Is winning an overall race with an EV vehicle even possible? (Page 2 of 9)

The people taking home the Class A nickels aren't feeding an OEM fuel tank with an OEM filler pipe.

They run Big Fuel cells and Dry break systems that cost more than their cage.

You mean “modifying the OEM fuel system” by removing part of the filler neck?

Didn’t the Jet Electrica get to run during Jesus hour, while everyone else was parked? Pick a track with a quiet hour and you’re essentially spotted a 1hr head start...

I spent some time running this thru some notepad calcs.  I have a good amount of knowledge about this, but also grabbed a ton of data by blindly googling.

The two limiting issues here is that you need the overall win and you much charge the batteries in the hotpit (assuming its a track where you fuel that way).

I don't think its even possible to win if you had a half million dollar budget (10x the prize).

A Tesla Model 3, which is arguably the most engineered ev being mass produced, can run about 3 laps around a track in "track mode".  But, I'm going to assume you can actually engineer a Lemons car that can run 45 mins at e30/e36 speeds (or our e12).  You have the issue of overcoming those long battery swaps twice as often as a ICE race car.  Then, say you are buying salvaged Teslas for the batteries/electronics.  According to a random google result "With a single onboard charger connected to a 240-volt outlet, as a Tesla can be setup, the pace can reach speeds up to 31 miles of range for each hour of charging, meaning a full charge takes less than 9.5 hours."  So you need let say 8 full Tesla battery packs per day and they all need be charging simultaneously to get thru a weekend.  One way to do this is to salvage Telsas that run 10k each, then you are up to $80k in batteries.  Then somehow you need to get 8x 240 connections in the hot pit to charge these 8 battery packs.  Rental generators will probably be an issue if they are in or near the hotpit.  So you'd probably need to cover the bill for the local utility to run the power and an electrician to install (assuming the track is OK with all this).  I don't even know what that would cost, but lets guess 10k. so the fueling alone has gotten us to 90k just for raw materials.  This is where my thought process starts to trail off to what it would take to build the car itself, plus the mechanisms to facilitate hot swap batteries.  You also wont be hauling this whole circus with a uhaul rental trailer behind a Silverado.

It's been fun as a thought exercise but as i go deep into the rabbit hole the logistics are mind boggling.

Here is the part where someone comes along and tears apart my analysis :-).

Even in hot pit races you can refuel in the padock folks.

Also Torchinsky lifted that line from the official E-mail/press release (because internet blog “journalism”)

Lemons perhaps Forgot to revise that part of the rules, or just counts it as “fueling” and so is covered as the rules are written.

I have built a couple electric cars, and one hybrid, and have a lot of parts and pieces and have been
looking for the right candidate/plan for an EV 'supercar'. 
I would not put my very expense and one-off engineering marvel onto a track
with a bunch of newbies in crapcans and within an organization defined by laziness and bribes.
Lemons is great, but completely wrong for EV racing.  Unless the point is to see how much you can cheat the rules, the 'spank loophole' is the way to do it.  Two cheap (prius-based) EVs that swap track time.

They have the Green Gran Prix,  http://www.greengrandprix.com/  people who don't make it a joke

I want to say CMP, Autobahn, and NJMP we could do either, with hot pits mostly there for the folks with nickel fever. But I was A&D for those so I really wasn’t paying much attention. Everywhere else for me running team or A&D was either fuel at pumps or fuel in paddock, no hot pits.

Perhaps they imagine some super fast battery killing hypercharger sort of thing.  Otherwise I would assume replacement battery charging at paddock space. Cause you sure won’t be doing that at the pumps.

Not Autobahn for sure...paddock fueling only.

This was back in 2012. But I may be jumbling it with NJMP since autobahn is easily the most forgetable paddock.

Before you even think about the tech required, you need to look at what your race needs to look like to win. The races are starting to be really close at the pointy end of the field. Take a look at who's winning and how. They're running lap times that are for sure in the top quarter of the field or better, they're limiting their fuel stops to 2 or 3 tops. To win, you have to be doing that, plain and simple.

So you need a system that lets you get through the day with at most 3 stops. And those three stops need to be matching the perfect pit stop times others are doing. meaning whatever you're doing to "refuel" needs to take a couple minutes at most. Assuming that the caveats for this challenge are that the car needs to be 100% EV and not some hybrid gas generator backed electric drive compromise, you're backed into battery pack swaps. Which honestly is the easy part. You can design a pallet system that rolls in/out to blind mate connectors with guide rails and fast latches/pins for securing in place. Again, that's the easy part (and the part I'd have the most fun designing).

The energy density problem is what makes this very unlikely to be completed anytime soon. Is there any battery pack out there right now that can let you run a-class speeds for 2 hours? Is there one that can do 1 hour? Until you can find a solution that gives you that 2 hour stint time with super fast swap times, it's not going to happen.

It would be interesting to start playing the maximizing game on all the ways you can cram power into the car. how much does real regen braking add? Is it even worth considering lining the car with solar panels to try and add that extra 10 minutes of range from a bright cloudless day? (I suspect it is not). Can you bribe a fluid dynamics engineer to help you build a hyper mile style car with as little drag as possible? Would it be worth running a two car team and designing the aero on each in such a way that the EV slip stream drafts the other car the entire race. Do you have enough drivers skilled enough to even think about doing that? because getting two cars to tail each other at race winning speeds the whole weekend sounds impossible.

I really don't think winning with an all-EV car is physically possible right now, and I think HQ agrees. but they're throwing the carrot out there to get people thinking and trying (with the HUGE caveat that not all are trusted to try, you must work with them through the whole process to ensure safety).

If the EV slipstream drafts then you risk ending up in second if your draft driver forgets and gets nickel fever.

But seriously, the head in the clouds designing is the only fun part. Actually trying to compete with class A is a drag. Just like it is in a regular IC car.