Students from Imperial College London rolled into Panama Thursday in the world’s first electric race car, making a pit stop midway on a journey from North to South America.
The car, called the SRZero, is the key element in the Endurance Racing Green Project which seeks not only to promote green technology but to change the perception that electric vehicles are slow, unattractive and limited in range.
Built by a team of eleven engineering students from the College, the SRZero is a modified Radical SR8, one of the fastest race cars in the world with an internal combustion engine. SRZero weighs just over a ton and reaches 125 miles an hour, accelerating from zero to sixty in seven seconds.
Endurance Racing Green departed from Anchorage, Alaska on July 4 and traveled the first 8,000 miles to Panama in just about two months. Final destination: Ushuaia, Argentina, at the southern tip of the South American continent, about 8,000 more miles down the Inter American Highway.
The SRZero has a range of about 250 miles. If the math is correct, the SRZero has stopped approximately 32 times so far for a full 6-hour battery charge.
SRZero electric race car and team
