Lord Drayson has long been a proponent of alternative propulsion methods in the world of motorsport and now his company, Drayson Racing Technologies, has announced that it is to make an attempt to set a new world electric land speed record. You may think that with the recent growth of electric vehicles, this record may be constantly shifting, but in fact the current record has stood since 1974.
Almost forty years ago an American firm called Battery Box General Electric set the record at 175mph (281.6km/h), which is measured by running an electric vehicle (weighing no more than 1,000kg) over a measured mile (1.6 kilometres) in each direction. Perhaps it has stood for this long as there was less interest in electric vehicles until more recent times, which has re-'sparked' (sorry) the interest in the record.
Lord Drayson, CEO and co-founder of Drayson Racing Technologies, commented: "It is not the outright speed that is impressive about this record attempt, but the engineering challenge of accelerating a 1,000kg 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."
For the attempt, which will take place on June 25 at RAF Elvington in Yorkshire, Drayson Racing will run one of its Drayson B12 69/EV cars, which was developed from a Lola chassis. The team has raced this vehicle before, but it was then powered by a bio-fuelled Judd V10 engine, so a significant degree of re-engineering has been required to package in the batteries and electric drivetrain whilst maintaining the rigidity and crash safety of the original car.
Explaining his reasons for wanting to take on the record attempt Lord Drayson added: "The reason we are doing this is to showcase the maximum level of EV performance at the moment - and in a real racing car rather than a teardrop-shaped land speed record car. We are also demonstrating the future potential of technologies like wireless charging in speeding the adoption of high performance EVs. It's a great way to build up to the Formula E championship that we are competing in from 2014 and will demonstrate that Britain is at the forefront of this vital technology, which I believe represents the future of the automobile."