Drayson Racing aiming for Electric car World Land Speed Record

The Drayson B12 69/EV – heading to RAF Elvington to break the EV land speed record.

One of the best uses for electric car technology is to deliver copious amounts of instant torque for track cars – far more than an ICE engine manages – and Drayson Racing Technology is aiming to prove how much that electric power can help by taking its Drayson B12 69/EV to RAF Elvington on 25th June to attempt to break the land speed record for an EV.

That record – 175mph – has stood since 1975 (which probably shows how little EV technology has really moved on in the last 40 years), but the low-drag version of the Drayson electric Le Mans prototype is aiming to break that down the 1.86 mile runway at Elvington.

Lord Drayson, CEO at Drayson Racing and former Science Minister, will be driving the B12 69/EV on its record attempt. He said:

It is not the outright speed that is impressive about this record attempt, but the engineering challenge of accelerating a 1000kg electric vehicle to such a high speed and sustaining that speed over a measured mile, before stopping safely all within a relatively short distance then turning round and doing it again within an hour.

It’s a tremendous technical challenge but we believe it’s about time someone moved this record on to demonstrate just how far EV technology has come.

The Drayson B12 69/EV didn’t start out as an EV racer but was actually built on a Lola mchassis for sports car championships and fitted with a bio-fuel Judd V10, but Drayson decided it made the perfect starting point for their EV ambitions so they ripped out the V10 and the car now has 850bhp from its four electric motors, a high power A123 battery, single speed transmission, torque vectoring and traction control.

The car will get to 62mph in 3.0 seconds and 100mph in 5.1 seconds, so it has more than a fighting chance of breaking the 175mph record on the RAF Elvington runway, turning round and doing it all over again to set a new record.

We wish Lord Drayson – and the whole team at Drayson Racing Technologies – the very best of British for the 25th June.

By Cars UK