The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Lemons Tech → Is winning an overall race with an EV vehicle even possible?
So everybody it talking about swapping battery packs, and no one has brought up the correct answer, NUCLEAR!
With one small pellet of the right material you could probably get the car to run for about 50 years before refueling.
Yes, the lead shielding would add to the weight, and a meltdown would be "bad", but the rules don't say you can't do it...
Emyr wrote:rmcdaniels wrote:You can make it work for an autocross car or a Pike's Peak car, but if you have to carry enough energy for hours, then you need to carry a phenomenal amount of weight , enough that you will not be competitive. Alternately you can make a whole lot of pit stops, but then that E30 eats your lunch while you are swapping battery packs.
Swapping packs should be a whole load faster than glugging in gallons of gas through a standard filler pipe.
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.
I only just saw this. I don't know if it's different in your region, but I have only ever seen 1 team using a dry break system, and they weren't a guaranteed win. You can setup a standard racing jug to dump just as fast and not spill everywhere without spending thousands on a dry break. And I really don't think that's a money problem running rampant through this series.
I would suspect that your energy requirements for running good lap times is off by an order of magnitude.
About 10 years ago, my EE friend and I were going to make an electric autocross car. We did all the energy requirements and found that we were going to need 2 sets of batteries to get an estimated 6 miles out of the car (smaller battery groups than what an endurance car would run but still weighed ~100kg). Full throttle driving consumes an insane amount of electrical energy. We had to include regenerative braking (for an estimated 1 mile trip). Even the Formula E only get ~25laps out of 54kWh batteries (with very efficient electronics and motors).
Speaking of motors - the drive motors were going to get hot. Like really hot. Hot enough that they were going to require extra cooling not just ducting. There are trade offs here as to motor size vs. heat vs. cost.
Anyway, we gave up on the idea as a good two stroke engine was going to kick our ass in weight vs. power vs. cost vs. reliability ratios.
rmcdaniels wrote:You can make it work for an autocross car or a Pike's Peak car, but if you have to carry enough energy for hours, then you need to carry a phenomenal amount of weight , enough that you will not be competitive. Alternately you can make a whole lot of pit stops, but then that E30 eats your lunch while you are swapping battery packs.
Swapping packs should be a whole load faster than glugging in gallons of gas through a standard filler pipe.
The top end teams don't use the standard fill. It takes about 20-25 sec to drop 5 gallons of fuel into our cell using a hunsaker. Most of our pit stops are < 3min and we drop 15 and change drivers.
If I were to do it, I would use a pick up truck and line the whole bed w/batteries. Have it mounted on a tray that can slide out. Have a couple of replacement trays and just swap them out.
Sonoma Raceway hosts the Shell Eco-Marathon, which is a not a joke cynical lazy attempt at endurance racing for electric cars. They only allow university students, so i don't qualify..
Sonoma Raceway hosts the Shell Eco-Marathon, which is a not a joke cynical lazy attempt at endurance racing for electric cars. They only allow university students, so i don't qualify..
This is really getting up your craw for some reason isn’t it?
The top end teams don't use the standard fill. It takes about 20-25 sec to drop 5 gallons of fuel into our cell using a hunsaker. Most of our pit stops are < 3min and we drop 15 and change drivers.
A Hunsaker can be set up to dump five gallons in seven seconds (free air) without any weird mods. A VP-style jug with a big-ass vent ported into the side of it can dump five gallons in between three and four seconds. If you've got a big enough hole in your fill plate (big enough for the fuel to go in while the air comes out) you can get that sort of performance right into the cell.
At that point fueling is pretty much the fastest part of a pit stop.
chaase wrote:The top end teams don't use the standard fill. It takes about 20-25 sec to drop 5 gallons of fuel into our cell using a hunsaker. Most of our pit stops are < 3min and we drop 15 and change drivers.
A Hunsaker can be set up to dump five gallons in seven seconds (free air) without any weird mods. A VP-style jug with a big-ass vent ported into the side of it can dump five gallons in between three and four seconds. If you've got a big enough hole in your fill plate (big enough for the fuel to go in while the air comes out) you can get that sort of performance right into the cell.
At that point fueling is pretty much the fastest part of a pit stop.
I know our Hunsacker set up is fast, just haven't timed it. I know we can do a driver change and dump 3 jugs in less than 3min. You are absolutely correct, we take more time getting the driver in and out than putting in the fuel.
Mostly what I was going to say has already been said by TheEngineer.
You can recharge and swap batteries in the paddock, or at least we did.
You will not win the race. A team composed of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Lewis Hamilton, and Scott Dixon wouldn't win either.
Do it anyway.
FYI, Tesla model s battery can be swapped in 90 seconds.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aaSuTPn5g-o
Since you’re not fueling the car, can you do the driver change and other activities while swapping the battery? Would shave some time off stops as well.
FYI, Tesla model s battery can be swapped in 90 seconds.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aaSuTPn5g-o
Since you’re not fueling the car, can you do the driver change and other activities while swapping the battery? Would shave some time off stops as well.
I agree.
THERE IS NO WAY THIS CAN FAIL.
DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Batteries can be designed to recharge very quickly at the expense of energy density
and they are always announcing new ones that can be charged to 50% in seconds, 80% in minutes.
yet I don't think any of them have come to market yet.
Cells that discharge 90% in about 14 seconds, not 'soon' technology, today technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LQXB1DX-2Q
So maybe a Billionaire could win a Lemons Race and pickup $50k to cover meals,
they would rather build super fast america cup yachts instead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-16cxaFjpw
And btw, this is cheating tip number 4, get huge fans to blow on the track and add sails to the car.
Sigh.....we used to have a Boat on the track in Lemons.........
Jesus christ you know you're in Lemons when we collectively decided that the quickest way to do this is just to bribe the other teams....
...plus $2k is a large bribe when the winning Class A team only stands to walk away with $400.
"I'll bid $401, Bob!"
Jesus christ you know you're in Lemons when we collectively decided that the quickest way to do this is just to bribe the other teams....
...plus $2k is a large bribe when the winning Class A team only stands to walk away with $400.
"I'll bid $401, Bob!"
$50,000.00/100 teams is $500.00/team. Everyone can still go out and race but about some point day 2 everyone ahead of it gets off the track for a while.
Is it possible for an EV to win?
Hell if we know; we're in the business of letting ya'll solve the problems we create.
Does this mean that some EV experts are going to build a car with a bottomless money supply to win a dump truck full of nickels?
Maybe? The interesting thing is that no one—*cough* FIA *cough*—has provided a venue for all-electric endurance race cars at all. So if there's a shop that's been sitting around and waiting for something like this to show up, then maybe someone already has this figured out. Is that likely? Probably not. But if EV companies want to show that they can do what dino-juice cars can do, it's not a bad idea to start by beating 25-year-old hoopties in a venue where they've shown themselves surprisingly capable.
Can I win Class C with an EV and get nickels?
Yes, but you only get the $600 worth of nickels for winning Class C. You want the big money, you gotta win the big prize (Overall Winner on Laps).
Seriously, is it even possible?
The answer is still "Hell if we know," but we think it's worth dangling that carrot to see more people having fun with electric cars.
So do the vehicles have to be completely electric or is a hybrid considered an EV car?
Or you build an ultra cheaty car, enter it in the race and have it push the EV car around until the last lap? Boom
"3.L FULL-EV REGS" = Full-Electric Vehicle
"3.L FULL-EV REGS" = Full-Electric Vehicle
Surely we need Tony Stark on this, anyone able to get one of those power thingy's out of his chest? '
Steve, I was thinking gravity drive. Sure, you might rip a hole in the space/time fabric but we are talking about 5 1/2 tons of nickles here!
"3.L FULL-EV REGS" = Full-Electric Vehicle
So a Radium decay steam boiler with a turbine to generate electricity...your saying that is out? What kind of joke racing series is this?
Is a jet engine pointed at a windmill considered a Hybrid?
So I have been giving this some thought and I think that it is possible. Don't be shy there will be some math.
1. How much energy does a gas car use?
My car(mid-pack at best) at ~#2700 and not a lot of HP uses around 4 gallons per hour. Call it 5 gallons per hour to a front runner.
One gallon of gas contains 33.7 kWh of energy in it and I will assume that the efficiency(gas to wheels) is around 20%.
5[gal/hour] * 33.7 [kWh] * 0.20[%] = 33.7[kWh/hour][kW]
This means that I need to supply ~34 kW to the car continuously to run at race pace. This is not the same a the battery requirement.
2. How much storage do I need?
Motor and drive line efficiency ~90%
Battery charge usage capacity ~ 80% (can't drain the batteries all the way, Tesla batteries are good to around 80% depletion)
33.7[kWh/hour]/ 0.90 [%] / 0.80 [%] = 46.8 [kWh/hour]
Call it 50 [kWh/hour] of energy consumption continuous.
3. What does this mean for racing?
From looking at race data, front running cars spend ~30-45 min in the pits fueling and changing drivers. Lets call it 35min total off track to be competitive.
I am going to allocate 15min of that 35min to driver changes. Leaving 20min for all of the battery changing.
If I swap batteries every hour I would have to do 14 pit-stops maximum (the brake in the race would reduce this by one), every two hours would be 8 pit-stops.
20 [min] / 14 = 1:25 [m:s]
20 [min] / 8 = 2:30 [m:s]
Conclusion
From looking at this simple calculation I think that it might be possible to be competitive. I think that the battery swap times could be achieved with smart pack design, quick release fasteners and a well design removal/install fixture or rig. I also think that 100 kWh is not an unreasonable amount of batteries, Tesla's already come with 100kWh packs. (you would need like 5x this to have enough sets). It would definitely not be easy but I think it is doable. For less than $50k probably not, and it would require 20x the thought and engineering that goes into a regular Lemons car.
...plus $2k is a large bribe when the winning Class A team only stands to walk away with $400.
I figured the $2000 bribe wasn't so much based on the potential loss of $400 as it was on the loss of both track time and opportunity for competition. I know that even from my position at the back of the field I wouldn't give up a big chunk of the weekend for just a few hundred bucks after going to all the trouble of getting to the race. I prefer to let the car itself deprive me of track time.
There's also the psychological consideration that it would probably irritate a lot of people to be offered a small sum just to step aside to let someone else take home so much more, which would make unanimous cooperation that much less likely. At least by offering the bulk of the $50,000 as large-ish bribes it would make it clear that the EV team was doing its best to share the wealth among the conspirators while still reserving enough to cover a portion of the development costs. This is also why I think this approach would only work at one of the smaller races, as otherwise the bribes would need to be spread too thinly.
Mostly, though, I'm pretty sure even with all of the above in the team's favor, the potential success of bribery would come down to the hopefully universal appeal of the "messing with Jay" aspect of doing things this way.
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