car. And no, it’s not some ultralight vehicle designed to win an eco-marathon. It is a racetrack machine designed to leave practically all motorcycles – and practically all production cars – in the dust.
GreenTeam’s car. Photo: GreenTeam Uni Stuttgart
There are certain vehicles that GreenTeam’s car simply cannot compete with. Dragsters. Rocket sleds. Jet-powered and rocket-powered cars. Hovever, the Stuttgart-based team’s all-electric creation easily outruns Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Porsches and Formula 1 cars.
It has just set a Guinness World Record for the fastest-accelerating electric car. The 0-62 mph (0-100 km/h) time is about 1.46 seconds. Well, 1.461 to be exact.
The vehicle, designated E0711-11 EVO, competes in Formula SAE/Formula Student (yes, a vehicle built for student contests accelerates faster than an actual Formula 1 machine). For the Guinness World Record attempt, the vehicle apparently lost its huge rear wing it previously had.
Performance through light weight
The vehicle has four in-wheel electric motors. According to the team’s website, they are putting out 210 hp (156.4 kW) – but apparently, in the vehicle used for the world record attempt, it was beefed up to 241 hp (180 kW).
Does not seem much? Well, the weight of the carbon-fiber-bodied car is 173 kg (381 lb), and for the world record attempt it was reduced even further – Carscoops says the weight is 145 kg or 320 lb.
Which means the power-to-weight ratio is astounding (I think the fact that the vehicle is electric also plays a role – an ICE car probably wouldn’t have achieved such results with the same power-to-weight ratio).
That obviously brings to mind Lotus cars with their “performance through light weight” design. For Germans, it probably evokes the memories of the Bergspyder. The Bergspyder, developed by Porsche in the late 1960s, was a machine competing in hill climbing races, and had its weight reduced to the minimum.
There is yet another way to look at it: it’s a slighly oversized go-kart – an electric one, and with an extremely high power output. Although in the Guinness World Record run it only demonstrated its straight-line acceleration, so that result alone does not indicate whether the vehicle’s handling is truly go-kart-like.
See the Guinness World Record attempt video here.
The battery size is only 7 or 8 kWh (according to the team’s website), which partially explains the low weight. For a racing machine that lasts longer on the track, you might want to look up the Ariel Hipercar.
___