30/08/2011
NEWS STORY
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Toyota Motorsport GmbH (TMG) has set a new lap record for an electric vehicle (EV) at the legendary 12.9 mile Nurburgring Nordschleife circuit.
The TMG EV P001, with 100% electric powertrain and Jochen Krumbach at the wheel, set a new lap record of 7:47.794 to beat the previous lap record, which stood at 9:1.338, by a substantial margin.
Using two electric motors, the TMG electric powertrain has a top speed of 160 mph which combined with 800Nm of torque to achieve impressive speeds on the extremely challenging Nordschleife track, which includes significant elevation changes and lengthy flat-out sections.
TMG's target prior to Monday's record run was to become the first electric vehicle break the eight-minute barrier and this was achieved comfortably on a day when the notoriously changeable Nurburgring weather stayed fine, although track temperatures were relatively low.
Such performance shows TMG's electric powertrain is ideal to power any future single-make electric motorsport series and TMG will begin commercial sales of this technology in 2012. TMG continues to advance its electric vehicle capability for motorsport applications with in-house development of the electric powertrain and ongoing investigations into alternative chassis solutions.
"The goals for this project were twofold," said TMG's Technical Director, Pascal Vasselon, "obviously we wanted to set a new EV lap record and I am very pleased we could achieve that so comprehensively. On the other hand, we also wanted to learn more about the operation of our electric powertrain in extreme circumstances; in motorsport there is no more extreme circuit than the Nurburgring. On the record lap the TMG EV P001 performed better than in testing due to the improvement we already could make based on that experience. We have enhanced our electric powertrain development thanks to the information our engineers have gained and our future EV products will benefit from this project."
"This is a very impressive achievement which really shows the huge potential for electric powertrains to deliver fast, exciting action on the race track," added Rob Leupen, TMG's Director Business Operations. "There's no doubt that electric motorsport can be every bit as thrilling as traditional racing and it was an amazing sensation to watch the TMG electric vehicle fly past on the Nordschleife, with only the sound of wind rushing past and tyres squealing. To achieve a new lap record at the first attempt, and by such a huge margin, is a great achievement and I am very proud to see TMG's name in the record books. But this is not the end of the story for TMG and I hope we will see our electric powertrains in action on the track again soon."
The new lap record was completed on road-legal tyres, using the complete Nordschleife track. It was verified by independent lap timing.