updated 2011-08-13
Buckeye Bullet : The Fastest Electric Car
Ohio State’s 400 MPH Buckeye Bullet 3 to Attempt Electric Vehicle Speed Record
08/11/11
Last year Ohio State’s streamlined Buckeye Bullet supercar made headlines as it shattered the world speed record for an electric vehicle by clocking in a blistering 291 miles per hour. As if that feat wasn’t impressive enough, the team is back this year with plans for their next-generation racer, which they expect will be able to hit speeds in excess of 400 mph. The Buckeye Bullet 3 is being built from the ground up on an entirely new platform that includes an optimized aerodynamic shape, two custom-made electric motors by Venturi, and a set of prismatic A123 batteries.
In order to improve upon the performance of the Buckeye Bullet 2.5, the team is harnessing the Ohio Supercomputer Center to develop their next-gen land speed racer. Through a series of aerodynamic simulations they have come up with a completely new platform for the Buckeye Bullet 3 that will reduce drag by 5%, place the driver in front of the tires to conserve volume, and improve the vehicle’s overall handling and balance.
The team is also developing wind deflectors to be installed beneath the vehicle to improve stability and further minimize drag. According to the project’s chief engineer Cary Bork, “What sets the new design apart from the previous Buckeye Bullet vehicles is that at these higher speeds it is possible to produce shock waves under the vehicle. Such shock waves under the vehicle negatively affect the vehicle drag and can produce lift. Lift is undesirable in this application. Minimizing or eliminating these shock waves is critical to ensuring the safety and stability of the vehicle.”
Design work on the project is expected to be completed by the end of this summer, and the vehicle will be constructed over the course of the coming academic year.
from www.inhabitat.com/
Posted by Shahid On April – 13 – 2009
The Buckeye Bullet is the current landspeed record holder for electric cars. It is an annual project by teams from the Ohio State University’s College of Engineering. They set the landspeed record of 517.942 km/h (321.834 mph) on October 3,2004 at the Bonneville Salt Flats. The successor, the Buckeye Bullet 2 is now hydrogen fuel cell powered and aiming to improve the record.
It all started with participation in “Formula Lightning”. Formula Lightning is a catefory of open wheeled racing of electric cars for engineering students. High performance electric cars reach speeds in excess of 143mph (230 km/h). The cars are built from an identical rolling chassis, hence aptly name “spec racing cars”, thus keeping the cost low. It is a chance for engineering students to participate in an inter-dsiciplinary competition.
Coming back to the Bucekye Bullet. When Formula Lightning was phased out in 2000, the students decided to put their knowledge of electric car racing to test by aiming to build the world’s fastest electric car. They succeeded.
The Buckeye Bullet 2 is already the world’s fastest hydrogen fuel cell powered electric vehicle. It is driven by a custom built 700 Hp AC induction motor. At the Bonneville Speedweek it set the record for the fastest hydrogen cell powered vehicle at 287 mph (462 km/h) and the fuel cell stacks delivered an astonishing 585KW which comes to around 785HP
A 400-mph electric car that might accidentally produce shock waves underneath the vehicle, simply brings to mind the fact that the same electric engines would much more sensibly be applied to a small passenger VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft, which would use carbon fiber composites for low weight and greater power-to-weight ratio. Basically you would then have a very nice, safe, efficient VTOL aircraft that would embody the mythical Jetson’s personal family aircraft of the 1950s/60s, which is always ridiculed as a ridiculous impossibility in all the pundit roundtables on TV etc., whenever the topic of energy efficiency comes up, in particular. So here it is, another excellent investment and profit model being ignored and ridiculed by the Big (Ignorant) Boys of the world. Meanwhile, we keep losing combatants and collaterals in the oil wars of the world. Wake up folks.
The world does need to “wake up”, and you should learn that electric VTOL aircraft are already being built, but their forte is their silence, their stealth, “roughly 10 times quieter than current low-noise helicopters”. That is where the justification for investment is coming from. We have safe, personal airplanes now, and we have helicopters, and both are being “electrified” – safer and more efficient, and both are more cost-effective than vtol’s.
It is battery (and capacitor) research that has to continue, to put an end to our dependence on gasoline powered vehicles – before global warming destroys everything – or before the dwindling oil resources and rising prices destroys all our world economies, our way of life.
Or, better yet, we have to learn what Tesla knew, how to access the electrical energy all around us, which is free for the taking and so abundant as to appear limitless! Read our pages here on Tesla’s work with radiant energy.