An electric car beat all gas cars in a race. The Volkswagen ID R, a custom built electric race car, set the new record for the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, beating not only all of the gasoline-using cars on June 24, but beating all of the gasoline-using cars and motorcycles that have ever attempted the race in the past 100 years. Romain Dumas, winner of multiple Le Mans and Pikes Peak races, drove the electric car to the summit at an average speed of over 90 mph in under 8 minutes, 15 seconds faster than the fastest gas car, a minute faster than the fastest electric, and several minutes faster than the fastest Tesla.
The Pikes Peak Hill climb is a 100-year-old race to the top of a 14,000 foot peak near Colorado Springs. The race gained notoriety for its unprotected, precipitous roadside drops which encouraged drivers to carefully consider the value of their life relative to the gain or loss of a few seconds at every turn. Though a few guardrails have been added over the years, the road remains dangerous and challenging, and spectacular car flights off cliffs have occurred. In addition to the relative lack of safety compared to most race venues, the Pikes Peak hill climb offers many other environmental challenges. Weather can move in quickly, changing visibility and traction or even cancelling the race. Dust and gravel accumulate on the roadway. The change in altitude form the bottom to the top leads to variable temperature, air density, and humidity throughout any run. And the high altitude and low air density creates challenging problems.
It was the high altitude that led many race enthusiasts to speculate that an electric car could win the race. Cars running internal combustion engines need a good supply of oxygen to combine with the gasoline and propel themselves up the mountain. Thinning oxygen reduces the available fuel and causes a drop in power as the gas cars approach the summit. Electric cars don’t need oxygen and don’t have the same power drop at altitude. Plus, electric cars have immediate access to power at low speeds in a way that gas cars do not. That is why Teslas and other electric sports cars have ludicrously fast 0-60 mph times. Their acceleration begins immediately, whereas a gas car takes a moment to get the combustion going. In a race like the Pikes Peak Hill Climb with 156 turns, that acceleration out of the turns is a huge advantage.
In the 2016 race, an electric car built by a small, independent engineering team nearly won the race. That Drive e0 team finished only a couple seconds behind the winning internal combustion engine car (driven, ironically, by Romain Dumas). At 8:57, theirs was the third fastest time ever run an Pikes Peak, the second being the gas car that beat them, and the first a phenomenal 8:13 run in 2013 by Sebastien Loeb. With no one coming close to Loeb’s run in years, his record looked untouchable, and to this day no gas car has come close.
Enter Volkswagen. Volkswagen has endured a public relations disaster due to massive cheating on diesel emissions. Faced with falling sales and bad press, a new, bold CEO decided to take Volkswagen in a different direction: electric. All electric. To save the company and restore their green image, Volkswagen has declared that they are moving all of their models to electric as quickly as possible. To demonstrate that they have the ability, they chose an old auto industry technique: show off their technology on the racetrack. The ID R was born.
The ID R’s dominant performance has led to all kinds of excitement and speculation in the racing world. Some fans have complained that they don’t like the noise: a thin, high-pitched whine that sounds like a jet taking off. They prefer the loud rumbling, the revving of the engine, the smelly, smoke-filled display of power and machismo. Other fans love the possibilities, and speculate that not just Pikes Peak, but all rally-style events with short courses and lots of turns are soon to be swarmed by electric racers. After all, the only two things that really matter in a racecar are the two things that electrics increasingly excel at: speed and power.
You may now be asking yourself: WHO CARES? Kids are being ripped from their parents, the free press is under attack, government officials are openly taking bribes, our president is following the playbook of a foreign dictator, an entire political party is standing by impotently in the face of a clear threat to our democracy. Don’t I know that this is a POLITICAL blog? (I do.) Where is the rage against the man? (Next paragraph, sort of.) Am I some sort of representative for Volkswagen? (I am not, but the ID Buzz looks awesome.)
THIS IS A BIG DEAL. A company interested primarily in profit and image hired a team of engineers interested primarily in solving a challenge and a driver interested primarily in winning a race and together they created a milestone in environmental change. First the electrics will take over the racetracks, and then they will take over the streets. Combined with solar, wind, and battery advancements, this evolution could lead to much cleaner air. Most drivers will prefer electrics to internal combustion engines not because they want to save the environment, but because the electrics are simply better. They accelerate faster. They drive faster. They control traction in the corners better. They drive so quietly that music can be loud without causing hearing loss. They never require an oil change. Or a radiator flush. Or a timing belt replacement. They are already superior in every way except one– range– and even that is already changing due to battery technologies that already exist.
Some day very soon some dude in a big, rumbling pick-up truck will blow coal out of his exhaust to flip the bird to the global warming conspiracy as he accelerates out of a stop light and then will look next to him to see some other dude in a quiet electric truck accelerating away even faster despite carrying four other ranchers, an even bigger American flag, and a trailer full of cattle. And on that day, it won’t matter that Pruitt dismantled car emissions standards, or that China owns all the lithium mines, or that oil companies are taking government payouts to stay in business, that dude will be buying an electric.