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New Nordschleife lap record for Metropolia Electric RaceAbout
While testing on Nürburgring Nordschleife in September Metropolia Electric RaceAbout has made a new road legal electric vehicle lap record. German race driver Ralf Kelleners needed only 8 minutes and 42,72 seconds on Electric RaceAbout (E-RA) to complete a full lap of 20,832 km (12.944 mi). This world famous, curvy and hilly track with long fast sections is also known as “Grüne Hölle” - Green Hell - and widely used to benchmark the automotive top performance.
The average speed for the lap was 142 km/h (88 mph) and the top speed at Döttinger Höhe 238 km/h (148 mph). Later on during testing Kelleners reached even more impressive 244 km/h (152 mph). For the complete record lap E-RA consumed 25,6 kWh, measured as energy taken from grid to recharge the battery. This results to energy consumption of 1230 Wh/km or 123 kWh/100km for the lap.
Even if E-RA powertrain produced approximately 300 kW peak and 160 kW average power throughout the lap, there was no sign of overheating problems in motors or batteries typical to electric vehicles in such a heavy use. The weather was close to perfect with dry and sunny but still not too warm conditions at around 15 degrees C ambient temperature. E-RA was equipped with Nokian Z G2 high performance road tyres - 225/40 ZR 18 in front and 245/40 ZR 18 in rear.
Electric RaceAbout is built by Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. Approximately 25 engineering students and 2 faculty members have designed and buit the vehicle starting from a clean desk. Exterior and interior styling was created by students from Institute of Design at Lahti University of Applied Sciences.
E-RA has four motors – one per each wheel – designed jointly with Lappeenranta University of Technology and produced by AXCO Motors. The motor controllers come from Vacon a leading Finnish electric drive manufacturer. E-RA has full carbon fibre composite body to save weight for the powerful and efficient 33kWh lithium-titanate battery pack.
On Nordschleife and in various events like Michelin Challenge Bibendum, Automotive X-Prize and e-miglia, Metropolia team has demonstrated with the road legal and registered prototype vehicle E-RA, that using electric powertrain it is possible to construct both efficient and high performance car which can also be used in regular traffic. On normal roads the average energy consumption for E-RA is only 145 Wh/km and on racetrack it can achieve 244 km top speed still with modest consumption and minimal losses.
Electric RaceAbout team wants to thank all the supporters who have made our work possible.
Additional information:
Racelogic VBOX data file on the lap (use Save Link As command to store the file locally)
Racelogic Circuit Tools visualisation on the lap
General presentation on Electric RaceAbout
List of Nürburgring Nordschleife Lap Times
