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New world record with an electric racing car: From 0 to 100 in 0.956 seconds

ethz.ch

141–150 of 307 posts

Re: New world record with an electric racing car: From 0 to 100 in 0.956 seconds

#141

One of the photos really brought something home to me. Where I would expect to see an axle or something to provide torque to wheels from the engine, there is just a yellow wire. I know that's how electric cars work. But something about it in the racing car context just brings it home to me - electricity just works differently to all our other intuitions about the world. Factories used to have bands and axels taking p…

> Factories used to have bands and axels taking power from one central steam engine to all corners of the building.

From my own experience: a popular home woodworker tool from the middle of the 20th century is a Shop Smith. It had a motor that you would couple to the various mounted attachments to run the lathe or the band saw or the table saw etc one tool at a time. I guess part of the appeal was certainly the size savings, but I have to think it was also only having to buy one electric motor. Life changingly good motors are now commodity parts, and artisanally crafted ones are setting acceleration world records. Cool time to be alive.

Re: New world record with an electric racing car: From 0 to 100 in 0.956 seconds

#143
post #62

Out of curiosity, what's the point of a driver in something like this besides to have a human in the vehicle adding weight? Are they doing much? Serious & maybe very ignorant question. - Edit - For clarification, my reason for asking was due to this occurring in less than 1 second. I don't understand what the driver does as I'm assuming they have no gears to shift or turns to make.

I’d hazard you can’t get a world record without a human being in the car? I’m no mechanical engineer, but I could definitely make something without a human inside of it go from 0-100 in less than a second.

A bullet will do 0-60mph in 20ms.

Re: New world record with an electric racing car: From 0 to 100 in 0.956 seconds

#144

One of the photos really brought something home to me. Where I would expect to see an axle or something to provide torque to wheels from the engine, there is just a yellow wire. I know that's how electric cars work. But something about it in the racing car context just brings it home to me - electricity just works differently to all our other intuitions about the world. Factories used to have bands and axels taking p…

Kind of. This team is specifically using hub motors, thus bypassing the need for traditional axles. Hub motors are notoriously inefficient, though, so you don’t see them in normal BEVs which typically mount the motors near the center of the axle (as part of an “e-axle”). Basically, this team’s car is purpose built only for acceleration and thus gets away with doing things you wouldn’t see in cars that need to maintain speed or drive efficiently. Great ingenuity by them!

Re: New world record with an electric racing car: From 0 to 100 in 0.956 seconds

#145

As someone who grew up racing go karts and still enjoys motor sports (mostly F1), the problem I have with e-racing is the lack of sound. The winding noise they make just isn't adequate and really puts me off to the racing.

I'm sure there's some equivalent of putting a playing card into the spokes

Re: New world record with an electric racing car: From 0 to 100 in 0.956 seconds

#146
post #68

Impressive but for reference, about half the acceleration of a Top Fuel dragster, which are also still getting faster. Here's Brittany Force who holds the current records (fastest time, fastest speed): https://www.nhra.com/news/2022/brittany-force-sets-national-... 0 to 338.43 mph in 3.665 seconds over 1000 feet. (The cars got too fast for 1,320 feet and have been racing 1000 feet since 2008.)

The dragsters need to have a complete engine tear-down after nearly every run, regularly explode in a giant ball of flame, etc.

I thought maybe this was a superficial tear-down but nope, it's a whole heckin teardown and measurement of components and relubing and cleaning and etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1RYmUxUqso

Also the end of this video gives an awesome perspective that really shows the insane speed of these cars.

Re: New world record with an electric racing car: From 0 to 100 in 0.956 seconds

#147

On a related note in the sports car community its been interesting to watch Acceleration stop being a mark of a performance car. There is even a lot of chatter around this being the end of the supercar segment since there are family wagons that can now do 2 second 0-60 runs. On top of that the speed is now too much for anyone to reasonably use off a drag strip or circuit. Now there is a huge emphasis on engagement, d…

This is really quite wrong.

Performance car /= sports car. Sports cars are light and nimble by definition. They are usually fast, but this is not a rule. There have always been sedans that are faster in a straight line than most sports cars. There have always been sports cars that are not very fast at all. None of this is new, and claiming otherwise is ahistorical. Even back in the '60s, a sports car enthusiast would have chosen an MGB over a much faster Camaro, because the MGB is a sports car and the Camaro is not.

Engagement, dynamics, and "feelsomeness" are not vague at all. Handling is the product of engineering. It is largely objective. Some cars really are easier to control than others. Some really do hold on better in the corners. Cars really do have more or less body roll and more or less oversteer. What "character" is best is a matter of opinion, but the car really does have that "character". The fact that something is hard to measure does not mean it doesn't exist.

Sports car fans mean exactly what they say: they value handling over acceleration. If they didn't mean it, they wouldn't buy sports cars.

Re: New world record with an electric racing car: From 0 to 100 in 0.956 seconds

#149
post #148

Interesting that they went with an open-cockpit design. I'd have thought closed cockpit would be faster because of better aerodynamics, even at these relatively low speeds. Any idea why this was chosen?

I'm guessing weight is more important than aerodynamics if target is 0-100km/h.

Re: New world record with an electric racing car: From 0 to 100 in 0.956 seconds

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's *roughly* the gravitational acceleration at the surface of an Olympic-size swimming pool of electron-degenerate matter from a white dwarf star. Hope this helps! (Note: the swimming pool has collapsed under its own weight and is now a sphere).

A white dwarf's density is apparently around 1e9 kg/m³. Olympic swimming pools at 50m*25m*2m * 1e9kg/m³ would have a weight of 2.5e12 kg. As a sphere, the radius is (solving: volume_of_sphere = 4/3×π×radius³) $ qalc 50m*25m*2m = 4/3*pi*x^3 (((50 * meter) * (25 * meter) * (2 * meter)) = ((4 / 3) * pi * (x^3))) = approx. (x = 8.4194515 m) Gravitational acceleration (for a point mass) is: the gravitational constant, mul…

- " You're only one order of magnitude off"

Oh shit you're right. Root cause: I saw "3 g" and wrote "3 m/s^2".

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