Damian Carrington/Guardian.co.uk
With their instant torque, all-electric races could generate more excitement than petrol-powered processions. But will that accelerate the roll out of electric cars onto roads?
Instant torque: two words that should be all that’s needed to engage petrolheads in the idea of all-electric motor racing, I reckon. If not how about “boost button”, which dumps extra power into the tyres to speed past a rival.
The new EV Cup announced its inaugural series of races on Wednesday, starting on 6 August at Silverstone in the UK and ending five races later at the California Speedway on 16 December. As far as I can tell it’s the first major electric car motor racing series.
I’ll confess I am not a motor racing fan – which is why I’ll need your comments below – and for two familiar reasons. First, Formula One races are too frequently boring processions won by the best engineers not the best driver, and second, Formula One is an environmental catastrophe, a global circus worshipping the extravagant burning of fossil fuels.
You may or may not care about carbon emissions – we’ve had that discussion – but it seems to me that electric cars could make better race cars. First, as EV Cup race director Grahame Butterworth explains to me, there are no gears so the power goes straight into the wheels when you put your foot down, making them very zippy.
Next, the boost button he expects will be in the Westfield IRacer, the racecar for one of the EV Cup races, will be used tactically and enable overtaking. Also, the cars will not be reliant on downforce like F1 cars, meaning they will not lose power when they hit the slipstream of the car in front. And all 10 cars in the race will be the same, meaning it’s all down to the driver.
Butterworth says the IRacer’s will cost £50,000 each, contain two electric motors, weigh 600kg and have a top speed of 100mph – “and get there very quickly”. He acknowledges that there are still a fairly limited number of electric cars around – another race in the EV Cup series features the Think city car, or the “noddy car”, as Butterworth calls it. He adds that with software and suspension tweaks, the Think corners well and will make for entertaining racing.
The wider question is whether racing can drive on electric car development. Former Formula One world champion Damon Hill is a supporter of the EV Cup. “Racing electric vehicles should convince the wider public of their potential. Racing was initially used to develop and prove a new product called the motor car. I see no reason why electric vehicle development will not benefit in the same way.”
Ben Collins, formerly known as The Stig on BBC television’s Top Gear, says: “Motorsport still offers the purest research and development platform to deliver the true potential of electric power and dynamic energy recovery; perhaps to a level that will shame the carbon combustion engine the way rubber tyres did the wooden cartwheel.”
Talking of Top Gear, their race between a Tesla Roadster electric supercar and a Lotus Elise did not end happily – Tesla are suing. But Butterworth thinks petrolheads will be won round.
“Once we have cars fast enough to whet the appetite and with sufficient distance, I think plenty of people will be impressed,” he said. “I remember Jeremy Clarkson knocking GPS navigation years ago when it was not very reliable. I bet he uses it all the time now.”
This article is from Damian Carrington on Guardian.co.uk
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