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EV WORLD EXCLUSIVE ARTICLE |
The author drives his Open Class electric race called Team Electrolite to new world speed record using less energy than your average hair dryer consumes. Four other electrathon racers also broke the 50 mph barrier, traveling 50 miles in one hour on less than 1000 watts.
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Five streamlined electric cars powered by just 1 hp break 50 mph speed barrier
Open Access Article Originally Published: November 08, 2006
Five streamlined electric race carsset new levels of "Extreme Efficiency"during the Electrathon National Speed Trials on October30/31, 2006 at New Hampshire International Speedway. Each car broke the existing record by covering more than 50 miles in one hour using less than a kilowatt/hour of electricity....the power of a small hair dryer. Measured in automotive terms, they reached the equivalent of 1500 MPG while traveling at highway speeds.
With a field of competitors that included the fastest teams from Hawaii, the West Coast, the Midwest and New England, it is not surprising that new records were set in the High School, College and Open divisions.
Under the supervision of instructor John MacDonald, Mount Blue High School, Farmington, ME upheld their claim to the National High School division record again this year. Driver Alex Prentiss took the team to 50.15 miles in one hour.
Freshman Bradlee Meyers of Iowa Central Community College, Fort Doge, IA drove a car of his own design to a new record of 49.15 miles for the College division.
The highest speeds overall were reached in the Open division, with Team Electrolite of Portland, ME setting the pace at 53.16 miles in the hour. Crediting the extremely small and aerodynamic design of his vehicle, driver Michael Lewis was able to accomplish this with a mere 952.8 watt/hours.
Tension was high as all the teams knew that everything had to be done perfectly to achieve this level of performance - months of effort went into the design and construction of these exotic machines. In a style referred to as 'passive-aggressive', the drivers wrestled the highest possible speed from the lowest possible effort.
Electrathon is a national competition for lightweight, high efficiency electric vehicles. Power is limited to 67 lbs. of production lead acid batteries, which amounts to a little more than one horsepower over the hour. The rules are simple enough to allow a wide variety of creative designs, and although it's open to everyone, most of the competitors are school teams because the sport offers an affordable test of imagination, skill, discipline and teamwork. And, striving to foster an ethic of efficiency, it promotes the development of alternative energy transportation in compelling style.
The National Speed Trials are supported by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, Maine Energy Education Program, Patrons Oxford Insurance, Chewonki Pathways, and the many schools, businesses and organizations that support Electrathon teams across the country, and are made possible by the owners and staff of New Hampshire International Speedway.
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17 comments so far...
22-May-2007
56306
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Stinks?
Smells like Teen Spirit!
This is an awesome article about a great piece of work! thanks to all involved, I am impressed.
Aloha, Kim
Posted by: kim sweeney
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17-Nov-2006
37394
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Michael, if you're serious about having vehicle-mad kids and adults put posters of super-efficient EVs on their walls ... where do we download a poster-sized file of YOUR sexy vehicle? Post it as a BitTorrent download, and I promise to keep it mirrored on my machine for at least a month.
Posted by: Wilma Keppel
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11-Nov-2006
36950
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A bunch of high school students design a car getting 1,500 mpg at 50 mph, while the world’s giant automakers languish at a CAFE of 27.5 mpg. Doesn’t that just say it all? Be inspired by the success of these electric innovators, and ignore the corporate and political naysayers.
Posted by: Steve Ward
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28-Nov-2006
38562
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Wilma(or anyone else that's interested), contact me at cmlewis@maine.rr.com and I'll send you some inspirational images.
Posted by: Michael Lewis
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28-Nov-2006
38562
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Wilma(or anyone else that's interested), contact me at cmlewis@maine.rr.com and I'll send you some inspirational images.
Posted by: Michael Lewis
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22-Oct-2008
64559
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This is great! If people would just use this gas on races and just for hobbies, they must look for some substitute for the increasing cost of it. They should have several substitute for gas engine fuel saver to make their hobbies cheaper. Having and maintaining this kind of vehicles is expensive, why not just save on other aspects.
Posted by: Gail Adams
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12-Feb-2007
48408
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this stinks
Posted by: tom heuas
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14-Nov-2006
37130
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Steve,
you are comparing apples to oranges. These cars don't meet crash testing. They don't have the bevy of air bags, side impact beams, pedestrian crumple zones, etc. They don't have air-conditioning. They don't carry five or more passengers. The builders of these electrathon cars don't have to deal with litigation cost.
Inspiration? Definitely. A legitimate comparison to world automakers? Absolutely not.
Posted by: Peter Lawrence
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14-Nov-2006
37133
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One more nitpicky item. 1KWh is actually 1.3 horsepower (approximately 740 watt-hours per HP). It's still impressive feat though. Not sure if that error affects the 1500 mpg figure, too much math for right now.
Posted by: Rob Neff
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14-Nov-2006
37143
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Peter Lawrence – You are right… sort of. When I posted my comments, I considered emphasizing exactly the same differences you pointed out. But I felt it was a red herring that would take two pages to explain, so I didn’t say it. What two-page red herring was that, you ask? The fact is that car design is a huge pile of compromises that follow from a few basic design choices. Suppose you start with the premise that the vehicle must carry 5 - 7 people weighing 250 lb each, in captain’s chairs, with 20 cubic feet of luggage weighing 500 lb, while towing a small travel trailer weighing 1,500 lb, and capable of accelerating to 60 mph in less than 9 seconds. And you want to build that car affordably and profitably. If you apply the world’s best engineers to that problem, you get what we have on the road today. With the notable exception of the Prius and a few diesel cars, we mostly have CAFE 25 mpg cars, SUVs, and minivans that are superb at what they are designed for, but seldom used for that purpose. These vehicles spend 90% of their service lives carrying one or two people and less than 20 lb of luggage. The electrathon cars represent the other end of the spectrum. Their initial design choices are to carry one person with no luggage, no captain’s chair, no A/C, and no energy waste. And they succeed at those compromises to the tune of 1,500 mpg. It is worth emphasizing several points here: First, there is a lot of room between 25 mpg and 1,500 mpg for engineers and car BUYERS to make compromises. Perhaps the car could be slightly roomier and get only 1000 mpg, or carry four people and get only 200 mpg. Second, crash worthiness requires structures that absorb energy. The size of those structures is heavily dependant on the initial design choices. If the vehicle design payload is 500 lb instead of 5,000 lb, the crash structures can be much smaller, lighter, and cheaper. Crash safety doesn’t have to destroy fuel efficiency. Third, in America, thousands of motorcycles are sold each year which offer seating for one or two people, with no weather protection, at prices in the $7,000 to $30,000 range. The customers are not dissuaded by the lack of A/C, sound deadening insulation, or cargo capacity. Those amenities are not engineering imperatives in cars, they are needed because the customer demands them. Are there enough customers to support the production of lightly equipped cars? Perhaps the real question is: What does the motorcycle industry know about marketing that the car industry doesn’t know (or want to know)? Fourth, the external shape of the electrathon car is heavily compromised in the direction of low aerodynamic drag. But mainstream car styling is defined mostly by customer preference. This is not a recipe for energy efficiency because most customers don’t know what shape produces efficiency, or they don’t care, or they refuse to buy it. Can you imagine what the airline industry would be like if the customers were allowed to significantly influence the design of the external shape of the planes? Nothing would fly. If cars are ever going to be energy efficient, car buyers are going to have to accept that their ideas about styling can’t be allowed to fully determine the shape of the car. ----------- So, having said all that, you are correct that the electrathon cars can’t be directly compared to the offerings of the world’s automakers, but they definitely show just how horribly inefficient the compromises demanded by the mainstream market, and encouraged by the automakers, really are, and they firmly dispel the myth that it can’t be done better.
Posted by: Steve Ward
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16-Nov-2006
37241
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Thank you to Steve Ward. It is about inspiration. As I said, we are trying to promote an 'ethic of efficiency'. We want to redefine what young people think of as really cool, or totally awesome...you know that poster of the Lamborghini Countach that every teenage motorhead has on his wall? Its time for something else. Its time to stop dreaming about absolute power and start thinking about doing more with less.
We are also trying to build an infrastructure for electric vehicles, and I don't mean hardware. I mean the people that are going to build, buy, and work on them. A lot of these kids had never seen an electric car of any kind before they built one in shop class, and they've built enough support in their community to get them to the races. Or, as I like to call them, 'speed trials'. We try to emphasize that we are all racing against the clock, to see how far we can go in an hour. That we are all trying to do it at the same time is a matter of logistical convenience...which, frankly, makes it more fun.
There is another world we are trying to reach- motor racing (actually, it should be called 'engine' racing...WE have motors, THEY have engines)and NASCAR in particular, where being green means switching to unleaded gasoline (next year). History was made a few weeks ago when the first and second place cars finished a Nextel Cup race using no gasoline at all! They both ran out on the final lap. For the last 20 laps, they had been driving like we do, passive-aggessive, smooth and efficient, and by not having to pit for gas, they won. I'm not claiming we've influenced anybody yet, but our presence at the local oval and the superspeedway has not gone unnoticed. The track owners have been really supportive and the racers we've met have been respectful and encouraging. The fans? That may take a little longer.
By the way, the 1500mpg number, like the one horsepower, was a press release approximation. I arrived at that number a few years ago using a conversion factor from the Tour de Sol, which, I've been told, was somewhat biased. If anyone else wants to convert 53.16 miles on 952.8 watt/hours to mpg, I'd be most interested in the result.
Posted by: Michael Lewis
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16-Nov-2006
37245
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Regarding the 1,500 mpg fuel economy number… Because gasoline is a mixture of many compounds, the energy content is dependant on the mixture and there seems to be a wide range of energy content values reported. A hopefully acceptable median value of 114,000 BTU/gal was found at: http://www.chevron.com/products/PRODSERV/fuels/bulletin/fuel_economy/ This converts to Watt-hours as follows: (114,000 BTU/gal) x (.2933 W-h/BTU) = 33,436.2 W-h/gal The energy reportedly used by the car was 952.8 Watt-hours. This converts to gallons as follows: (952.8 W-h)/(33,436.2 W-h/gal) = .0285 gal The distance traveled was reported as 53.16 miles, which yields the following fuel mileage: (53.16 miles) / (.0285 gal) = 1865 mpg If the fuel has only 100,000 BTU/gal… 1865 mpg x 100/114 = 1635 mpg If the fuel has 124,000 BTU/gal… 1865 mpg x 124/114 = 2028 mpg As for the reason why these numbers are higher than the 1,500 mpg number noted in the article, it may be that the fuel energy values noted here are theoretical, not measured in a lab. I am not familiar with the calculation method used by the Tour de Sol. If anyone else can shed some light on this it would be appreciated, and I apologize in advance if there are any math or conversion errors here.
Posted by: Steve Ward
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16-Nov-2006
37249
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I should have pointed out that the fuel economy numbers I calculated in my last post don’t take into account the fact that a grid-charged EV gets its power from the grid generation mix, which usually includes hydrocarbon-combustion power generation, and has some transmission and charging losses. The well-to-wheel energy efficiency of this arrangement was calculated on the Tesla web site at about 52.5% if all the power comes from a 60% efficient gas-fired ‘combined cycle’ generator. If that 52.5% number were applied to the mpg numbers in my previous post, you get a low value of 850 mpg and a high value of 1055 mpg. Those numbers aren’t quite 1,500 mpg, but are still a fantastic achievement. It is possible the Tour de Sol calculation method included non-hydrocarbon electric generation in their grid mix, which would give a well-to-wheel efficiency number higher than 52.5% and correspondingly higher mpg values.
Posted by: Steve Ward
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16-Nov-2006
37291
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Wow! Thanks again Steve. In future press releases I will use a nice round number, say 2000mpg, This compares well with the SAE Supermileage competition, but is still well short of the Euro version, the Shell EcoMarathon, with records over 10,000mpg. Our big difference with both of these is that they accomplish this phenominal performance at an average of 15-20mph. While I applaud their intentions, and I love the variety of creative vehicles, I think doing it at highway speeds is more credible, and puts Electrathon more firmly in the real world.
Posted by: Michael Lewis
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16-Nov-2006
37296
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Michael – You’re welcome. I had to laugh at some of your comments. When I was 14 – 30 years of age, I had a Countach poster on my wall. If I can evolve beyond that stage, perhaps anybody can. I also got a grin out of your plans to use 2,000 mpg in your press releases. The marketing department always goes with the big number. The engineering department prefers mushy statements like: 850 mpg to 2000 mpg, depending on the gasoline energy values used in the calculation, and the source of grid energy used to charge the batteries. (Or is that what the legal department says… I can never keep that straight…)
Posted by: Steve Ward
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09-Nov-2006
36684
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traveling 50 miles in one hour on less than 1000 watts.
Shouldn't that be 'less than 1000 watt-hours' or 'less than 1 kWh'? This is the same energy as using a small hairdryer for one hour. This is about 20 Wh per mile compared to Tesla's claimed 200 Wh per mile.
Posted by: John Norris
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09-Nov-2006
36724
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Well since the event is conducted over one hour, both statements are correct - 1000W or 1000Wh
Posted by: Aussie Andy
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