John Wayland has built “White Zombie”, a modified ’70s Datsun that is the world’s fastest accelerating street legal electric car, taking it from its original 69HP from internal combustion, to a now electron-powered 300HP.
12-second quarter-mile. Bad ass.
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This is great. This is the spirit of Hot Rodding.
so, I take it we’re back to coal power vehicles?
Definitely. I’ve always liked the looks of these old Datsuns.
Trent, that’s certainly the case here in Ohio.
I think it’s funny that the car he grids up against looks like the Hertz ‘vette. I don’t think it is one – the Hertz has a single stripe rather than the odd split stripe.
Could be coal…
In my area most likely natural gas, 250 miles east and I’d be sipping on a nuclear powered straw.
I can see moving that drive train to a lighter more areo dynamic chassis for more speed. But there has got to be something of a wake up call seeing the econo box whooping the high dollar “brag mobile”
His repeated assertions that what he’s doing is “not causing pollution” and is “earth friendly” drove me up the wall.
When he plugs that car into the wall, where does he think that electricity is coming from?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s cleaner than internal combustion, but just because there’s nothing coming out of a tail pipe doesn’t mean the car is zero emissions.. it just means the emissions came from a coal plant 100 miles over the horizon.
In fairness, his local electricity is almost certainly hydroelectric; most of the Pacific North West is.
Of course it does feed into a much larger power grid, etc, etc, etc.
reminds me of driving those electric indoor go-karts in vegas. Damn quick, but battery life was horrible enough to require a charge after each run. as for the comments about coal… someone needs to do the math as to how much pollution would be put out if he charged with ONLY a coal powerplant based power. I’m betting it’ll still be better than with an ICE.
mudpup, more aerodynamic is very possible, but lighter is very unlikely. Those old Datsuns are much lighter than anything made today. We’re talking around 2,000 pounds from the factory, a stripped “full race” car might be around 1,750 pounds. For comparison, a 2009 Prius is just shy of 3,000 pounds.
Safety and modern conveniences add a LOT of weight! (that Datsun would be like a tin can in a crash – he should really add a roll cage if he’s going to race it a lot..)
Re: Coal-fired car – Lots o’ math. Figure the energy to dig up the coal (+emissions), energy to transport the coal (+emissions). Then the energy out of burning the coal (efficiency losses from power plant turbines), then transmission of the power to guy’s house (loss of power during transmission due to resistance), juicing up the battery (more power lost when charging the batteries), then the efficiency of the electric motor as it moves the car.
That vs. all the crap oil goes through before you can do a burnout in your Vette.
And none of that includes the energy/emissions of producing the hardware itself.
Wonder which one is ultimately more efficient and which one produces the least emissions for power output. Considering all of it, I wouldn’t make a bet before I crunched some numbers.
You should do a BB Video interview with that guy Joel.
or, perhaps, wind-powered?
if you lived in the sticks, say, and had your own wind-electric turbine, i wonder how long it would take to charge the thing up enough to have a decent range (at reasonable speeds)…200 miles or so minimum, if it’s to be practical.
a couple days? a week?
it’d be cool if you had a guage that gave you a live update on your effective range. i imagine it would take a hit every time you stomped the accellerator. heck, that would be neat in any vehicle.
And this is the world’s fastest street legal car, period:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urXPM_P-8kY
a 2200 bhp Vauxhall Victor that does 0-60 mph in one second!
HOLY.FUCKING.SHIT.
I just witnessed history.
I cannot believe my damn EYES- that acceleration is absolutely insane! I have never seen a car move that fast, ever. On cordless drill batteries, no less.
It’s like the entire last 100 years of engine development was a TOTAL JOKE. And the reason everyone doesn’t have these yet is battery tech/price?
START FUNDING BETTER BATTERY TECHNOLOGY, SOMEONE!
When we can get this kind of performance, with batteries that charge even quicker, and can be safe to throw away/recycle, what the hell are we waiting for?
Jesus! Seriously, holy. shit.!
When my 2000 Honda Insight’s ICE finally needs replacement I’m hoping to convert the vehicle to completely electric powertrain. Hopefully that will happen before it’s totaled, but it’ll probably be another 10 years before it makes sense economically to do it. The Insight’s curb weight is actually less than that Datsun, and it’s more aerodynamic, so I wonder if one could best even White Zombie with similar modifications, but I want a car that I can actually drive around town so I won’t be doing the drag-race configuration.
When doing this math, remember that it is easier to monitor and manage emissions when they all come out of one, stationary place. Eventually, we’ll stop burning fossil fuels, but until then it’s better to centralize the process.
And — dang! That shit is fast.