X1 beats Ferrari Spider

[Ciro Pabón]

Remember how electric motors can provide high-torque easily? I was going to put this at the end of other thread, (sorry if you saw it there) but I thought this was interesting for itself:

Electric car outpaces Ferrari Spider at Infineon Raceway. http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/04/technol ... /index.htm

Some photos I took from that link:

"It never occurred to me that I would lose," says Kim Stuart, the Porsche's driver. "It was like a light switch. He hit the pedal and was gone."

Engine:


Electronics:


"In the second race, against the $440,000 Porsche, the two cars were even after an eighth of a mile. But as the Porsche driver let out the clutch in a final upshift, his tires briefly lost traction. The X1, blazing along in its software-controlled performance mode, beat the Porsche by half a car length."

Top view:

[johny]

We should concentrate on this kind of cars, there're alternatives to petrol, with developement even fasters than it so why world economy must be in danger with petrol?

[Scuderia_Russ]

Beats it in what, the 'ugliest car' category?

[zac510]

Is that basically an Atom with an electric motor?

Looks excellent. Though the next limitation with electric cars are batteries and their range. What's it like Ciro?

[Venom]

What is the point of racing those two cars?

Why didn't they race it with an F1 car, that's a better match in terms of car category.

[zac510]

??

The X1 can be registered on the road.

Here in the UK those cars are registered with Honda Civic engines.

[joseff]

Zac no it's the Atom you're talking about. The supercharged (305hp) Atom costs 1/2 as much, has around the same power, and is much lighter.

They should be racing that against the X1 instead.

[Apex]

What is the point of racing those two cars?

Why didn't they race it with an F1 car, that's a better match in terms of car category.

You should really think before you post

[Tom]

I like it. If it can beat Ferraris it can't be bad

Seriously though, if its battery lasts as long as a hungry petrol car, even at only 100km/h, it should really be mass marketed.

[Venom]

What is the point of racing those two cars?

Why didn't they race it with an F1 car, that's a better match in terms of car category.

You should really think before you post

Was I serious about racing it with F1 car?

lol

[Ciro Pabón]

Beats it in what, the 'ugliest car' category?

You are right. Seems a Bauhaus civil engineer did the body.

After all, yes, it is a british Atom with an electric engine strapped, which I did not know, thanx guys. Not a great surprise there, anyway.

The ugly contraption (to add insult to injury) beat them at 1/4 and 1/8 of a mile, which is like 4 and 2 of your hectometers, I think, I don't know how much is this translated to euros.

But, you know, I understand you. I believe it was the great Bruce McLaren who summed it up perfectly when he once said the immortal words: "he, he, he, I beat them, those F'rrori guys". Did I mention that the builder is from NZ?

It gives you 0-60 mph (0-96 megamillimeters per 3.6 kiloseconds, as they say at the other side of the pond) in 3.0 seconds (approximately equivalent to 3.0 european seconds).

For the engine nuts, you get rid of such antiquities as clutch, torque converter and gearbox, still used by many quaint factories. The 13.300 max rpm doesn't look bad either, as the 182 lb-ft of constant torque from 0 to 6.000 rpm.

Alltogether means a modest 170 miles per gallon at a max of 112 mph.

A full battery charge gives you 150 miles. The car recharges in 4.5 hours. Very reasonable, if it wasn't for the 500 kilograms of batteries that I bet have to be replaced some day ahead.

I confess I found that a Bugatti Veyron (8 mpg, U$1 million or so) gives you a better acceleration and an even uglier body, so you can still be calm. There is hope for the conventional cars on the ugliest car category, dear Scuderia_Russ ...

EDIT: You can appreciate the X1 better if you take a look to my old (and more or less mantained throught the years) rip-off, which I converted from the unmanageable text file Car and Driver offers to a neat Excel file. It has times for 0-60 and quarter mile for 1757 different models of cars.

To my surprise, you can find many fine european "sport" cars between the american "muscle" cars. (Note: for my american friends, "sport" is the word europeans use for "microscopic", I believe. For my asian and latin american friends, "muscle" means "mid-sized, efficient-engine-compared-to-the-other-gas-guzzlers, no-suspension" in America, this is, cars less than 8 meters long).