Even more so if this race attracted an audience.timhebb said:Appearances like this could be instrumental in changing the public perception of EVs, especially if the cars do well.
Hope you're not France-bashing here, but yes, for American fans obviously NASCAR and Indy-car race appearances would carry more weight, i.e., attract larger audiences. Still, Le Mans is pretty prestigious, and a good enough place to start.LTLFTcomposite said:Even more so if this race attracted an audience.timhebb said:Appearances like this could be instrumental in changing the public perception of EVs, especially if the cars do well.
I must be missing something. Isn't that like 8 miles? Even sucking up the juice way faster than a Leaf would it seems you'd still be good for a few laps. Assuming you don't turn the heat on of course.Electric4Me said:Agreed! I would bet that the car would need more than the 21 kWh in the Leaf battery per lap! (~13 km/lap)
Okay, okay, I pulled that out of my ass, but now I'll try to back it up! :lol:LTLFTcomposite said:I must be missing something. Isn't that like 8 miles? Even sucking up the juice way faster than a Leaf would it seems you'd still be good for a few laps. Assuming you don't turn the heat on of course.Electric4Me said:Agreed! I would bet that the car would need more than the 21 kWh in the Leaf battery per lap! (~13 km/lap)
OK, so the 2021 winner drove 5151 km and pitted 33 times. Let's say on average they took on 45 liters of fuel - let's round that to 1500 liters which is about 3.4 km/l which is about 8 mpg. Doesn't sound too far off.LTLFTcomposite said:I must be missing something. Isn't that like 8 miles? Even sucking up the juice way faster than a Leaf would it seems you'd still be good for a few laps. Assuming you don't turn the heat on of course.Electric4Me said:Agreed! I would bet that the car would need more than the 21 kWh in the Leaf battery per lap! (~13 km/lap)
As has been pointed out repeatedly, the Leaf doesn't use a LiFePO4 battery, it's LiMn2O4.Drivesolo said:Wow... really?... wow!
Great news. It does raise a lot of questions. Considering Nissan's first attempt at a purpose built EV racer was the Nismo RC, this Le Mans car would have to be a monumental improvement over it, by like an order or of a magnitude better. Battery swapping is almost definite. But what batts can they be planning to use for energy density? The current LiFePO4 24KWh pack wouldn't be able to take a Leaf around the circuit de la Sarthe for more than 15 minutes of driving at race pace. They'd probably need at minimum a 300bhp motor. If that photo is of their Le Mans car, it doesn't look like it'll be taking advantage of the efficiencies that the DeltaWing had so my guess is that they're planning something significantly more than 300bhp. If they're gonna need to pit more than once an hour, even if they can out pace most of the cars there, it's really gonna hurt them. Could they be thinking a range extended EV as a series hybrid? I'd think Nissan would only attempt to make this move if they knew that the could keep pace w/ the back markers. I'm guessing (hoping) that the engineers behind this project really know what they are doing and getting themselves into. Anything better than a last place finish would really do wonders for the impressions of EVs.
I hope whatever tech they use will come into play for a future mass produced performance EV soon.
The curious part of that analysis is the extrapolation from gasoline consumption to electric in a race car. It should be possible to get some validation, wasn't Tesla showing a model S being driven at ~110 mph on the autobahn? Any idea how many mpkWh they were getting on that run?Ref posts above from Electic4Me and drees
The 2014 rules show that all cars will be "hybrids" with KERS so that's part of how they will drop their consumption by ~25% for that year.drees said:EVs will have the benefit of regeneration under braking which the gas/diesel cars don't have the advantage of.
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