If you have ever wondered what the opposite of a NASCAR car would look like, your wish has been fulfilled … by NASCAR.
The stock car racing series has built an all-electric vehicle with the body of a crossover SUV. It is a prototype demonstrator designed to test ideas that could make it onto the track one day, but probably not any day soon.
The project was born a few years ago when the industry’s shift to electric vehicles was in top gear. Things have slowed down a lot since then, and few automakers or fans are in a rush to see NASCAR’s V8s and gas tanks swapped for electric motors and batteries today.
However, they might be if they got behind the wheel. I had the opportunity to speak to someone who did just that when the vehicle visited New York City on a promotional trip.
David Ragan was born into a NASCAR family and is a Cup Series veteran with a coveted win at Daytona on his resume. He’s a part-time racer now, but was the chief development driver for the electric car.
The car was built using the same chassis as the current Cup Series car, which is known as the Next Gen and was engineered with the flexibility to accommodate a variety of powertrains.
Its 670 horsepower V8 engine and five-speed transaxle were replaced by a tri-motor drivetrain developed by electric power specialist ABB. It has one motor up front and two in the rear and can put out a combined 1,300 horsepower when you unleash the juice from a 78-kilowatt-hour battery pack rides shotgun where the passenger seat would be.
It is still a low-rider, but the roof was raised a couple of inches to help give it the shape of a generic compact SUV along the lines of the electric Chevrolet Blazer EV or Ford Mustang Mach-E. The body is made of a low carbon footprint flax-based composite to help amp up the vehicle’s green credentials even more.
It weighs around two tons, which is 600 pounds more than a Cup Series car. The extra power more than overcomes that mass and the vehicle uses its motors as generators when it’s slowing down, which supplements the brakes and charges the battery pack with what would otherwise be wasted energy.
“When you mash the throttle and when you put on the brakes it’s a lot different,” Ragan said of the experience of driving it. “It has a ton of acceleration and with the brake regeneration capability, it stops on a dime.”
Ragan tested it on the iconic Martinsville Speedway where it was nearly as fast around the half-mile oval as a Cup Series car. Given a few more laps to tweak it, he thinks it could be faster.
But not louder. The car isn’t equipped with any sound enhancements, so it just makes a quiet whirring noise which might not thrill crowds and is one of the biggest things holding back electric racing from a live entertainment standpoint. Much like electric street cars, driving range is the other issue.
Ragan said the car could drive at full speed for about 45 minutes to an hour on a track like Martinsville, where there is a lot of breaking on every lap to help replenish the battery charge, but it wouldn’t last very long at a superspeedway like Daytona or Talladega where there is no breaking at all.
An hour is long enough for a support racing series, but Cup Series races run closer to three hours and a pit stop to charge the battery would probably take a half-hour or so.
Nevertheless, there are plans to give it a shot at the mile-long Phoenix Raceway during NASCAR’s championship weekend in November to see how it does.
“I can’t wait to get to a bigger race track where I can hold the throttle down for more than a few seconds,” Ragan said.
Even if the electric part doesn’t work out, the SUV design may have a future in NASCAR. Coupes and sedans are becoming less popular in a marketplace that’s become dominated by utility vehicles. Chevrolet doesn’t even make the Camaro that its NASCAR Cup Series car is based on anymore, so if it wins on Sunday it doesn’t have anything to sell on Monday.
“I like the look of this car. We’ve had the sedan and the coupe body style forever,” Ragan said.
“My wife drives a crossover sport utility vehicle style and I think the manufacturers were really excited about doing something different.”
