The battle for the quickest lap around the Nürburgring Nordschleife has become nearly bloodsport among automakers like Porsche and Nissan, who most recently duked it out after Nissan’s GT-R beat the 911 Turbo around the ‘Ring. Toyota isn’t immune from a little Nürburgring name-dropping itself, though, and today its Motorsport GmbH subsidiary announced that it has set a new lap record at the famed circuit—in an electric car.
The record that Toyota broke wasn’t held by the Radical SR8LM or the Gumpert Apollo—or even a Porsche. The bar set for Toyota was much lower, but no less significant: Toyota Motorsport GmbH set out to run an EV around the fabled Green Hell in less than eight minutes, which would handily thump the previous EV record of 9:01.338 held by Peugeot’s EX1. Toyota’s TMG EV P001 did the deed in 7:47.794, indeed trumping the Peugeot and nosing EVs into a realm of Nürburgring performance they’d never before seen. It is important to note that while the TMG EV’s lap time is supremely quick, it is more than a minute and a half off the times of the quickest gas-powered production cars.
How did Toyota Motorsport’s TMG EV accomplish this feat? Light weight and a high top speed (for an electric car). The P001 is powered by two electric motors that together produce 375 hp and kick the P001 to a top speed of 161 mph. The car weighs a claimed 2138 pounds; the battery pack alone is 772 of those pounds. The pack is an advanced lithium-ceramic unit, and has an energy capacity of 41.5 kWh. The chassis actually is a modified Radical unit, which definitely explains why the TMG EV looks pretty similar to a Radical SR8LM. The car features a doorstop-like profile and an open cockpit—and a giant rear spoiler—and achieved its record lap time using street-legal tires.
No comments:
Post a Comment