Dark Horse: the story of the all-electric 1968 Mustang | Hacker News Reader

Dark Horse: the story of the all-electric 1968 Mustang

theverge.com

91 pointsjgrahamc20 comments

With that headline I was expecting a story about Ford (or someone) building an electric Mustang in 1968.

People have been hand-converting cars to electric power since the 70s, but the lead-acid battery technology of the time was miserable. Too heavy, plus poor deep cycle performance. As the Tesla story trending on HN right now says, the modern electric car is a battery story.

Still, the headline remains poorly written. You read it and think Ford built an electric car in 68, and you go there to find out about it, why it flopped, how it ran, etc.

The mention of LEDs had me checking for the date until I realised that the car was a rebuilt one. Should have known really given the size of lead/acid batteries from late 60s.

Agreed, that would have been way more interesting, end the editor knows it

I'm with you - though wouldn't be the first time that nostalgia rather than facts drove naming...

Resurrecting the "cars of the future" of the past[1], with an all electric powertrain, also sounds like a neat idea.

[1] Example: https://i.imgur.com/KSOjCEJ.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancia_Stratos The '0'.

Beautiful car!

The car looks right at home under the "carport of the future" of the past, which, like the car itself, looks strangely current.

I wouldn't say it's strange. 50s-60s design has made a big comeback as "flat" design

Reminds me of some of the pictures from OMNI, how that magazine inspired me back then

https://archive.org/details/omni-magazine

Not very 'pedestrian friendly'.

Electric vehicles have great torque and are ideally suited to rapid acceleration up to the 150 mph range - after that, just like the drag racing world, things get a lot more expensive and complicated.

I could buy off the shelf speed parts for a 351 windsor powered mustang and build a 9 second street car for around 10k so this article has a certain hubris. I'm an electric car fan, but I'm getting a little tired of all the giddy writing about super fast electric vehicles and how they are doing things other vehicles can't.

In both the ICE and the electric world we are making staggering progress in terms of performance and efficiencies.

In the ICE world there is no substitute for cubic inches to go fast, in the electric world the batteries are the limiting factor. Garlits has failed to break a 200mph quarter mile so far despite serious efforts (he was first to 200 in 60's drag racing) NEDRA is really worth following for the development end of electric but it's still early days for electric performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL82_22BKYk great bit of video of Garlits arcing out which ended his most recent attempt. Horizontal firewalls and instant kill switch are a very big deal in electric vehicles

The car that is known as the current Formula 1 Safety Car, has an all-electric twin:

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gFGX43vubM ("Petrol vs Electric" by BBC Top Gear UK)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_SLS_AMG

Mercedes SLS AMG Electric Drive (2013) priced at $544,236.

  The production version of SLS AMG E-CELL includes four 
  synchronous electric motors rated 392 kW (533 PS; 526 hp) 
  and 880 N·m (649 lb·ft), 400V 48 kWh lithium-ion battery 
  from Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains.

The SLS car is also produced with a gasoline engine:

  Mercedes SLS AMG's 571 PS (420 kW; 563 hp) M159 engine [...]
  "the world's most powerful naturally 
  aspirated production series engine" ever produced.

Related: Fifth Gear / Mud Sweat & Gears presenter Jonny Smith is converting an Enfield 8000, a weird little British electric car from the 70s, into an all-electric street legal dragster. He has a blog here: http://www.flux-capacitor.co.uk/

(no affiliation, just a fan)

I don't really understand the high-performance focus of electric car advocates. Sure it's an impressive technological achievement, and interesting on the race track, but I'm not going to buy a Tesla or anything else on the basis of a breathtaking 0-60 time.

For the mainstream market, though there's certainly a minimum performance requirement (keeping up with normal traffic) the much bigger practical concern is range.

I think there are two reasons for it.

First is that it's easy. Performance comes naturally to an electric car. Electric motors provide high power and torque, are easy to control precisely, don't need a multi-gear transmission, and lose very little efficiency with more powerful motors. Tesla's Model S has a 0-60 in under six seconds not because it has to, but simply because it can, and it's relatively easy to do. Lots of people don't care about performance, but lots of people do, so if it's easy to satisfy that second group, why not do it?

Second is that it's part of countering the reputation of electric cars as bad cars. Electric cars have long been seen as small, uncomfortable, and slow. Now we're seeing that they can be fast. Not just fast, but brutally fast. The best way to correct a misperception isn't merely to show that it's wrong, but to show that it's extremely wrong. It's not necessary, but as before, it's relatively easy, so why not?

Also note that range and acceleration go hand in hand to an extent. The larger your battery is, the more power you can draw from it, all else being equal. Part of why the Tesla P85D can do 0-60 in just over 3 seconds is because it has a 85kWh battery that gives it 250 miles of range. You wouldn't be able to draw 515kW from, say, a 100 mile battery.

> but I'm not going to buy a Tesla or anything else on the basis of a breathtaking 0-60 time.

That's why you're not their target audience. If you need funding for your Gigafactory, sell to people who will pay $60K-120K for car based on 0-60 time. Don't try to sell to the masses where the margin per unit is significantly less.

There are a lot of conventional cars sold with an emphasis on speed, too. It's a niche market with big pockets.