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Comment by chakintosh | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me like building the fastest EV has nowhere near the complexity of building the fastest ICE car. Way too many moving parts and fine tuning required to get an engine to 440Kmh (Chiron SS) than an EV with 4 big motors.

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I recommend you watch this video (the channel's pretty good in general):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev6DiHOidcg

While I agree with your statement in broad strokes - I'd reframe it as the same amount of engineering takes you much further in an EV than an ICE car. Considering this, the Chinese really swung for the fences, and what they made here is quite impressive

People have been putting engines that powerful in cars since Campbell's blue bird in the 1930s. I'm not going to say it's easy, but it's doable in custom vehicles.

The hard bits are connecting that power with the ground long enough to reach speed safely, and storing enough energy to do so. EVs don't solve that.

This comment has the same vibe at "football is easy, because the rules are simple". Something is only easy if you don't have to compete with others. If it's "easy" for you, then it is easy for others. So being the best/fastest is hard.

Chiron still has that Piëch handwriting on it. It's driveable enough to take your wife to the opera. Full regulatory compliance, low wind noise at high speeds, all that. I don't want to say it is compromised, but it's not as extreme as it could be.

The closer ICE comparison would be Koenigsegg (447 kph/278 mph), Hennessy Venom GT (435/270) and SSC Tuatara (455/283, no shenanigans). SSC have reached 295, they were clearly aiming for 300. It's no 308 but it's reasonably close.

All these are also relatively small companies with relatively low budgets -- none of the big manufacturers seem interested in top speeds anymore.

Yet none of the other mainstream automakers has done so.

Are they even trying? It seems like the only reason to do this is for publicity. Maybe a manufacturer that's known for their ICE vehicles would want an opportunity to show off their electric vehicle engineering but I don't know any it would make a difference for. US manufacturers even sell electric trucks. It's not like any mainstream manufacturer needs to rebrand to sell electric vehicles.

> Are they even trying?

Nope, probably too busy faking emission results, lobbying at the EU parliament , or designing overpriced mid tier cars in the US

Research also might trickle down to production cars. Maybe research for some extreme project has more opportunity to find unexpected improvements compared to more tightly budgeted production research

Isn't the complexity in storing and and moving the electrons rapidly? Stringing a bunch of 18650s with a copper wire harness won't cut it. You've got to invent some novel chemistries and new materials to pull it off.

At a battery level it’s very doable — and certainly not as extreme as in most racing applications — it’s just a bunch of trade-offs.

Well, while impressive I would like to see them do a second lap right after or try the Nürburgring (seems they have, way off pace versus ICE cars).

One thing many car channels are pointing out is that the car could've reached even better numbers looking at how easily it reached its record pace. I wonder if the bottleneck is the battery. Hell, it supposedly discharges at full power in 2 minutes.

(Edit: noting they did the ring)

The second fastest lap at the ring, and at least another five records in the top ten, are all EVs:

    VW ID.R
    Xiaomi SU7 Ultra
    Lotus Evija X
    F-150 Lightning SuperTruck
    Nio EP9
    Ford Transit SuperVan

#1 is the Porsche 919 Hybrid.

Cars built for straight line speed are rarely fast in a track – you won’t find the Bugattis breaking any fastest lap records either.

You are looking just at EVs. Or some other non road legal list.

ICEs have more above it.

https://fastestlaps.com/tracks/nordschleife

That was from the official Nurburgring page, includes prototype cars. Your list seems to be missing most of those. The slowest from the EV list above is 6:48 for the Ford Supervan.

Ford Supervan is a promotional vehicle. I just wanted to focus on road legal cars.

But yes, the link I posted is lacking lots of data. Apologies.

True, if your goal is "the fastest car, period" then you're going to pick the best technology for that. And as of now onwards, that's not Internal Combustion Engines. As you say, there are way too many moving parts in a legacy tech ICE engine.

It might indeed be more difficult to push obsolete technology ever further.

Which shows that ICEs are a ridiculous choice for performance cars?

No, EV are too heavy. On an actual track they loose to lighter ICE cars since they corner better. Plus for a prolonged race EV might run out of battery.

are we bound to see a huge increase in speed limits as EVs start to dominate?

The reason we have speed limits isn't because cars can't go any faster, but because they can.

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