Monday 10th October 2022

New 0-62mph world record for EV pocket rocket

Just 1.461 seconds needed for 173kg singe-seater to break the Guinness tape

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The question of acceleration is something of a hot topic at the moment. EVs, you definitely won’t have failed to notice, are exceptionally good at getting away promptly from a standing start. Very promptly, in some cases. Quite how interesting or appealing this is, is open to interpretation. Some Tesla Model S owners have spent years decimating combustion-powered sports cars away from the lights, to their apparent satisfaction. But the here-we-go, theme park-style sprint for the horizon isn’t nearly so interesting when it occurs silently and without conspicuous effort. To the point where it’s arguably more novelty than must-have. 

A case in point is the 0-62mph EV world record set by students from the University of Stuttgart last week. Obviously we take nothing away from the technical achievement, or GreenTeam’s ingenuity - indeed, it’s hard to not like an EV which can clearly be picked up and moved around with nothing more than the core strength of four blokes - and yet its 1.461 second time to 62mph is dispatched so abruptly and ruthlessly that the video makers have to work hard to dress it up a bit for the sake of drama. 

Kudos to them, of course, for the Fast and Furious-style plunge into the working innards of the diminutive E0711-11 EVO, but it just isn’t the same without the red-hot fury of pistons turning liquid dinosaur into explosion-based forward motion. Benign microprocessors and a bit of wiring just can’t compete - even if the 173kg single-seater is clearly capable of annihilating any car you’ve ever sat in (although Max Chilton might have something to say about that). For the record, the CFPR machine gets a motor on every wheel hub for a total output of 241hp, with the power coming from a dinky 7.67kWh air-cooled battery pack. In other words, it’s custom-made for the record it just set. Bravo students. But for once we’re happy to stay in the slow lane. 

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• McMurtry Spéirling takes FOS Hillclimb record
• Rimac C_Two will 'meet and exceed' 258mph

[aestivator]

Singe-seater? These jokes write themselves...

[Frimley111R]

1.45 secs to 60 has never been so underwhelming.

[anonymous-user]

Put a shopping trolley on the back and the whole trip to sainsbury's would become way more interesting.

Maybe the could put a Caterham body on this ?

[Turbobanana]

I'm struggling to work out which is most depressing:

- The merciless rise in popularity of EVs
- The derision with which PH-ers treat them
- The inability of PH staff to notice that the time printed in huge letters on the screenshot they've used as a lead image is not the same as they've written in their headline or the body of the article

[aestivator]

Turbobanana said:

I'm struggling to work out which is most depressing:

- The merciless rise in popularity of EVs
- The derision with which PH-ers treat them
- The inability of PH staff to notice that the time printed in huge letters on the screenshot they've used as a lead image is not the same as they've written in their headline or the body of the article

There also isn't any 'tape' to break, since the run is of indeterminate distance.

They only need to knock about a second off their time to start equalling dragsters...

[sxmwht]

It's 1.461 seconds...

[J9hcw]

What it lacks in size it makes up for with speed. Could be an old girlfriend talking.

[cidered77]

Admittedly i scanned this article taking maybe 70% of it in (and so may have missed this) - but, how can this be a world record when there are drag cars (street legal cars too, which this clearly isn't) that could beat it?

If it just that none of those said pro street cars have bothered to do the Guinness world record test?

[Silvanus]

cidered77 said:

Admittedly i scanned this article taking maybe 70% of it in (and so may have missed this) - but, how can this be a world record when there are drag cars (street legal cars too, which this clearly isn't) that could beat it?

If it just that none of those said pro street cars have bothered to do the Guinness world record test?

Are you referring to road legal EV drag racers? For all its worth, what they have done is quite impressive, what ever its powered by.

[pppppppppppppppp]

That clip should have been 1.45 seconds long.

[Vickers_VC10]

What a cancerous video.

[Maccmike8]

What a typical ste video.

[pquinn]

That video does a truly brilliant job of not showing one thing that mattered - their little car rocketing away.

Not like it takes much camerawork to actually show standing start acceleration looking fast, yet they failed.

[cidered77]

Silvanus said:

cidered77 said:

Admittedly i scanned this article taking maybe 70% of it in (and so may have missed this) - but, how can this be a world record when there are drag cars (street legal cars too, which this clearly isn't) that could beat it?

If it just that none of those said pro street cars have bothered to do the Guinness world record test?

Are you referring to road legal EV drag racers? For all its worth, what they have done is quite impressive, what ever its powered by.

Ahh it's the EV 0-60 record, not the 0-60, 0-60 record. Got it!!

[sixor8]

Seems it's actually the 0-62 record.

[Stevie_Wonder]

Turbobanana said:

- The inability of PH staff to notice that the time printed in huge letters on the screenshot they've used as a lead image is not the same as they've written in their headline or the body of the article

[SlowV6]

pquinn said:

That video does a truly brilliant job of not showing one thing that mattered - their little car rocketing away.

Not like it takes much camerawork to actually show standing start acceleration looking fast, yet they failed.

+1. It's the worst video I have ever seen. Why not put it next to a couple of known roadgoing benchmarks (Nissan GT-R, Tesla something) and have a quick race.

Honestly Sharknado is better quality.

[Fetchez la vache]

Frimley111R said:

1.45 secs to 60 has never been so underwhelming.

Technical achievement notwithstanding, the word "underwhelming" doesn't seem to do it justice as to how utterly underwhelming that video is, but after a quick look in the thesaurus it's as good / harsh as we have...

[ate one too]

This quote sort of sums it up for me:

[carlo996]

I'm sure it's a great bit of tech, but wasn't a great watch. Did it die after the run