Hacker News Reader

Comment by Judgmentality | Hacker News Reader

What really limits electric vehicles for racing is weight and batteries. Weight is always bad, and batteries are heavy. And batteries can overheat, which means going into limp mode. The overheating seems to be getting solved relatively quickly, but the weight of batteries isn't going to come down drastically any time soon.

They're just different - electric is better in a lot of ways and gasoline is better in a lot of ways. I don't think you'll see electric cars doing endurance racing anytime soon.

View on HN

EVs made explicitly for racing very short distances often have fairly small battery packs and use DC motors instead of AC -- as they have no need for regeneration, the motors are cheaper, the wiring is simpler and the possible torque is insane.

Their chief limitation is managing heat, and maintaining the DC motors themselves.

For example, electric drag racing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_drag_racing

They would also have to consider how the mass of a battery affects safety as a car goes airborne and hurtles toward other cars, fences and spectators, as well as establish the right protocol for when batteries catch fire, etc.

A stalled car in Formula 1 (last race year?) cause the driver to have to "hop" out of the car with both legs at the same time. This was to prevent a possible ground path from one leg to the other as a result "stepping" out the car.

I'm not a racing or really car enthusiast, but, don't races have pit stops where mechanics change out the tires and such? Tesla's old 90-second battery replacement tech could be used here. Just thinking out loud.

90 seconds for a pit stop is an eternity.

Just for those that don't know, pitstops these days are under a few seconds. See for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAd_t4wibM0

That's slightly misleading, as that pit stop didn't include refueling. Adding fuel will add about ~10 seconds to the pit stop. But you're still comparing ~10 seconds with ~100 seconds, which is an order of magnitude difference, when many actual races have been lost over 2 second delays in pit stops.

You could do much better with a specialized high-risk vehicle, probably on the order of a couple of seconds.

There's Formula E racing, their solution was to have 2 cars and the drivers switched. An interesting company to look at is Lucid Motors they provide a battery pack that lasts all race now.

tesla never had 90sec battery replacement tech

Reply on news.ycombinator.com