With 1200hp, This Is An EV We Can Get Behind

Think electric vehicles today and you tend to consider MPG over MPH, but that looks set to change in the near future.

As much as we might not want to admit it, fossil fuels are finite, and EVs (electric vehicles) undoubtedly represent the future of transport. In Norway for example, EVs now make up over 50% of all new car sales – a trend that is already starting to affect the oil industry after a year-on-year drop of almost 3% in petroleum sales in that country. At the moment, EVs appeal to those wanting to travel in a more eco-friendly manner, but what about the performance side of going green?

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Yes, we’ve already seen performance EVs and hybrids in the form of the pricey Tesla Model S, Honda NSX, LaFerrari, 918 Spyder and so forth, but what you’re looking at here is pretty exciting stuff for the future of all performance road cars. It’s called the Schaeffler 4ePerformance concept.

Although this car is exactly that, a concept, it’s a great demonstration of how applicable technologies such as those developed and used in Formula E can be used in road-going cars. The Schaeffler team, for all intents and purposes, essentially transplanted the running gear from the ABT Schaeffler FE01 Formula E race car into an Audi RS3 TCR chassis, plugged it in and then hit the racetrack. These are the very same motors that propelled Lucas di Grassi to victory in the 2016/17 Formula E season.

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Behind each wheel is a 220kW electric motor, providing the equivalent of 1,200hp in total, enough to propel the 4ePerformance concept from 0-200km/h (124mph) in under seven seconds. Power is provided by two batteries under the bonnet, with an overall capacity of 64kWh.

Each axle has a shared transmission housing for the two motors, and there’s plenty of clever electronic wizardry going on behind the scenes too, such as active torque vectoring, which allows the ECU (and the driver) to determine exactly how much torque is sent to each wheel – you could dial in more under or oversteer instantly at the twist of a dial.

As you can see in the video above, this thing absolutely rips. Granted it’s a bit odd hearing tyre noise over the engine and exhaust, but the instant torque delivery, bags of power, and huge amount of control over exactly how the car handles makes this a pretty exciting prospect.

While Formula E might still be finding its feet in motorsport and hasn’t received the strongest response from motorsport fans up to now, if it’s the driving force behind road-going potential such as this landing in dealerships, then I can’t wait to see where we’re heading.

Jordan Butters
Instagram: jordanbutters
jordan@speedhunters.com

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1
Ben Wilkinson

what happened to this website

R.I.P website

2

I don't think there's anything wrong with talking about these issues, as they're a huge part of modern car culture. You don't have to like it, but these cars are being developed regardless.

3

agreed. I feel like there's been a trend of glorifying electric cars and automatic gearboxes lately. :/

Author4
Jordan Butters

Come on Jani - two stories out of the hundreds we’ve published over the past couple of months?

Not everything can appeal to anyone and not everyone can agree with everything.

5

That wasn't our intention, but point noted.

6

I don't mind the subject but where are the details? This is a promo video link not an article.

Author7
Jordan Butters

Promotion indicates payment. If what you say is true then I’m out of pocket.

This is a news story, like it says at the top.

8

Jordan you're a snappy one. Chill out.
Promotion 1) means putting something forward, supporting it, encoraging it so yes you have promoted this even if you didn't get paid and 2) you work doing this so you totally got paid lol.
I'm not here for an argument and I love electric tech (right now working on a short range car and EV boat) but my comment was about this "article" being a link post and not the juicy details about a interesting car.
Don't let your knee-jerk reaction be to try slap down your readers with (what I showed above) to be silly points. Just soak up the feedback and progress.

Author9
Jordan Butters

Hey Brian, sorry if that’s how it came across - I’m thinking my tone doesn’t always arrive with you how it’s intended. That’s the problem with electronic communications essentially - we can’t always read attitude accurately from words alone.

Regardless, this is the info that we have about the car. It’s intended as a short, snappy news story about a relevant and interesting project, rather than a full drill-down feature.

10
Airik Keringes

No worries Jordan... you honestly didnt come across that way to me. Even "Car People" are a little sensitive it seems.

11

It is an interesting feature, hunt them down for a full article :)
You have a tough job managing online presence, keep on with it

12

With 1200hp there’s a lot of people who will be forced to get behind it.

13

With 1,200 hp, there'll be a lot of people who'll be behind it no matter what.

Way behind.

14

It's very, very rare that we delete comments around here but I've had to give this section a major clean up. By all means, voice your opinions but don't do it from behind multiple re-reg accounts with personal attacks or with the aim of turning the comments section into a complete shit show.

The one thing I love about the comments here is that you can have intelligent arguments and debates with other readers, and we aim to keep it that way. Be civil.

15

Watched the Formula E for a couple of laps, even more boring than the 2014 F1 air dryers. Maybe after a good relatively cheap performance EV is available and i test drive it i'll change my mind, but for the time being it's so far from me\y interests and watching them makes my feelings worst. I doubt I would ever love to take an EV over an ICE. (I fully respect the guys efforts and the technology itself)

Author16
Jordan Butters

It is INCREDIBLY dull, however I found this short video ten times more exciting than any Formula E race.

17

Fair enough to say that as a short video things were "interesting" and didn't reach the "F*** i could do anything instead wasting my time on this" while i can say this statement while watching Formula E.

18

I respect the tech of Formula E but I just can't get behind it all. Don't get me started on Roborace either.

19

Feel free to remove my comment and pretend this had never happened but please don't start talking about Roborace. (unless you know a hacker not willing to expose himself and you'll speak instead of him who can play with the "cars" systems, that would the best satisfying and most entertaining race ever)

20

We've no plans or intentions to ever cover any Roborace events.

21
Analogue Sheep
Author22
Jordan Butters

Well spotted - I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a test bed for ABT Schaeffler in that regard.

23
Analogue Sheep

Hopefully, I believe TCR is the future for touring car racing. If there is a high degree of cross compatibility with the standard TCR class it should make the switch to electric more accessible for teams and manufacturers.

1000hp+ Touring Cars around the Nordschleife, Macau or even Knockhill?

Author24
Jordan Butters

Funnily enough I have a theory that EV racing could help rescue the Motorsport industry in places like the UK where noise restrictions are a circuit’s biggest enemy.

I think I’ll save that story for another day when everyone’s calmed down a bit

25

I have no problems with EV's, and power/speed are enjoyable whatever the source/fuel is, but have we reached the stage where we can generate the electricity to charge these vehicles without fossil fuels on a consistent basis?

26

67% of electricity in the United States is generated by either coal or natural gas. About 20% is generated by nuclear power. Only about 13% is percent is generated from so-called renewables which include biomass, solar, wind, etc. The idea that an EV vehicle is "clean" energy is a sham since almost 90% of the energy to run an EV car comes from fossil fuel or nuclear power. Just my opinion, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation

27

The US is not the world. A common mistake among Americans lol.
Plant generated power is still cleaner (I still think coal plants are ridiculous) but you can petition your govt. to chance sources too. It will take time but we need to start somewhere.

28

I see what you're saying but statements like this are naive at best.

You know what most people were driving when the car was invented? A horse. But that didn't mean the automobile wasn't the future.

The numbers alone are just a sliver of the story at one moment.

29

I think this is cool - a real look at the trickle down effect from racing. It is not a boring EV. Not a prius/volt clone - but something that you could actually drive one day - soon. At least it is not another chopped up, bagged super car with a rocketbunny kit on it. Most of us would drive this before a doink. (and the doink photos were fun)

30

For me at least, I think the biggest problem with the electric car, aside from purely technological matters like power generation and charging, is its association with left-wing social radicals and self-righteous urban progressives.

Paradoxically, people who either don't bathe or who think getting dirty fixing your own car is for "unenlightened," soon-to-be-obsolete Normals.

31

although I wouldn't be able to miss the roar of any kind of combustion engine, the EV story will turn us over in the end. Provided we want our children to be able to live in a healthy world (not only automotive industry should be blamed fot that however).

Aside from that, the full electric propulsion will never be the way forward in my opinion. Unless the heads of the world's largest nations put their minds and means together, stop spending money on nuclear devises to kill eachother and invest that money in meaningfull space exploration (and hopefully finding a new sort of clean power source) the action radius of bateries will be the limiting factor.

For person cars? yeah why not, for 4x4, vand and trucks, no way...whatever Tesla says... In the end, the only reasonable propulsion system that will combine the best of two worlds, will be a vehicle with an engine that will run on a clean fuel at a constant rev and will make electicity for the cars electric engine and battery. serves the environment ad provides much needed torque to get a mass moving...

These projects are interesting and will provide a lot of data, but it will never be more than a picture on the wall.

32

I would take this over a Tesla P100D anyday now

33

You're right that fossil fuels exist in finite quantities, in the sense that the amounts available aren't mathematically unlimited.

But a quirk of mankind makes said quantities EFFECTIVELY unlimited.

"Human ingenuity always outpaces the rate at which we consume a supposedly limited resource."

I wouldn't be surprised if in 150 years or so, some reputable organization issues a report stating that even after two and a half centuries of ever-increasing fossil fuel usage, given the exploration and drilling technology available at the time of the report, mankind hadn't even touched something like 97% of extractable oil & gas.

Remember how we were supposed to have run bone dry twenty years ago?

As I've said before, I'm okay with pure electric vehicles, if those things are truly technologically superior to fuel-driven vehicles. But right now, mainly for reasons of power generation and charging infrastructure, they're not.

Someday, I have no doubt they will be. But until then, the fuel car is the only viable option.

In the meantime, projects like these are a good idea. It's time for lots more high performance EVs to wash the stink of the EV1, the Prius and their associated unsavory people from the battery-electric car's image.

34

The human ingenuity is usually used to find a completely different technology - like wood > whale oil > parraffin > crude oil...
If you can get the energy efficiently stored, the there is no answer to electric torque and throttle response.
Petrol and diesel (as a Supra and Audi A6 TDi owner) are pretty much done - I look forward to 1000NMm of torque at a penny a mile. Until then I'l enjoy making my loud noises. Plus ça change.

Author35
Jordan Butters

Great response! I think the thing to take away from this is to give it more thought than simply hurduh electric is bad mmmkay.

36

Seriously.

I have no doubt that some lone nut, fascinated by the IDEA of battery EVs, will come up with some way to make them practical.

Super efficient solar panel, ultracompact fusion reactor, hyperdense battery gel he cooked up in his garage by accident when he dropped his MIG welding gun in a vat of old paint thinner.

Who knows?

Right now, I myself am trying to find some LEGITIMATE rational to hook a manual transmission up to a DC motor and run the whole rig without any electronic controls.

This isn't just science, it's SCIENCE!

37

I want an EV for a daily. Who cares about manual gear boxes and engine noise when you're stuck in traffic. How long are we going to have to wait for an affordable ev.

38

fossil fuels aren't "finite" they are made from carbon, the most common thing in the universe unlike I dunno "rare" earth minerals. Like the kind that can only be mined in certain countries to make modern battery packs.

Oil is abiotic, that means you can find it anywhere there is carbon and heat. A point Russia has proven "many" times over and why they don't even tap there biggest claims for decades despite "peak" oil being 50 years ago...lol it's like every lie told by democrats goes right into the bain, do not pass go, do not collect 200.00

Socialism demands scarcity, division, confusion to control - buy a tesla, they lose money with government subsidies and the long tail carbon released is greater than gasoline engines, then again so are cargo ships and arson, volcanos, cow farts, farming...

39

yeesh. enjoy it for what it is, people: a powertrain swapped thousand horsepower all wheel drive touring car that can rip it sideways at a moment's notice. only difference is that it doesn't make as much noise. lmao

40

Love the car. I don’t know how people can hate on speed, no matter how it’s achieved.
It’d be great to see a proper feature story on it, with shots from you guys instead of the press shots. I’m sure a ton of custom work went into making a 1200hp car, and isn’t that what speedhunters is about?

41

I think I'm finally warming up to the idea of electric cars, but is there more info on the transmissions that these cars run? I remember seeing an old VW Beetle electric conversion running with a fully manual transmission on one of the episodes of "Fully Charged" on YouTube, it doesn't seem like ABT's RS3 has one, I wonder if they are running any at all (if they even need one, with so much torque from the electric motors)... I don't personally dislike electric motors, and I'd like to think I'd be able to get used to the absence of noise, as a trade-off for massive and instantly arriving torque figures, but I think there's something special about letting off the gas, pressing on the left pedal, moving a gear lever and letting off the clutch, pressing on the clutch and over and again... There's something sentimental in that, like an emotional attachment, something that gets you excited about driving, be that at 10 or at 100 km/h... If that's not lost in the move from old-school cars (as in, your typical, small capacity, medium sized petrol cars with manual transmissions) to the new EV generation of cars, I think I'll be fine. Sorry for the blabbering, this is just my opinion.

42
tofu_foxphotography@instagram

where are you going to use 1200 hp on the street and that thing must be hot at idle.

43

Only bothering to sign up to say how depressing this comment section is: this car is epically, violently quick, and I find it deeply depressing that the automotive Amish down here with their arbitrary golden-eras are so opposed to technology progressing past their comfort zone that they feel the need to scatter-gun the comment section with vitriol as though that will somehow help these Knuts hold back the tides.
I get it. You like loud noises. So do I. But this site is fueled on everything from Patent Motor Wagens to T-Buckets to Koenigseggs and everything in between. And if you whingeing brats can't ignore the things you don't like and love the things you do, good riddance.
If you find Tata Nano more exciting that a ~1,000bhp/tonne racecar because it goes "putt-putt", don't read - or, at very least, don't comment.

44

I think this is great, and is undoubtedly the future.

I also think there would be a few more positive comments if the used a Supra or R32 base instead of the Audi haha.

I wonder if would be possible to match up a EV to a manual transmission to up the “fun factor” or if the “fun factor” of the enthusiast-desirable MT really only relevant with the ICE acoustics?

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