With little over a month since the announcement of the second RAC Future Car Challenge taking place on Saturday November 5 this year, the opening list of vehicles is growing in this competition for low-energy vehicles.
The first entries received for the 2011 event includes a line-up of EV sports cars from Radical, Tesla, Delta, Vortex and Vince Nemesis, many of whom we have never seen.
The Radical SRZero supercar EV entry is from Imperial College London. In 2010 they drove the all-electric Radical from Alaska, down the Pan-American Highway, finishing at Ushuaia in Argentina, the world’s most southerly city, passing through 14 countries in 140 days. The team used the journey to demonstrate that electric vehicles have outstanding performance and that they are a viable low-carbon alternative to combustion engine vehicles.
The Tesla Roadster is one that is well-known as the first production electric sports car as well as being one of the fastest, but it has a close competitor in the shape of the Vince Nemesis.
British built Vince benefits from a similar lightweight structure to the Tesla but uses a different cell and motor arrangement for an equally-impressive turn of speed – 270 kph makes it possibly the world’s fastest electric vehicle.
Their rival comes in the shape of the Delta E4 Electric Coupe which has a high-tech carbon fiber design with impressive performance on electric power: not only is it capable of over 320 kays on a single charge but can also carry four people and accelerate to 100 km/h in less than five seconds – all with zero tailpipe emissions.
Although these confirmed entries are electric, the RAC Future Car Challenge is also open to hybrid, hydrogen and low-emission internal combustion engine cars and light-commercial vehicles. Last year’s entry list included one-off prototypes and future production vehicles from Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Nissan, Vauxhall, BMW, Skoda and Volkswagen, as well as current production cars offering the highest levels of efficiency regardless of their powertrain.
