NASCAR to electric by 2021?

aunty dive said:
A guy I met drove his Tesla from Vancouver, BC to Palm Springs, California, a distance of 1390 miles. The trip took 6 days. That’s down to the 300 mile max permitted by the battery pack and the required 9 hour recharge.

A Formula E car’s weight is less than half that of a Cup car.

2021? Not likely.
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Complaining about the time it took to drive a current model electric car 1400 miles is like complaining about the noise, lousy ride, and fuel mileage if you drove an M1 tank the same distance. It's the wrong vehicle for the task. That's why I take the Hyundai Elantra for the 4-hour drive to my parents instead of the Ford Ranger - it's quieter, more comfortable, cheaper, and more dependable. It's like complaining because a hammer does a lousy job of driving screws.

What does the weight of a Cup car have to do with this? Get past the notion that a E-series would be a modification of an existing NASCAR series. It could be a completely new series with production Toyotas, Chevys, Teslas, and whoever else makes electric cars these days.
 
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NASCAR already has four national series (if you count ARCA) that suffer from a lack of investment, sponsorship, viewership and attendance. Why not divide the pie up a little further? :rolleyes:
 
More than that if we put IMSA under the umbrella. I didn't say it makes total sense, but starting a new one makes more sense than converting one of the existing series.
 
Charlie Spencer said:
Complaining about the time it took to drive a current model electric car 1400 miles is like complaining about the noise, lousy ride, and fuel mileage if you drove an M1 tank the same distance. It's the wrong vehicle for the task. That's why I take the Hyundai Elantra for the 4-hour drive to my parents instead of the Ford Ranger - it's quieter, more comfortable, cheaper, and more dependable. It's like complaining because a hammer does a lousy job of driving screws.

What does the weight of a Cup car have to do with this? Get past the notion that a E-series would be a modification of an existing NASCAR series. It could be a completely new series with production Toyotas, Chevys, Teslas, and whoever else makes electric cars these days.
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not really if a person only has one car and wants to drive cross country for Christmas. They needs to start right after Thanksgiving.
 
StandOnIt said:
not really if a person only has one car and wants to drive cross country for Christmas. They needs to start right after Thanksgiving.
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The buyer should have considered the most likely uses before making the purchase, or have planned on renting something else for the longer hauls, or have flown and rented something at the other end. Flying would have been cheaper than the 5 nights of hotels over the 6-day trip in the Tesla.
 
Charlie Spencer said:
The buyer should have considered the most likely uses before making the purchase, or have planned on renting something else for the longer hauls, or have flown and rented something at the other end. Flying would have been cheaper than the 5 nights of hotels over the 6-day trip in the Tesla.
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The buyer wanted the car down in the desert. It’s still there.

He could have shipped it down or purchased it there. He did neither. I brought this up to focus on the relatively short duration of a single battery charge and in my tiny mind, imagined how long a 2021 version would last powering a race car that would presumably look like and be constructed in a manner similar to current “stock cars”.

In closing, I suggest that none of this will be happening in 2021.
 
aunty dive said:
The buyer wanted the car down in the desert. It’s still there.

He could have shipped it down or purchased it there. He did neither. I brought this up to focus on the relatively short duration of a single battery charge and in my tiny mind, imagined how long a 2021 version would last powering a race car that would presumably look like and be constructed in a manner similar to current “stock cars”.

In closing, I suggest that none of this will be happening in 2021.
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Okay, to get back on target, almost all X and all Truck races are under 300 miles. That's within range if they construct them similar to production models, something many have said they'd prefer.

I don't see it happening by 2021 but I say that due to administrative reasons, not technical ones. NASCAR hasn't show any signs of trying to spin up an electric series. If they were to get serious about it after the holidays, I've no doubt they could be running at Daytona in Feb. '21.
 
In the consumer market electric cars are just a hold-over to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles which are decades way from being viable. I did a minor report on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles a year back or so. Pretty cool stuff...and I think it will come to fruition eventually. Electrical infrastructure is present in our society while hydrogen infrastructure is not. With hydrogen you don't have the range issues of electric because they will fuel up like traditional gas.
 
Hydrogen is going to have to overcome some safety issues. There's too much social baggage left over from the gas bags.

I'm not saying that hydrogen isn't a viable long-term power source.
 
Charlie Spencer said:
Okay, to get back on target, almost all X and all Truck races are under 300 miles. That's within range if they construct them similar to production models, something many have said they'd prefer.
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The Tesla’s range is 300 miles at legal speeds. I’m too lazy to look up the formula but I can assure you that a lot more energy is consumed at 150 miles per hour than at 75.
 
Hilarious thread to read.

People seem to expect that battery technology which has exponentially increased in life, duration, and capacity since the early 2000’s is going to remain stagnate. The projections on lithium-ion batteries will continue to have capacity increases by 6% annually for years.

By 2021? More than likely - Nope. However, the future is electric vehciles at some point in the medium future.
 
Nothing like anticipating the sound and vibration of 40 honey bee's thundering down the front stretch. What a rush that would be. :sarcasm::sarcasm::sarcasm::sarcasm: Just in case it was missed, that was :sarcasm:.
 
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Towmater said:
Hilarious thread to read.

People seem to expect that battery technology which has exponentially increased in life, duration, and capacity since the early 2000’s is going to remain stagnate. The projections on lithium-ion batteries will continue to have capacity increases by 6% annually for years.

By 2021? More than likely - Nope. However, the future is electric vehciles at some point in the medium future.
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Stagnant. No-one expects that at all.

The conversion to vehicles that do not directly burn petroleum products is, as you say, inevitable.
 
Charlie Spencer said:
Literally, 'Jet Assisted Take Off', although technically it was a rocket-based technology, not jet engines. Basically, it was a big honkin' bottle rocket used to help aircraft take off from runways that were too short for them to normally consider.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO
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I am thinking that APP launcher is best for the nEhra series.
 
StandOnIt said:
not really if a person only has one car and wants to drive cross country for Christmas. They needs to start right after Thanksgiving.
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Or you can save money 360 days a year and rent a vehicle for 5 day long trip.
 
This is just the ultimate Humpydidit Wheeler - Bruton Smith curse from 1992. They thought they were slick with the light cheating mirrors staged all around the track. The mirrors that alloweted them get more light than they paid for.
I knew we would pay for the perversity sooner or later.

Like most all evil perverts just one act of evil was not enough so they bought in the lab coats. People that don't like any noise or having the senses stimulateds. The kinds that likes writing Ha Ha Ha and Boo hoo down rather than really feeling anything. I tried to befreind one of them once, I asked him about his family and he just said he had read about wimmins.

Thats is what it takes to make E racing the next big nothing, guaranteed to make you feel nothing. Line them bleachers up with recliners and pillows.
Remember not to cheer, there will be people trying to sleep. Save you dry golf claps until the race is over and so forth....
 
Gosh, and you'd think that NASCAR was selling out the tracks and it was the 1990 to early 2000's. Yep, really packing them in with that racing gas smell and burnt clutch aroma. BTW, Andy is right. E-racing is the future.
 
Towmater said:
Gosh, and you'd think that NASCAR was selling out the tracks and it was the 1990 to early 2000's. Yep, really packing them in with that racing gas smell and burnt clutch aroma. BTW, Andy is right. E-racing is the future.
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Obviously the noise and smells aint the only thing. But racings appeal has a lot of undeniable sensual elements, and I do love the smell of racing gas.
 
Greg said:
Obviously the noise and smells aint the only thing. But racings appeal has a lot of undeniable sensual elements, and I do love the smell of racing gas.
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Yup. First time I went to OCIR as a kid to watch drag racing -- I experienced wave after wave of calamitous 5 senses overload; it was a true guilty pleasure. Watching appliances go fast will never be as cool...
 
Speedbowl14 said:
In the consumer market electric cars are just a hold-over to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles which are decades way from being viable. I did a minor report on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles a year back or so. Pretty cool stuff...and I think it will come to fruition eventually. Electrical infrastructure is present in our society while hydrogen infrastructure is not. With hydrogen you don't have the range issues of electric because they will fuel up like traditional gas.
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yep.
 
StandOnIt said:
yep.
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So what Lobby group is preventing Hydrogen cars from being the norm.
They have been in existence for over a hundred years. Maybe with the big green movement
starting to get traction it will become more desirable.
 
Team Penske said:
So what Lobby group is preventing Hydrogen cars from being the norm.
They have been in existence for over a hundred years. Maybe with the big green movement
starting to get traction it will become more desirable.
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not really. They might have had them, but the problem is being able to store Hydrogen. The molecules are small and containing them for storage is and has been the problem. expensive. What is probably scary to big oil is that home stills can produce hydrogen very cheaply.
 
StandOnIt said:
not really. They might have had them, but the problem is being able to store Hydrogen. The molecules are small and containing them for storage is and has been the problem. expensive. What is probably scary to big oil is that home stills can produce hydrogen very cheaply.
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Don't forget Big Corn, which is raking it in from the gubbermint's ethanol mandates. Brazil's been demonstrating for years that you can get something like 7 times more ethanol per acre with sugar cane. Switch grass generates about 4 times more than corn.
 
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