“Of the companies we originally approached, none could provide either the technology or the expertise that justified a world record attempt of this magnitude,” says Mark Newby, the driver of an electric car, which British designers hope will set a new battery-powered land speed record.
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Newby and Colin Fallows designed the battery-powered dragster to break the current world record of 247 miles (393 kilometers) per hour held by a team from the U.S.
Unofficially, the car has already broken the U.K. record of 139 mph. It will be transported to the Chott el Jerid salt flats in the Tunisian Sahara in September to try to break the world record and become the first battery-powered car to exceed 300 mph.
“We initially approached ABB, via a mutual colleague, because we were aware of its profile in the world of electrical engineering,” says Fallows. “Based on what we have seen so far, we are 100 percent confident that ABB will be joining us in the record books when we break the world speed record.”
Emotional breakthrough
Dubbed “e=motion,” the British entry uses an inverter from ABB’s ACS 800 range of drives and two 40 kW IP23 motors.
ABB drives specialist Frank Griffith says: “We had to model and calculate likely performance based on a set of estimated conditions involving factors such as rolling resistance, drag and battery discharge…and had to make sure whatever we came up with was compact.”
To qualify as an official world record, the car must perform two runs at better than 252 mph over a distance of one kilometer. This means motors must reach speeds in excess of 6,000 rpm. ABB motors can reach 9,000 rpm.
“ABB’s solution is extremely compact and means our car does not even need to be the ten meters it is!” says Newby.