EV Racing and battery swapping

[jlsoaz]

2nd question tonight about EV racing, I guess as long as I'm at it:

After seeing the Tesla battery swap video, I can't help but get to wondering at what point good evs might start to compete on equal footing with good gasoline vehicles in racing, with EVs carrying out battery swaps to try to match speed with ICVs.

 

[Spindoctor]

http://www.formulaeracing.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

They haven't started on battery swapping yet. Should be the next thing. Be interesting to see how fast a pit crew could swap out 4 tires and a battery.

 

[jlsoaz]

http://www.formulaeracing.com/

They haven't started on battery swapping yet. Should be the next thing. Be interesting to see how fast a pit crew could swap out 4 tires and a battery.

Thanks, I had completely lost track of those efforts, good to see they're continuing.

On the swapping question, I completely agree, it would be interesting to see.

Perhaps a car could be designed to swap out from one side and swap in from the other side, simultaneously, or nearly so. Maybe such an approach would help avoid the time to swap out by taking the battery downward and then swap in by taking another one upward, and thus reduce overall time dramatically? I would think Better Place and others researched the swapping-from-the-side approach, so I wonder what they found if they did.

I don't know how BP ultimately did theirs but just have on my mind that recent Tesla video which seemed to take about 90 seconds (is that right?) to swap using the down-up approach.

 

[Drivesolo]

Right now Formula E (even though it is still more than a year away) could be considered the top form of EV circuit racing. Comparing a Formula E car to the capabilities of an Formula 1 car; the delta in performance is very large. Maybe in another decade or so Formula E technology might get to the point where they can match an F1 car for a few laps of a city circuit, but as far as a full length race distance, it could be a while. Keep in mind that all Formula 1 cars are hybrids and will be using more KERs in 2014.

But in other motorsports, EVs are already showing that the can be challengers to ICEs; Pike's Peak Hill Climb, TTGXP - Isle of Man and NEDRA