BYU Sets EV Land Speed Record

For the past 10 years, engineering students at Brigham Young University have been bringing their battery powered race car – Electric Blue – to the Bonneville Salt Flats to compete for top speed honors. In all, more than 130 students have been involved in designing and building the car, which competes in the under 500 kilogram (1,100 lbs) category for land speed racing, and the team finally broke the 200 MPH broke during their latest attempt, reports Electric AutoSport.

Three years ago, Electric Blue set a land speed record for its class of 155.8 miles per hour. But this year, after a lot of hard work and modifications, the car smashed that record by more than 50 mph, topping out at 204.9. Kelly Hales, BYU student and team captain says “When we set the record three years ago we felt like we left a lot on the table. On paper we thought we could get 200 mph but we never had the conditions just right—until now.” Other electric cars have set higher speeds at Bonneville, notably Ohio State’s Buckeye Bullet, but those cars compete in classes for heavier vehicles. Electric Blue is half as heavy as the Mazda Miata, which is just about the lightest production car you can buy these days.

BYU students have custom-built the lightweight carbon fiber body of Electric Blue over the past 6 years with assistance from computer programs that model wind tunnels. All that aerodynamic work, coupled with power from lithium-iron phosphate batteries, helped the car reach its record setting speed on the salt flats this year. Team captain Hales says that Electric Blue can now retire with a record that should stand for awhile.

Source:  Gas 2.

Ohio State team moves EV Salt Flats speed tests back home

The Ohio State Center for Automotive Research (OSU CAR) may be moving speed tests for what may be the world's fastest electric vehicle about 1,700 miles away from its original Utah destination, but, hey, that's theoretically just a tidy four-hour drive at full speed. This month, Ohio State, which earlier this year said it was working with Venturi on setting a land-speed record for electric vehicles, will test its third Buckeye Bullet, otherwise known as the Venturi VBB-3, at Ohio's Transportation Research Center to better give the building team a chance to perfect the car's operations.

Testing was originally to be done at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats, where the team will try to set a world speed record in mid-September but apparently, there's still more work to be done. In April, the team said its 3,000-horsepower EV was already able to reach about 373 miles per hour and was shooting to add another 60 mph or so to that mark. The original Buckeye Bullet reached a top speed of about 301 miles per hour in 2009.

Read the team's rapidly written press release below.

Show full PR text

News Source: Ohio State Center for Automotive Research (OSU CAR)

Buckeye Bullet 3 to Get 3000 HP Electric Motor - VIDEO

What will a streamlined, lightweight, ultra-slick electric lakester run WFO on 2 miles of dead-flat land with 3000 hp worth of electric motor whirring away a few inches behind the driver’s head? The Ohio State University team behind the Buckeye Bullet electric land speed record-breaker is hoping to find out soon, thanks to a set of new 3000 hp Venturi electric motors.

We’ve covered the Buckeye Bullet before, when the team cracked the 300 mph barrier and followed up with plans to go 400 mph with a slightly more streamlined and slightly more powerful version of the Bullet.

“Slightly more powerful,” however, might be an understatement. The 300+ mph record-setting car was making just about 800 hp back in 2011 … with almost 4 times the power, actually going 400 mph in August seems like a formality!

Stay tuned for more Buckeye Bullet news in the weeks and months ahead – and, if you can’t quite get enough, check out the video (in French), below.

Source: Ohio State University, via TechVehi.

Electric Cowboy rides Zero S, sets speed records on Bonneville Salt Flats

Brandon Nozaki Miller – A.K.A. the Electric Cowboy – is on a mission: to prove you don't need big-time money to have big-time fun competing on an electric motorcycle. To help make his case, he's just set several land speed records on the Bonneville Salt Flats.

Aboard his Zero S steed (affectionately named Foxie Cleopatra), he reached an averaged speed of 101.652 miles per hour over a mile distance, placing himself in the record books of both theFIM (Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme) and AMA(American Motorcyclist Association), in the category of electric motorcycles under 150 kilograms. The effort also landed him the FIM record for the kilometer distance at 102.281 miles per hour.

Pretty cool, right? But this leads us to an obvious question: how do you get a battery-powered bike that's rated for a top speed of 88 mph to break the ton? Answer: Modifications. Lots of them.

Perhaps the biggest gain came from a simple swap of the stock rear 108-tooth sprocket with a slightly smaller 98-tooth disc. Other hardware changes included the addition of a steering damper and other bits to make it AMA compliant at the higher speeds, as well as little tricks like sawing off over five inches from his handlebars.

The Cowboy also employed some high tech savvy in his high-speed bid. Hacking into the bike's controller, he bumped up all the parameters, especially torque in upper range, to feed more power from the Zero ZF6 pack. While this is risky business – the magnets in permanent magnet motors can lose their attractive/repulsive properties if exposed to too much heat – Miller managed to come out on the winning end of the equation.

Good thing, because after the benefit of some TLC from the crew down at Hollywood Electrics and a new set of handlebars, Foxie is going up against the gassers of the Chuckwalla Valley Motorcycle Associationthis weekend. Though Miller wouldn't predict how he would fare against the 250cc bikes, we expect he will, at least, have lots fun while spreading his EV-positive message.

Source: Autoblog Green