RE: VW shatters Pikes Peak record

[tr3a]

fblm said:

More worrying if motorsports goes electric you can probably kiss goodbye to amateur/grassroots series for cost reasons. Would love to know how much this record cost.

Oh please. Well within a decade, electric cars wil be cheaper than dino juice burners through economies of scale. Affordable batteries and electric motors will be available in abundance and anybody will be able to go amateur electric racing for pretty much the same money as before. Maybe even less. The necessary skills and tools to run a car will change (still more soldering irons and laptops than today), but there will always be competition. It's human nature.

[dvs_dave]

astrsxi77 said:

CDP said:

jason61c said:

it could have done it in 38 seconds.

Still just a boring electric car.

I can think of a number of adjectives when I imagine what it would be like to ride in this car. Boring is not one of them.

Why bother imagining? This new age of “Motorsport” is not for the purpose of igniting imagination in the likes of us. This is a PR exercise; a diversion; a marketing initiative; a bid to ensure commercial relevance and future-proofing of the brand. Why even bother with the driver? His inclusion is simply slowing the vehicle down. Why not jump on the tech bandwagon and fully automate it? It’ll happen soon and then the last vestiges of meaningful, honest, emotional connection with the endeavor of racing cars will be lost.

And only then will we wonder why we let it happen.

[dc2rr07]

Max_Torque said:

cuda said:

Why do they have such huge wings???

Because the average speed up the course is low, and hence they trade off drag for downforce, and because even the starting gate is at 2800m and hence at around 80kpa (20 % lower air density than sea level) and the finish at 4300m (~60kPa or a 40% reduction in air density)

+150 corners as well.

[FeelingLucky]

Articles about EV and McLaren really seem to bring "them" out.

[CDP]

tr3a said:

fblm said:

More worrying if motorsports goes electric you can probably kiss goodbye to amateur/grassroots series for cost reasons. Would love to know how much this record cost.

Oh please. Well within a decade, electric cars wil be cheaper than dino juice burners through economies of scale. Affordable batteries and electric motors will be available in abundance and anybody will be able to go amateur electric racing for pretty much the same money as before. Maybe even less. The necessary skills and tools to run a car will change (still more soldering irons and laptops than today), but there will always be competition. It's human nature.

This.

I remember a conversation with a vintage racer who said that a lot of people today are scared off by magnetos expecting them to be too difficult to maintain.

Technology moves on as does humanity's ability to torture and abuse it.

[anonymous-user]

tr3a said:

Oh please. Well within a decade, electric cars wil be cheaper than dino juice burners through economies of scale. Affordable batteries and electric motors will be available in abundance and anybody will be able to go amateur electric racing...

Time will tell but I think you're being naively optimistic in your time scale. 'Cheap' motorsport is usually lightweight.

[astrsxi77]

tr3a said:

fblm said:

More worrying if motorsports goes electric you can probably kiss goodbye to amateur/grassroots series for cost reasons. Would love to know how much this record cost.

Oh please. Well within a decade, electric cars wil be cheaper than dino juice burners through economies of scale. Affordable batteries and electric motors will be available in abundance and anybody will be able to go amateur electric racing for pretty much the same money as before. Maybe even less. The necessary skills and tools to run a car will change (still more soldering irons and laptops than today), but there will always be competition. It's human nature.

But why are we sacrificing THE SPECTACLE of Motorsport for the sake of ill-thought out populism? Are electric vehicles really more sustainable than ICE? Where do the raw materials for the batteries come from? How are they charged? They might address local pollution problems for private cars in town (and that’s excellent news, thanks to Diesels), but in Motorsport?! No, they are an answer to a non-existent question and simply serve as promotional tools for the manufacturers to claim just how “in touch” they are with current logic* and how they “care” about the future - in reality, it is just self-preservation on their part. They’d be developing nuclear-powered racing cars if equally warped logic favoured that means of power as The Next Big Thing.
Electric racing cars should remain the preserve of well meaning but ultimately lentil-based university projects or, at best, provide a side-show category in the mix with regular ICE - variety, I think we used to call it.

[CDP]

fblm said:

tr3a said:

Oh please. Well within a decade, electric cars wil be cheaper than dino juice burners through economies of scale. Affordable batteries and electric motors will be available in abundance and anybody will be able to go amateur electric racing...

Time will tell but I think you're being naively optimistic in your time scale. 'Cheap' motorsport is usually lightweight.

I wonder how long before we start molesting the odd Twizzy and Zoe in the quest for cheap thrills?

[Jimmy Recard]

RacerMike said:

You mean that massive red herring that was blown completely out of proportion? Yes :P

I disagree, I think that more should have been made of it.

[tr3a]

CDP said:

I wonder how long before we start molesting the odd Twizzy and Zoe in the quest for cheap thrills?

That's the spirit.

[ReaperCushions]

Jimmy Recard said:

RacerMike said:

You mean that massive red herring that was blown completely out of proportion? Yes :P

I disagree, I think that more should have been made of it.

Agreed. The proliferation of diesel engine development and sales set the car industry back 20 years. Imagine where we’d be if we’d put that R and D into developing electric / hydrogen / hybrid tech instead of chasing down the last MPG (then getting so desperate you have to lie about it) at the expense of the environment and health. More need locking up from that company and any others that did the same.

[foxbody-87]

Impressive but I’d still rather watch a (probably slower) ICE car do the run, the driver tap dancing on the pedals to control the car and ring as much power out of the engine as possible. Whilst motorsports are essentially about times, they are a spectator sport, and these types of run might feel amazing for the driver and set good times but they leave me cold.

[suffolk009]

CDP said:

tr3a said:

fblm said:

More worrying if motorsports goes electric you can probably kiss goodbye to amateur/grassroots series for cost reasons. Would love to know how much this record cost.

Oh please. Well within a decade, electric cars wil be cheaper than dino juice burners through economies of scale. Affordable batteries and electric motors will be available in abundance and anybody will be able to go amateur electric racing for pretty much the same money as before. Maybe even less. The necessary skills and tools to run a car will change (still more soldering irons and laptops than today), but there will always be competition. It's human nature.

This.

I remember a conversation with a vintage racer who said that a lot of people today are scared off by magnetos expecting them to be too difficult to maintain.

Technology moves on as does humanity's ability to torture and abuse it.

I think if you compare the evolution of the electric car to that of personal computers, we've gone past the Sinclair ZX80 and are now onto the Spectrum with added 64k RAM pack. Really no further than that. Still a very looooong way to go.

[SidewaysSi]

Should have thrown a few monkeys on the course and he got him to slide around them too.

[996TT02]

fblm said:

More worrying if motorsports goes electric you can probably kiss goodbye to amateur/grassroots series for cost reasons. Would love to know how much this record cost.

There are no amateur/grassroots in F1, and that is ICE tech. Due to cost.

Amateur/grassroots series are by definition cost-restricted, wherever the power comes from, now or in the future.

[jmcc500]

CDP said:

I know a normally aspirated engine will suffer badly at altitude but surely a turbo engine would turn up the boost countering most of those losses?

Turbo engine will be better than NA, but you’ll run into turbo speed limits / surge as you go up -you’re only able to generate a certain pressure ratio at any given mass flow before hitting issues. A typical production car would have a turbo sized more or less for sea level, so you’d already be derating at 2000m, and severely derating by 4000.

[RobDickinson]

astrsxi77 said:

But why are we sacrificing THE SPECTACLE of Motorsport for the sake of ill-thought out populism? Are electric vehicles really more sustainable than ICE? Where do the raw materials for the batteries come from? How are they charged? They might address local pollution problems for private cars in town (and that’s excellent news, thanks to Diesels), but in Motorsport?! No, they are an answer to a non-existent question and simply serve as promotional tools for the manufacturers to claim just how “in touch” they are with current logic* and how they “care” about the future - in reality, it is just self-preservation on their part. They’d be developing nuclear-powered racing cars if equally warped logic favoured that means of power as The Next Big Thing.
Electric racing cars should remain the preserve of well meaning but ultimately lentil-based university projects or, at best, provide a side-show category in the mix with regular ICE - variety, I think we used to call it.

All that has been answered repeatedly, tldr it's all OK.

[RobDickinson]

borat52 said:

Cooling is a huge issue with high output electric power, it would be interested to know if the drivetrain on that VW was in some was pumped with very cold coolant prior to departure to give it an extra advantage (id be very surprised if it wasn't)

Cooling isn't that hard if you expect it, it's not like performance ice engines don't need it, they waste far more energy as heat.

Sure one ev has battery heat issues doing something it was never designed to do, but even then the model s is being used in an upcoming race series, I'm assuming it's had improved cooling but don't really know.

There's several other ev's that go quickly that don't have cooling issues, rimac etc, even the model 3, but for that I guess we'll see with the P3d version

[Maldini35]

RacerMike said:

fblm said:

RacerMike said:

suffolk009 said:

I suppose this electric car is supposed to help the world forget about Diesel-gate.

You mean that massive red herring that was blown completely out of proportion? Yes :P

I largely agree with your version however don't underestimate the level of hatred for VW in the US. The hysteria includes a popular documentary making no bones about drawing the 'connection' of 'Hitler's peoples car' with poisoning millions of people with toxic gas! Really!

Well quite. It's America......and there was also a great opportunity for people to get a load of money back, which given how money driven the US is, it's unsurprising they went full retard on it.

Well obviously reductionist arguments referencing the Nazi’s are ludicrous but your dismissal of the whole sorry saga as ‘blown out of all proportion’ shows how out of touch many in the motor industry were and still are.
Yes, anybody with a brain probably realised diesels weren’t the eco answer (blame idiot politicians and pathetically weak lobbying from the motor industry for that) but to cynically manipulate the system whilst making outrageous claims and profiting from them was not a minor misdemeanour.
For a start, just think of all the sales JLR lost to VW over this period.

But to get back to the topic - the Pikes Peak car looks sensational.
Probably the first EV car I’m interested in.
But how boring was that video? A shocking piece of editing and post production.

Edited by Maldini35 on Monday 25th June 22:38

[RobDickinson]

Maldini35 said:

Yes, anybody with a brain probably realised diesels weren’t the eco answer (blame idiot politicians and pathetically weak lobbying from the motor industry for that) but to cynically manipulate the system whilst making outrageous claims and profiting from them was not a minor misdemeanour.

I think the risk from NOX was understood, the motor industry decided it was too hard and expensive and not profitable so ignored it. In Europe the rules are certainly very grey, in the US they are not. VAG became the worlds leading car manufacturer pretty much purely on this cheating.