Electric Race Cars - Formula SAE

Formula SAE is, essentially, a competition for university automove engineering faculties. Their website says: "We can guarantee you’ve never seen anything quite like Formula SAE-A"

Well let me tell you, they're right! These amazing young engineers are creating the future of autmotive transport. I've only managed to capture a glimpse of the achievments of these teams in both electric and ICE race cars.

The Electrics out performed the ICE cars, although it was pointed out that this is more likely due to driver ability rather than the insane electric acceleration. The difference here between the fastest electric and the fastest ICE was 1min 20sec compared to 1min 25sec, which is quite a bit really.

The video's here were taken on an iPhone and use the new HTML5 video tags (mostly because I couldn't be bothered with youtube).

University of Canterbury (NZ) Electric

Monash University (Melbourne) ICE Petrol

Insane electric acceleration means cars are not immune to crashing out however.

The general layout of the electrics was a 440 Volt Lithium Cobalt battery with an inverter running in to two 80kw motors. The motors themselves were liquid cooled 240mm diameter units which you can see at the back.

Like bicycles, the more money at your disposal the lighter things are. A typical weight seemed to be around 230Kg.

By way of comparison, the Mitsubishi PHEV has two 60Kw units, one oil cooled driving the front wheels and the other water cooled driving the rear wheels. And I can assure you that it weighs a lot more than 230Kgs. Even so it can keep up with V8 cars at the lights. So these little guys are well and truely in ludicrous mode.

Volkswagon's Electric ID-R setting a new record against all comers at Pike's Peak.

Volkswagon's Electric ID-R how it was made.