Fastest Nurburgring time set at 6:45:90 by an EV

doublespaces

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I think a lot of guys on here still scoff at the idea of an electric vehicle. But the internal combustion engine will look more and more like a steam engine as time goes on. Overall record on the ring is owned by an EV. You can cling to your car sounds for a while, but pretty soon you're just gonna look like a hick and start asking for special treatment in races, disallowing EVs, when just last year (or even now) you think they are trash:


See for yourself:

https://nurburgringlaptimes.com/lap-times-top-100/

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dyezak

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Just wait till in wheel motors have been perfected. Current estimates show that inside an 18x9 wheel you should be able to get around 250hp out of a motor that can fit there.

Think about how that will change...no, revolutionize automobiles. Trucks and SUV's off road clearance and capabilities will go through the roof! Sports cars will have true 1000hp capable AWD systems that allow full independent traction control per wheel dynamically. The next 25y is going to be a revolution.

If we could just get power/battery systems that can keep up with motors.
 

doublespaces

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Just wait till in wheel motors have been perfected. Current estimates show that inside an 18x9 wheel you should be able to get around 250hp out of a motor that can fit there.

Think about how that will change...no, revolutionize automobiles. Trucks and SUV's off road clearance and capabilities will go through the roof! Sports cars will have true 1000hp capable AWD systems that allow full independent traction control per wheel dynamically. The next 25y is going to be a revolution.

If we could just get power/battery systems that can keep up with motors.

Do you know much about computer history? Moore's Law? Cars have made the leap into the electronic world and there is one big downside, depreciation. These cars will depreciate like no other when we have these technological leaps.

I'm predicting there will be several new internal combustion engine advancements in the medium future...And they simply won't matter. The variable compression engine for example and many others. When a tech leap happens, there are usually parallel advancements in the existing tech line that get forgotten. For example: LS-120. This was a 3.5" floppy disk that held 120 megabytes instead of the usual, 1.44mb and was even backwards compatible with the old disks. Nobody ever bought it because the CD Rom came out: http://amzn.to/2zn7Rkt
S6ocbYa.png


As you said, with independent wheel adjustments, which can be made with an electrical system and cannot be made as easily with a mechanical system, you'll get infinitely better control of the torque, things like LSD's become obsolete. If you look at the difference between a chinook helicopter and an electric quadcopter, there is no skill in getting the quadcopter to hover. It can vary the speeds near-infinitely and can be entirely computerized. The mechanical blades and drivetrain of a traditional helicopter simply can't match the instant change of momentum and with electrical systems, power delivery through a drive line becomes simply a conductive wire to transfer the power.

I'm incredibly optimistic, I have not read much about in wheel motors but I've heard about them and can only image just how insane things will be. By then however, we may find our selves in a world where autonomous driving is a mandated requirement.
 

doublespaces

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The other big thing is really about battery technology. There are many much more efficient battery technologies but they are not commercially viable. There are battery combinations that can store 3-5x the battery power but simply do not recharge as well. This is not an issue for race environments when you only need to make one pass down the strip or other scenarios which don't have warranty expectations of hundreds or thousands of charge cycles.

Currently there is Lithium Sulfur, still technically a Lithium Ion battery, which has realistically the capacity to store about 3x the energy of normal Lithium Ion batteries (which are nothing more than Lithium Cobalt Oxide in a traditional formula). They are made of cheap sulfur and also aren't flammable when punctured or have thermal runaway issues like current lithium ion batteries. A 3x jump in battery capacity means the heaviest part of EV's is about to drop big time. Take a gutted model S that weighs 3000 pounds. Remove it's 1200 pound battery, give it 3x the capacity and only put enough battery cells to get down the track a couple times, similar to drag cars having limited fuel capacity. You now have a 2000 pound car that will eat anything alive in the 1/8th and when the gearing is adjusted for the new parameters, you've got a full 1/2 mile competitive monster on your hands. EVs won't be constrained to just the 1/8 mile and 1/4 mile for much longer, especially in purpose built applications and this video is testament to that.
 

dyezak

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Just wait till in wheel motors have been perfected. Current estimates show that inside an 18x9 wheel you should be able to get around 250hp out of a motor that can fit there.

Think about how that will change...no, revolutionize automobiles. Trucks and SUV's off road clearance and capabilities will go through the roof! Sports cars will have true 1000hp capable AWD systems that allow full independent traction control per wheel dynamically. The next 25y is going to be a revolution.

If we could just get power/battery systems that can keep up with motors.

I'm thinking more about in-wheel motors. Jesus, the trucking/towing industry will be INSANE. Think about 18 wheelers, and trailers with their own motor packages in the wheels. Those are 22.5" wheels, 8 of them on a trailer. Add in the 10 wheels on the truck itself...I don't think we will have 18 wheelers as we know them anymore on our roads...these things will be unrecognizable to us once redesigned to take advantage of the new tech.
 
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sirdaft1

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Hate to burst your bubble OP but the EP9 set the fastest EV record, not the fastest overall lap record (assuming you mean fastest non-street-legal-yet-non-race-car record, correct?). If so, that record is owned by the McLaren P1 with a 6:43.22 all the while running one of those lowly steam engines under the hood (to be fair, it's a hybrid setup - but vastly different vehicle dynamics vs a tugboat EV).


Or if we mean the overall fastest lap ever of 6:11 set by a Porsche 956 that was set by some 35 year old 80's ICE?

I bust your balls. In all honesty, as impressive as it is spending 7 minutes feeling like I'm getting my teeth drilled by a dentist watching that EV lap the Green Hell, it is annoying to hear the token EV fanboys act as though 1830's EV tech is somehow new to the world. It's neat. But instead of working towards being a REPLACEMENT to ICE, perhaps it would be more widely adopted if it was developed as a COMPLIMENT to ICE (ie: hybrid tech as evidenced by the P1). Just a thought.

Nurburgring lap times:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nürburgring_Nordschleife_lap_times
 
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doublespaces

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I was going off of: https://nurburgringlaptimes.com which may not be an official account.

Also note, that the P1 did not take the "Full Lap" like the NIO, and instead traveled 232 meters less, so unless it was traveling at 116 meters per second I don't think we can make this comparison.
 

doublespaces

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Watch the videos, they did the same lap.

I don't see that at all. The NIO starts at the white line, like every other 'Full Lap' video I've seen. You'll notice the minimap in the corner clearly showing it back at the starting line:
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And here you can tell the race is starting already at the next corner, and the car has advanced in the minimap and the timer is still at zero. The P1 simply does not go as far. This is the 20,600 meter lap called the Sports Auto Lap or something like that.
X8C9unX.png
 

doublespaces

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Either way, I think they are both very amazing cars. The P1 made its way around with 'normal' tires and the Nio used a slick. The Nio also weighs over 3800 pounds, so as battery technology improves, and it will, this thing will be insane considering the battery is surely the heaviest component of the vehicle. That battery heft also gives it a low center of gravity, so I'm sure there is some trade off. I just don't see the huge leap in ICE technology on the horizon.
 

sirdaft1

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Either way, I think they are both very amazing cars. The P1 made its way around with 'normal' tires and the Nio used a slick. The Nio also weighs over 3800 pounds, so as battery technology improves, and it will, this thing will be insane considering the battery is surely the heaviest component of the vehicle. That battery heft also gives it a low center of gravity, so I'm sure there is some trade off. I just don't see the huge leap in ICE technology on the horizon.

Very true on tire compounds. Like for like I think it would be pretty clear which would make it around the track faster. What's crazy is that the only thing that kept the P1 in the non-production class was the lack of a front plate. Had it a front plate, it would have shaved 4 full seconds off of the GT2 RS lap record. Damn impressive.

All that being said... as interesting as EV and the fanbase of non-fat soy latte sipping advocates are ;) What is truly exciting to see from an enthusiasts perspective are the advancements taking place in hybrid tech. I can't wait to see the development that takes place with more and more performance driven hybrids moving forward. On tap performance benefits of EV without all the extra 338084320lbs of battery baggage :). Talk about a new age of tuner...
 

doublespaces

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I am actually considering making the G83 M4 my next BMW. Rumors have it as hybrid on demand AWD, electric spooled turbos and even water injection, hopefully they keep it an inline 6. The EV technology I'm dreaming about is much further along down the road, but the vision is there. I still enjoy my gasoline engines :)
 

aus335iguy

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When I look at a combustion engine in real terms it’s archaic. Burn some fuel, to make an explosion to make a chamber expand, to push a rod to turn a crank, to turn some gears disengaged by a clutch to turn a shaft to turn a differential to turn a wheel. Then repeat that process thousands of times a minute to move stuff...Steam indeed.
 
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