Yahoo Autos Fly Up Pikes Peak Precisely in 7:57.148
As you have probably heard by now, Romain Dumas broke the all-time record up Pikes Peak driving Volkswagen's LMP1-inspired electric prototype, the 680+ horsepower I.D. R. The four-time Pikes champion was 16 seconds faster through those 156 corners than his fellow Frenchman Sebastian Loeb with his heavily turbocharged Peugeot in 2013. Yet because electric cars hardly make enough noise to satisfy the safety department, up close, his racing car sounded more like an ambulance. One that always gets there in time.
Zoom out to your helicopter's flying altitude however, and the sound of the sirens gets lost in the turbulent air. What remains is that familiar whining noise produced by the high-performance electric motors built by McLaren Applied Technologies, originally for Formula E.
These 120 kW synchronous permanent magnet motors can rev up to 17,000rpm, yet they hardly sound any different than the 110 kW DK-210 A-3 motor powering the Soviet ZiU-9 trolleybuses produced in the sixties, which were a common site in my home city of Budapest from the 1960s until just a few years ago. Not that it matters. Getting a 7:57.148 minutes run out of just 680 horsepower is a testament to VW's engineering team, not to mention Romain Dumas' driving skill. And here's all of it from a bird's-eye view:
If you can’t view the YouTube video above, click here.
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