Friday, November 1, 2013

Video: Quimera’s 700 HP AEGT Electric Race Car Tears up F1 Track

EV Racing is suddenly a hot topic for a number of big and small automakers alike, from ice racing to traditional contests on tarmac, the time seems ripe for electric car racing. Now comes another entry from the Quimera Project called the AEGT, and this 700 horsepower EV Race Car looks ready to take names and kick ass.
This video, sent to me by Quimera’s David Garcia, shows the long-in-development AEGT out on the track for its first shakedown run. Usually this means going easy on the car, working out the bugs and whatnot. But this is a race car, after all, which means it is made to push hard, and push hard Quimera did at the Motorland F1 track.
With three UQM motors pushing out a continuous 255 kW (340 hp) and offering bursts of up to 525 kW (700 hp), the three motors also combine to offer up to 700 Nm (516 ft-lbs of torque). In short, this is one fast, badass car, and as the video makes evident, Quimera has implemented perhaps the holy grail of EV racing…a six-speed transmission.
Fisker has implied that such a transmission could offer an electric car performance on par with the Bugatti Veyron, and Quimera obviously has no problem putting this transmission through its paces. The transmission is a Hwland NLT six-speed (plus reverse), and powering everything is a lithium-ploymer battery pack. At the race track, at maximum power, the pack has only enough power for 18 minutes of racing, or 30 minutes at about half-throttle. That’s not a lot of juice, but a lot of effort went into keeping the race car’s weight down, like the carbon fiber monocoque chassis, and as a result 0-100 km/62 mph takes under 3.5 seconds, and the AEGT has a top speed of 300 kph/186 mph.
Even with the carbon fiber chassins though, the AEGT is pretty hefty for a race car, tipping the scales at 1,500 kg/3,300 pounds. But it definitely goes like stink judging from the video, and it even looks like they let the driver have a little fun on the course. Quimera hopes to get a racing series based around electric vehicles going sooner rather than later, much like Nissan has mentioned, though I think the AEGT looks (and drives) a hell of a lot better than the Leaf NISMO racer. It is a purpose-built race car, after all, and it looks quite capable of shattering records wherever it goes, and it is another contestant in the upcoming green car competitions that are popping up all over the world.

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