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http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/2/AmericanFlag.jpg Green GT is doing them all one better with an electric racer. (wired.com/autopia/2009/05/electric-car-makes-le-mans-racing-greener)

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/green_gt1.jpgTony Borroz – Wired (wired.com) - May 1, 2009

Great gobs of torque and speed in an electric powered package... I'd like to test drive this one! -- Ed.

Le Mans–style endurance racing has caught green fever, with biodiesel racers already on the grid and algal fuel and a hybrid slated to join them. Now a Swiss outfit called Green GT has entered the fray with an electric racer it says will do 170 mph.

This isn’t some half-baked publicity stunt. The Green GT appears to have the specs to put down some serious times at the Circuit de la Sarthe. And it joins a budding green revolution in motorsports.

Audi has been stomping the competition at Le Mans with its diesel R10 and R15 racers, and it even brought some biodiesel along last year. Peugeot has been right behind the Germans with its own turbodiesels and plans to run a diesel hybrid at Le Mans in 2011. Here in the United States, the American Le Mans Series runs a whole slate of alt fuels and hands out awards to the most eco-friendly entry. And boutique automaker Panoz is working on an ALMS race car that burns algal fuel.

Green GT is doing them all one better with an electric racer.

It’s an impressive car on paper. The race-spec carbon-fiber chassis holds two liquid-cooled 100-kilowatt (about 148 horsepower) motors that the Swiss gearheads claim put 1,475 pound-feet of torque to the tarmac at up to 100 mph. That figure rolls off to 590 pound-feet beyond the century mark and stays there as the car approaches its claimed top speed of 170 mph. The juice comes from a pair of 30-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion polymer battery packs. All told, the car weighs 1,896 pounds... http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/electric-car-makes-le-mans-racing-greener/

I'd be more impressed if they actually intended to race and finish Le Mans.

But... I don't think quick-charge tech is quite there yet.

Maybe they are gonna change battery packs when they pit. That would be no slower than filling a fuel tank. The simplicity of an electric drive system vs ICE would mean fewer moving parts to go wrong as well. This will be very interesting to watch(as well as what LeMans rules will allow). I imagine the performance would be like the Tesla Roadster on steroids!:eek:

Le Mans will start looking (and sounding) more and more like the electric road-race set I played with when I was a kid.

Hi Deezle:

___Remember the fun we used to have flipping those cars when entering a corner to fast and watching them fly off the table?

___I can see it now. During a crash, either there will be just a bunch of noise with the metal and rubber flying about (no such thing as a fiery brash in a BEV) or a bright light and a plasma explosion in which the car is instantly turned into a molten pile of junk and the driver is permanently encased in the molten pile for all eternity :angel:

___Good Luck

___Wayne

Maybe they are gonna change battery packs when they pit. That would be no slower than filling a fuel tank.

A good pit stop for Le Mans including tires, and driver change is ~45s. Fuel is added during the driver change while tires are later. I don't see how any electric can match 70% of the winning pace of LMP2.

354 Laps *8.45Miles = 2991 Miles in 24 hours. 70% is 2094 Miles or 87mph avg. speed

Just looking at power/energy density curves and pit stop time, I don't see how it could be done.

perhaps they plan to swap batteries during the pit stop? I worked with some large fork trucks a few years back and we had the ability to swap 3000 # batteries in a matter of min, we weren't trying to be fast (focused on saftey... not winning a race)