I love racing, and few things get me more excited the ever-expanding array of sustainable motor sports series popping up. Now some of the biggest names in sustainable racing are joining forces to create the next generation of clean racing series. Quimera, the International Motor Sport Association, the American Le Mans Series, and the TTXGP are all coming together to bring a new brand of green racing series to the worlds.
These are all major players in the world of racing and cleantech, and you may remember Quimera’s awesome EV race car which debuted to the world last year. I’ve also written a lot about the American Le Mans Series, which promotes clean fuels like E85, iso-butonal, diesel, and hybrid vehicles by making them compete against each other. Then there is the TTXGP, the world’s foremost electric motorcycle racing series. And last, but certainly not least, there is the IMSA, the presiding motor sports organization of, well, the world.
Together, these entities are going to prepare the media, viewers, and racers for a new generation of racers. Quimera is going to take the lead by debuting a version of its 525 kw/700 horsepower AEGT all-electric race car at the American Le Mans series this year. Another catagory, Touring GT, will be open to all OEM’s and would welcome all-electric race cars of up to 300 kw/390 horsepower. Quimera won’t be alone in bringing an electric race car to the ALMS this year though.
Electric Formula is creating its Formulec vehicle, a 220kw/285 horsepower racer for the open-wheel class, much like Formula 1 cars, though they also are not the only ones creating an open-wheel electric racer. Quimera is also devloping a 170kw/220 horsepower electric drifting car for competition, and the TTXGP is expected to expand is classes and racing offerings in conjunction with this effort to bring electric racing to the masses.
I just got goose bumps. Unlike other electric racing efforts that have floundered and failed due to a lack of interest, what we have here are several very well-established racing series working to hand-in-hand to promote real electric racing at real race car speeds.
Happy happy, joy joy.
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About Christopher DeMorro
In a better world, where horse power worship, speed worship, for motor cars is realized as futile against the Chinese nuclear Electric bullet trains, traveling at 320 Kph with many passengers all riding in comfort, no seat belts, computers in hand, toilets nearby, humanity will have gaped the 20th century Western World obsessions, and settled into an era of high productivity and intelligent contribution by all. We watch now as not the death of oil, but the surpassing of an old ideology by a newer communal effort at survival evolves in the vast Pan Eurasian Empire, America falling deeper in debt each hour, and the Pan Eurasian world, standing back in disbelief. Americans, the Western World, need painful paradigm shifts towards a basic reality, need to draw away from the Great Corporate American Propaganda Whores’ mesmerizations, and see real scientific progress in the world, but they do not. Will high powered electric cars, running in circles improve anything in a dying society? But were they the seed of electric bullet trains to serve the masses, perhaps some light would show at the end of the tunnel. This is not so. These are toys for the most evil of the exploiters of the masses, very expensive, useless save for entertainment value, and lost on the very few. America fails on its own petard. Sad.
The idea is that racing of electric cars should bring more money into it and perhaps drive some of that innovation the way regular ICE driven racing drives some of the innovation. If we can get the entertained masses to back EVs then you can get them to buy EVs. If you can get EVs to do 500 laps like in Indianapolis or to endure 24 hours of racing like Le Mans, you can so it is a proven tech that can meet the needs of regular folks. Money in racing should help to move battery and recharging tech along at a good pace.
Will we move back to trains? Most likely it only makes sense, as moving people and freight by rail is cheaper and the more you can do this the more you take planes out of the sky and big trucks off the roads. We also need new long distance power lines put in all over having them follow the corridors the the trains use just makes sense. Maybe the trains could also be powered by those same lines, this way someone can use some of that electricity so that the losses from long distance line isnt just lost..
Will America fall on its own sword, or be hoisted by it own petard maybe, it is more like America has become an over ripe fruit that has begun to rot and in its rotting away it will feed the many seeds laying in it heart that are ready to take root and grow.
Uncle B there are many nuggets of wisdom in what you say, if we stop rolling our eyes at what you write and look for them, but with how you go on with how China and the ‘Pan-Eurasian world’ will come to the forefront if it happens it happens. It will either move America to do more or it will be just about time. If by America you mean just the US @5% of the worlds population, Europe @13-15% of the worlds population, China @20-22% of the world. Numbers say both of those sides have many more hands and it should be easy for them to take more of the pie. The US is a huge market place for the remaining 95% of the world so big a market that if the world used just the dollar as currency that 1 in every 3 dollars would be spent in the US. America has grown fat and lazy thinking it could just suckle at the teat of the world thinking it was alone for about 70 years just suckling away, too busy suckling to even bother to care to look over it shoulder to see the rest of the world catching it and no longer asking for America to make room but nudging and shouldering America to make room. This will either make American trim down to compete or make America even more gluttonous so it chokes. If it chokes the rest will eat America and it share.
-T
Clearly Uncle B, you do not grasp that racing is much more, no, hugely a European based and driven sport. In comparison America dabbles. Only one of the organizations above are American, the IMSA which sanctions the ALMS.
Also, racing drives innovation and engineering, and what gets tested on the track ends up in vehicles on the street. Saying otherwise is indulging oneself in an engineering utopia the will not exist in this life time. The other thing is people want to buy what is fast and cool first, but often compromise to fit their lifestyle. EVs have an image problem. A bunch of Chinese hurtling down the tracks isn’t doing anything to fix the image problem. Racing will fix the image problem. Racing, and people seeing how fast EVs are will fix the image problem, and drive reliability, range, and efficiency like no other way has, or can. The Tesla would be a better car if they had a place to race it. A Army of engineers made it really really good, but racing it would have made it better.
Passionate people go racing. Are these series some wonderful haven of EV development? No. But teams and owners know how to do the dance by now (or should) and there ways to get what you need from the “evil doers.” This is a capitalist world, and using socialists examples (no matter how right they may be) just doesn’t work.
It is what it is, but hardly the last straw of the western world. That is just a belligerent over dramatization. A symptom of a larger societal problem, yes. But not an actual problem. You don’t have to watch if you don’t want to. But I sure will. I may even participate.