The Future Of Drag Racing: Electric Vehicles – The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) is the latest racing sanctioning body to take a serious look at electric cars. The association announced Monday that organizers are asking for input on how to make electric cars a bigger part of drag racing.
The NHRA plans to host several meetings on the topic, starting with one during the Gatornationals at Florida’s Gainesville Raceway later this month. It is “an open invitation to interested parties to participate in an open discussion on the topic,” the organization said in a statement on Tuesday.
The Future Of Drag Racing: Electric Vehicles
That invitation includes, but is not limited to, automakers, aftermarket parts suppliers, race car builders, and safety equipment manufacturers, the NHRA said. The organization hopes to gauge interest in electric racing, and discuss regulatory issues. Safe for electric racing cars.
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“When it comes to electric drag racing, we want NHRA to be a leader, not a follower,” Ned Walliser, NHRA’s vice president of racing, said in a statement.
Electric drag racing is nothing new. The NHRA notes that electric cars and motorcycles have been included in its rule book “for years,” and YouTube is full of videos of Teslas embarrassing internal combustion cars at the dragstrip. Long before Tesla, drag racing was a major outlet for home-built EVs, with cars like the “White Zombie” 1972 Datsun 1200 demonstrating the potential of electric power.
However, the NHRA believes now is the time to invest more in EVs, hoping it will bring in a younger demographic and dovetail with automakers’ efforts to electrify street cars. While this may make room for cars like the Chevrolet eCOPO Camaro and Ford Mustang Cobra Jet 1400 prototypes, don’t expect electric cars to replace traditional dragsters anytime soon.
“We certainly have no intention of abandoning our current platform, which has proven very popular with racers and fans alike,” said Walliser.
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Like road cars, racing cars are gradually greening up. Formula E has carved out a niche for electric single-seater racing, and is adding the off-road racing series Extreme E. Formula One already uses hybrid electric cars, and IndyCar plans to follow suit in 2023 (one year behind schedule due to coronavirus delays). NASCAR is considering hybrid electric cars.
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Spy Shots Super Cars Videos Concept Cars SUV Hybrids First Drives Racing Muscle Cars Industry Electric Cars Luxury Cars Car Tech Features View All Julia Pyper is a Senior Editor at Greentech Media covering the energy transition. She is also the host and producer of the political weather podcast. She previously reported for E&E Publishing, and has covered clean energy and climate change issues throughout the United States and abroad, including in India, Haiti, Israel and the Maldives. She holds degrees from McGill and Columbia universities. Find her on Twitter @JMPyper.
Faraday Future, the Chinese-funded California-based electric vehicle maker, has finally come out of stealth mode. But it is not entirely clear what will happen next.
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Last night, on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show, the mysterious electric vehicle company unveiled the FFZERO1, a high-performance EV concept car. Faraday Future also confirmed a strategic alliance with LeTV, a Chinese media company known as the “Netflix of China.”
Reports indicate that LeTV is eager to unseat Tesla in the US auto market and make a big EV play in Asia.
But instead of presenting a car designed for urban roads and everyday consumers, Faraday released a vehicle designed for competition. The FFZERO1 has 1,000 horsepower, a 0-60 mph time of less than 3 seconds, and a top speed of over 200 mph. .
The luxury single-seater vehicle has many nice design features such as a long glass roof, air tunnels to reduce drag, an instrument panel to collect biometric data on the driver, and a helmet that provides water and air for the driver.
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The smartphone embedded in the steering wheel is another important design element. A key focus of the Faraday-LeTV partnership is creating a “seamless connection” between phones. of users, houses and cars. Faraday executives hinted at launching a program where consumers “subscribe” to vehicle services, rather than actually owning the vehicle.
FFZERO1 is also built on a standard but customizable battery platform, which the company calls Flexible Platform Architecture. The battery cables are laid out in a row, and can be added and removed to suit a particular vehicle design.
“We can change the size and shape of the vehicle to almost anything we want,” said Nick Sampson, Faraday’s senior vice president and de facto spokesman, since the company has yet to appoint a CEO.
In general, Faraday is approaching the move more like a technology company than a traditional car company, Sampson said. The EV maker is unique because it doesn’t have a pre-existing brand or legacy, and so it can look several years ahead to try and change the market in advance, while focusing on quick execution, he said.
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“It’s like the auto industry is trying to improve the landline when they should be building the next generation of smartphones,” Sampson said at a press conference in Las Vegas. “While the traditional automotive industry is focused on making better cars, we are redefining the nature of vehicles and mobility.”
Faraday has been actively recruited both inside and outside of the automotive industry. The 18-month-old company has 750 employees worldwide (550 in the US and 200 overseas). Many of them are employed by some of the world’s most famous technology companies, including Tesla, Apple and Boeing.
Little was known about Faraday until last summer. The company is rumored to be the frontrunner for Apple’s electric car project, but an anonymous source said.
“LeTV has a strong reputation and deep relationships in China, and this will open doors for us, new investors, and help us enter the important Chinese market,” Sampson said.
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In December, Faraday Future announced plans to build a $1 billion, 3 million square foot automotive manufacturing facility “where new ideas will be refined and implemented,” according to a press release. The project is expected to employ more than 4,500 people.
In late December, Nevada State Brian Sandoval, who attended the event last night, signed a $335 million incentive package to support Faraday’s factory plans. The state gave Tesla $1.3 billion in incentives last year to build its Gigafactory in the state.
Faraday Future executives remain tight-lipped about their product line, but spent plenty of time talking about clean transportation, unique ownership models and autonomous driving, hinting at the launch of an electric car-sharing service. . After building a lot of hype around the moving trifecta, the launch of the space race car was complicated.
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When asked why Faraday chose to produce a racing car instead of a sedan or something closer to a production vehicle, Sampson said, “Because we didn’t want to show off what we were going to do.” The newly unveiled concept car also emphasizes that Faraday can build almost anything on a flexible platform architecture, he said.
Richard Kim, Faraday’s head of design, said the FFZERO1 isn’t just a concept car – rather, “it’s a concept car.”
Report on LeTV’s plans to take on Tesla with mass-produced EVs. But Faraday execs have yet to reveal any information about what the company’s first production car will look like, other than the fact that it will be a “premium product.” All Sampson will say is that the car will be comparable in price and range to the top competitors in the EV space.
The company also refused to disclose its battery suppliers and refused to provide details of its financial backers.
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And about shared and autonomous vehicles, Sampson basically said that the company is looking into it, but did not offer any information about the launch plan. (GTM hopes to learn more in an interview with Faraday Future executives later this week.)
Whatever Faraday was doing, it planned to move quickly. Sampson said the company plans to bring the car to market in 2017 (though he said “in a couple of years” on stage last night), which is remarkably early by any standards. It usually takes four years to bring a new vehicle to market.
At the press conference, Sampson said he expects to bring products to market on a faster timeline than Tesla, which launched in 2003 and is expected to release its third-generation vehicle in 2017.
Nevada Gov. Sandoval poses with Ding Lei, co-founder of LeTV, and Faraday’s Richard Kim and Nick Sampson at CES. Photo: Julia Pyper
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And a professor at Stanford University, said he was impressed that Faraday unveiled a physical vehicle at CES. “But the concept doesn’t mean it’s a car,” he added.
“Starting with a supercar, an expensive car, superior, is not wrong. Tesla did it and it worked for them, and I think it will work for other EV companies,” Seba said. “But to start in many, many