18 May 2009 - 12:00
Electric circuit
Diesel has dominated the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the last three years, but could the future of the endurance race be electric?
Racing outfit GreenGT thinks so. The Swiss firm has unveiled this design study that, they say, previews an all-electric Le Mans entrant in 2011.
Based around a carbon fire chassis and fiberglass body, the GreenGT car is powered by a pair of electric motors putting some 335kW.
In a car weighing just 860kg, that's good for a 0-100km/h time of around four seconds - the problem, we suspect, will be getting all that torque down onto the track effectively.
Batteries will be the big issue, though. Powerpacks that can store enough energy to supply that sheer amount of power for dozens of laps simply don't exist at the moment - at least, none that weigh less than several tonnes. The answer, surely, is replacing battery packs at pitstops, but nonetheless, we're still a long way off.
But GreenGT is convinced that the technology will develop within the next couple of years. It promises to have a pair of electric cars at Le Mans in 2011, followed by a curiously precise 22 road-going models within three years.
We'll see. We'll see...
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Hmm, may not be as far fetched as it sounds, heard some talk a while back about organic power cells, naturally designed to power toasters and stuff, but they're extremely small. Without actually knowing the specs of these power cells I don't know if the tech could be adapted to high power applications such as this, but there may be avenues such as this that GreenGT are looking at. Who knows, but it'll be interesting to see what they come up with (if anything at all).
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Hmm, reading their website, they're talking about integration of a hydrogen engine with photovoltaics to power a 12v battery which handles the peripheral electronics. So looks like it wont be powered by traditional style battery cells as such. (apologies if this double posts, my internet is being screwy tonight)
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blackdog commented on this article
at 05:32 am on 20 May 2009
Will it have a big audio system playing v12 sounds??
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