Well said Nascho.
Well said Nascho.
N Sperlo wrote: That depends on weather the tires melt into the ground or the *car* melts into the ground.
And there is a problem with a car that does this?
A Tesla Roadster gunned down my C5 Corvette in cold blood in a stoplight drag race. Absolutely nothing I could do. It hooked up harder and just steadily drew away all the way up beyond freeway speed.
From my Formula Hybrid experience, I can get more power per pound from an electric powertrain than a four-stroke gas powertrain, so long as I can accept limited runtime. 11 lbs batteries equaled 2 minutes of hard running; 5 lbs of gas equaled twenty.
But here's the rub. Gas engines get slowly and steadily better, fast enough over the past hundred years to defeat all contenders. We get a couple percent on energy efficiency (lbs fuel burnt per horsepower per hour) per decade. We're up against physical limitations now that only improve gradually - fighting detonation on one side, metal fatigue on another, etc. Batteries are improving very, very rapidly. The ones readily available 5 years ago aren't even half as good for energy storage (lbs battery required onboard per horsepower per hour) as the ones I can buy now. The big problem now is heat, and commercial batteries are basically big heat-generating bricks - not even air cooled, let alone liquid-cooled.
TU Delft matched the performance of broadly similar FSAE cars with their electric this year. Look 'em up on Youtube. Within three years the gas cars will be finished as contenders.
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