Nissan Unveils World's Fastest Electric Car

Just before the start of this year's LeMans race on Saturday, Nissan revealed the ZEOD RC, the world's fastest electric car. The company has been invited to enter the 186-mph electric race car in next year's 24-hour LeMans race.

The Nissan ZEOD RC (Zero Emissions On-Demand Racing Car) prototype is part technology demo and part publicity stunt for the Japanese automaker. The car uses the same lithium-ion batteries as the Nissan Leaf electric car, and Nissan is touting the fact that race-car technology often finds its way to cars driven on the street.

Nissan said it will test a variety of types and combinations of electric motors and gasoline engines in the ZEOD RC before the car hits the LeMans race track in 2014. The company was invited to the 2014 race under LeMans' "Garage 56" classification, reserved for one technologically innovative vehicle to take part in the annual 24-hour competition.

Andy Palmer, an executive vice-president at Nissan, said in a statement that this zero-emission, on-demand option lets a driver "switch between electric and petrol-powered drive," calling it the future direction for road cars. He continued, "That will be tested in addition to pure electric power and other new technologies that we still have under development."

Another part of the publicity-stunt aspect of the project is Nissan's plans to provide progress updates on the development of this electric car via its Nismo.tv YouTube channel.

In addition to the technology inside, we're impressed by that radical DeltaWing shape — one that's been tried before — at the 24 hours of LeMans in 2012. That was also a "Garage 56" entry, but wasn't electric — it had an Aston Martin chassis with a turbocharged Nissan gasoline engine.