from the when-burnouts-end-in-lithium-fires dept.
But there are many other electric vehicle (EV) racing events popping-up across the country that are showcasing and championing important advances in EV technology.
Formula E has been around for years, but a flood of newer EV racing events have lately zoomed into view.
Others include the Extreme E race series, which launched earlier this year. In it, electric sports utility vehicles (SUVs) compete in a series of off-road events. And in 2022, SuperCharge will bring EV racing to city streets around the world.
Battery life, safety, and weight are three dimensions that EV racers are focused on to give them a competitive edge.
But mostly battery life -- Ed. (yeah, yeah, that belongs in the comments - shut up!).
Anyway, plenty of variants available - including 2-wheeled ones. That might be what powers your sit-on lawnmower in a few years.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @05:34PM (4 children)
https://futurism.com/the-byte/electric-car-batteries-hellscape [futurism.com]
EV's are White Supremacy.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @05:37PM (2 children)
Mining anything has been hell in the Congo. Never heard of conflict diamonds?
(Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Friday November 19 2021, @07:37PM (1 child)
The congo's always been hell, always gonna be hell, may as well get some diamonds and batteries outta there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @09:43PM
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by khallow on Friday November 19 2021, @08:40PM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday November 19 2021, @05:58PM (4 children)
One of the most disappointing things to me about Formula E was that all the cars had to use basically the same hardware. Arguably useful for cultivating interest (and training drivers) to the differences in electric racing, but utterly worthless for actually driving improvement of the technology the way Formula 1 racing does for ICE cars.
Give me races where the teams can go nuts within certain broad requirements (size, mass, etc). Then every trick they come up with to give themselves an edge over the competition has the potential to trickle down to the commercial EV market.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @10:51PM (2 children)
The most disappointing thing to me about Formula E is the lack of screaming engines. There's no sense of speed from a camera hundreds of yards way following a mostly silent object. It's like putting the TV on mute so it's not distracting you from other activities. Love the technology. Love the competition to improve it. This just isn't grabbing me as watch worthy.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday November 20 2021, @02:14AM (1 child)
Screaming engines or no, racing is hard to make interesting. Audiences want to see ugly racing. Want daredevil driving, games of chicken, crashes, a bit of dirty pool-- in general, drama.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday November 20 2021, @06:12PM
Yeah, I only watch horse racing for the crashes.
Not everyone's tastes are the same. Why do people watch GOLF of all games? Chess is more exciting.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @02:06AM
> Give me races where the teams can go nuts within certain broad requirements
I give you Electrathon https://www.electrathonamerica.org/ [electrathonamerica.org]
A friend of mine held the record at one point, a bit over 60 miles (~100km) in the one hour race. All on 1 kWh--think about that kind of efficiency. Later he took his car, changed gearing and sprinted to around 100 mph (160kph) on the Bonneville Salt Flats.
A lot of high school teams build cars, but there are some very serious adults too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @06:35PM (3 children)
N/t
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @06:47PM (1 child)
Start with 'stock' cars.
Wait to see how long before the 'South' secedes.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday November 19 2021, @07:46PM
On any day of the week, Texas is on the very edge of triggered into 'seeding'.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @02:09AM
The spectators burn a lot more fuel than the race cars. Might as well ban football too, the gasoline saved would be about the same, keeping all those drivers off the road once the events are cancelled.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Friday November 19 2021, @07:35PM (7 children)
The guys who race converted kids electric powerwheels toys at makerfaires are more fun to watch than F1. And yes I've been to actual F1 race and it was fun, its just that the powerwheels dudes are more fun. Massively corporatized and homogenized and rules lawyerized stuff has its place in the ICE racing world, but it would be interesting to see more "personal level" EV racing.
Also, it takes some balls to do a demolition derby with explosion proof sealed one liter fuel cells and all that, but its going to take REAL balls to do a demolition derby with kilovolt lithium ion battery cars. EV does not automatically mean safer than ICE, not at all.
I guess my meta commentary is you can change something "minor" like banning turbos or whatever and ICE racing is still ICE racing, but maybe changing to EV is too much of a culture shock to keep doing the same old thing now with kilowatt-hrs instead of liters.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday November 19 2021, @07:47PM (1 child)
A lithium fire is (1) a metal fire, (2) a chemical fire, and (3) an electrical fire.
Three for the price of one. Making it much more difficulter to put out.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday November 19 2021, @08:09PM
Agreed, also the danger of electrocution even if there's no fire.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday November 19 2021, @08:16PM (1 child)
You want an electric demolition derby? Watch BattleBots.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday November 20 2021, @07:40PM
Fair enough. Although there is a big risk difference between "homemade RC car" and actually sitting inside a car.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday November 19 2021, @10:40PM (2 children)
I have occasionally been tempted to make an adult-sized "Big Wheels" electric trike. Put a few horses of electric motor in the front wheel and see just how much crazy drifting I could pull off.
There is something a lot more intense about such small-scale racing. Yeah, they're not going nearly as fast, but that means you get to actually watch some racing in person, rather than a few seconds of fury each as cars zoom into and out of view at ridiculous speeds, and it's almost certain that nothing of interest has had time to unfold.
There's also a lot more of excitement from near-disasters. An F1 car is riding so close to the edge normally that if it looks like they're starting to lose control, they're probably already totally F'ed. Whereas with an overpowered toy car can take a turn too fast, get up on two wheels, and still manage to recover with a bit of luck and skill.
Rally racing has some of that - but you're really only going to get to watch it from a dash or bonnet cam that's still far too restrictive, and you've got to be a pretty dedicated fan to watch a multiple-day race. And is it really racing when there's (essentially) only one driver on the track at a time? Any other racing genre would call that time trials.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @12:23AM (1 child)
Colin Furze beat you to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otlR05QZRrU [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday November 20 2021, @01:28AM
And he's far from the first. I was inspired by many other projects, many years before that one.
And yet, even knowing I'd be following in the footsteps of countless others... it *still* looks like great fun. And a lot cheaper and less insane than a wing suit.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 19 2021, @09:20PM (2 children)
So, in a sense, my "sit on" electric lawnmower (for the last 5 years) has been mowing my lawn at 20mph+ with a mere 5kWh battery, for 100 minutes at a time between charges. How does that math work? Well, first, I don't sit on it. My personal involvement in mowing the lawn consists of walking out to get the self-driving mower unstuck once every 2-3 hours of operation. So, for a 5 minute investment of my time (not even sitting on it, just a walk to-from wherever it is), it covers 1 foot per second for 150 minutes, 9000 feet for every 5 minutes of my time, or 108000 feet per hour of my involvement, roughly 20mph. If it wouldn't fall in the gopher holes so often, that could easily get up over 80mph equivalent speed to a sit-on mower.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 19 2021, @09:46PM
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday November 19 2021, @10:21PM
Shouldn't that be 20mpph? Miles-per-person-hour?
Heck, by that measure I hate to think of the speeds various autonomous drones must be clocking in at...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @07:05AM
the tamiya R/C cars really did grow in size and required time to a comparable living thing (over 25 years or so).
now if we could get them to mate and self-mutiple, we could start a R/C car breeding farm, feed them and watch them grow to human sizes :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @02:34PM
Drone Racing League: Fastest Heat: Beale Street
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryAgkdrRz6U [youtube.com]
Championship Race: Xfinity CA Drone Speed Challenge, 2018:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZvNLuC12R0 [youtube.com]