Spokane Pace Car

Littlevees

Jim Venable
For those who were not at the Spokane race the club utilized a most interesting Pace Car. The best way to describe it is it looks like a two seater Minivan that is electric powered. Bryan who is developing the vehicle with his Dad shared a few things you may find interesting. 0 to 60 in four seconds with a top speed of 140 if I remember correctly which to me is impressive. I'll not say anymore so as not to misquote. Perhaps Bryan can share additional aspects such as weight, construction and so forth.
 
The Tango currently weighs about 3,100 lbs (trying to get it down), but 2,000 lbs of that are under the floor in the form of batteries, drivetrain, etc. The carbon fiber body only weighs about 25 lbs so it's very bottom-heavy; the batteries sit 4" off the ground and the center of mass is about 13" off the ground. The car is built around an FIA-approved chrome-moly cage and stainless steel chassis and battery box. The door bars are pinned into the rest of the cage.

It seats 2 in tandem, up to 6' 8" each in the newer cars with the passenger straddling the driver seat with out-stretched legs. Both custom Sparco seats have 4-point aircraft pilot harnesses with inertia reels.

For driver comforts, it has a very powerful air conditioner, 400 W Alpine sound system with rear subwoofer, GPS navigation, backup camera, and back-lit MoTeC.

The motor controller has a peak output of 600 kW (805 hp) and can instantly and easily produce over 1,000 ft-lbs of torque. There's one motor driving each rear wheel directly through a 3.5:1 helical gear box on each side.

Let me know if you have any questions.

--Bryan
 
The lead-acid batteries can go about 40-50 miles per charge.
The lithium-ion batteries can go about 200 miles per charge.
With 200 amps of 240V (entire household service), you could charge to 80% in 10 minutes.
With 40 amps of 240V (welder/dryer outlet), you can get the bulk charge in about an hour and trickle-charge until full in a couple more hours.
With 15 amps of 120V, it would take about 8 hours.

The lithium-ion iron-phosphate-polymer (nano-tech) batteries currently cost about $40k extra but some have a warranty of up to 1 million miles depending on charge cycles. The lead-acid batteries ($2,500/pack) could possibly last up to 80k miles if you treat them really well (don't discharge them too much).
Lead-acid batteries have voltage sag at high current due to internal resistance so you won't get the full voltage when you're accelerating hard. The lithium-ion batteries don't have these drawbacks and can produce 2,000 hp for 10 seconds and 1,000 hp continuously until they're empty.

The current price for the T600 with lead-acid batteries is $121k. These are hand-built and the waiting list is a few months. Our goal is to go to mass production and sell cheaper models that anyone can afford. With $50M and a couple years of re-engineering/re-tooling, we could make 10,000 base-model cars per year for about $18-20k or so.

--Bryan
 
That's really cool! Good luck with the endeavor.

When there down to the 18k-20k range I could afford one :)


edit: OOO you guys ought to race prep one, go club racing with it. Really freak some people out!
 
Oh, and the reason for its size is that it has the advantages of a motorcycle without the drawbacks. It's 39" wide (5" narrower than a Honda GoldWing which is 44") and 8' 5" long so it can park perpendicular to the curb between cars. Being so narrow, it can maneuver through traffic like a motorcycle and share a lane with other motorcycles and narrow vehicles. Where it's legal (California and everywhere else in the world), it can lane-split like motorcycles, going between stopped or slow-moving traffic on the freeway at a safe speed. It's allowed in the HOV (carpool) lane even with only one person in it.

--Bryan
 
Thanks!

We're definitely looking forward to road racing a whole pack of them someday. :)

--Bryan
 
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