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100% electric Corvette hits 186 mph - world record

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186 in the standing mile is nothing to sneeze at. You don't hit top speed in a mile.

Very few cars are that fast. Sure there are many that go over 200 now, but 186 in a mile is faster than a ZR1 by a little.

186 in the half mile would be nothing to sneeze at. 186 in the mile is indeed not as impressive.

I've done a few half mile events and the "fast" cars were always the ones that could break 180 - 190mph in the half.
 
186 in the half mile would be nothing to sneeze at. 186 in the mile is indeed not as impressive.

I've done a few half mile events and the "fast" cars were always the ones that could break 180 - 190mph in the half.

There are plated cars that go that fast in the 1/4 today. Heck, my >6400lb pickup runs 10.65@130 on just pump diesel just as driven to and from the track getting 25 mpg highway. It also has a 197.xxx mph timeslip from Bonneville, IIRC, it still holds the A/DT record.

That doesn't mean 186 mph is slow in the mile for an electric car with a license plate.
 
Telsa's small drive units have a rated RPM limit of 18,000 RPM. With a 9.73:1 gear ratio and stock tires that are 751 rev/mile, the motor hits 18,000 RPM at 147.8 MPH.

155 MPH overrevs the motor by about 5% from it's rated speed.

Top speed is difficult to achieve with electric motors without the transmission. In addition to physical limits on rotor RPM and centripetal force, high RPM increases the necessary applied frequency from the inverter, and the inductive reactance of the motor goes up with the frequency. To put more current through the motor under high inductive reactance conditions needs more voltage, but you're limited by what the battery can put out. Especially at that condition when the voltage is already sagging from the current draw. Internal motor losses like hysteresis loss go up with frequency also, so you run into a loss of efficiency and a cooling issue at high RPM.

The disadvantage with that Corvette is that the motor's torque has to be limited to what the transmission can handle. The 0-60 times are not likely to be that impressive. They also lose efficiency with the transmission, both in internal friction and a huge hit in amount of regen it can utilize. Without optimally downshifting in a controlled pattern, you lose a ton of energy in the friction brakes.

As well, they saved a lot of weight using only a 44 kWh battery at the expense of range of course.

It's a purpose-built car for getting a top speed run, but completely impractical as an actual useful street vehicle.

Not really an issue below 100 MPH.
 
Is that for the front or rear drive unit? (I thought they used a different gearing ratio between the front and rear drive units.)

I believe it has always been assumed that there is a slightly different gearing on the front drive units as opposed to the rear drive units, but I haven't seen any documentation on that from Tesla. The owner's manual only specifies 9.73:1 as the drive ratio, without referring to front or rear.

Maybe with the people who are now logging the CAN bus, we can get some RPM values for each motor and see.

18,000 RPM is the rating on the small drive unit. The large drive unit is supposed to be rated for 16,000 RPM, but it would seem it can go faster than that if the gear ratio is still 9.73:1.
 
There are plated cars that go that fast in the 1/4 today. Heck, my >6400lb pickup runs 10.65@130 on just pump diesel just as driven to and from the track getting 25 mpg highway. It also has a 197.xxx mph timeslip from Bonneville, IIRC, it still holds the A/DT record.

That doesn't mean 186 mph is slow in the mile for an electric car with a license plate.

Well your statement didn't specify just electric vehicles. In a general sense I don't think 186mph in the standing mile is impressive any longer, at least not to the people that do that kind of racing. Either way, given how fast the higher end Teslas are, I suspect even without a speed limiter it would be able to hit maximum speed in the standing mile if not shortly after. So 186 in the standing mile by a $350,000 purpose built car isn't really all that impressive to me.
 
I would venture a guess to make the Model S body efficient, it doesn't have a lot of downforce. Once you start climbing over 175mph you really should have some downforce on the nose. The air is pushing so hard that it can cause the car to spin, which is the biggest danger when setting land speed records using factory bodies.

That's not a bad thing. It's just an engineering decision, and a good one at that.

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Well your statement didn't specify just electric vehicles. In a general sense I don't think 186mph in the standing mile is impressive any longer, at least not to the people that do that kind of racing. Either way, given how fast the higher end Teslas are, I suspect even without a speed limiter it would be able to hit maximum speed in the standing mile if not shortly after. So 186 in the standing mile by a $350,000 purpose built car isn't really all that impressive to me.

It sure is impressive for an electric full body car with a plate. Yes, the University of Ohio has went a LOT faster, but they too aren't up with the ICE cars yet.
 
It sure is impressive for an electric full body car with a plate. Yes, the University of Ohio has went a LOT faster, but they too aren't up with the ICE cars yet.

I guess it's all relative. It's cool and I totally admire what they've built but I wouldn't say that it's a profoundly fast car outside of the bubble of electric cars and even in that bubble I wouldn't say it's amazing. A quick search reveals a P85 going 133mph in the half mile. We know the car falls on it's face up top so let's say in the full mile it would have hit 150 - 155mph.

Well that's a lowly P85 hitting those times, not even a P85/90D. Not only that but they're heavy production cars. Comparatively we've got a purpose built, lightweight car with a smaller battery and a $300,000+ pricetag turning times that are faster, yes but impressively faster? Well I guess that's subjective. Personally on a purpose-built car I need to see a larger gap in performance before I start singing it's praises.
 
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