British electric car sets new world land speed record

Lord Drayson has successfully quashed the 1979 electric car land speed record, reaching 204mph

The previous record set by an electric car was 175mph, set in 1979

We wrote previously about Lord Drayson's upcoming attempt to break the world land speed record for an electric car. Well, the racing model ‘Lola B12 69/EV’, designed by Drayson Racing Technologies, yesterday did break the world land speed record for a lightweight (under 1000kg) electric car.

The previous record, held by Battery Box General Electric, was set in 1974 at 175mph, but Lord Drayson, Chief Executive of Drayson Racing and former science minister, was behind the wheel yesterday and smashed the 1974 record - reaching speeds of 204.185mph!

Lord Drayson completed two one-mile runs of the racetrack at RAF Elvington in Yorkshire, and he hopes his achievement ‘will highlight electric vehicle technology potential’ and that motorsport can be used to advance the adoption of electric vehicle technologies.

Lord Drayson commented saying “It is not the outright speed that is most impressive about this record attempt, but the engineering challenge of accelerating a 1000kg electric car on a short runway over a measured mile.”

He went on to say, after the world record-breaking speed had been recorded, “What we’ve achieved shows that EVs can be fast and reliable – and that the UK can be a leader in such technology.”

"What we’ve achieved shows that EVs can be fast and reliable"

The first electric car championships are being held in London in September 2014, where Drayson’s sights are now firmly set. In the 2014 series, he will race the Spark-Renault SRT10E. This new land speed record opens up new opportunities for Lord Drayson to race his vehicle, come 2015, using the same technology as Lola.

Lola was developed using a lightweight 20-kilowatt hour battery and an adapted vehicle chassis made of recycled carbon fibre to minimise air friction.

Lola B12 69/EV Specification: Power: 640 kW, 850 Bhp Battery: 30 kWh

Encased in a carbon battery cell integrated into the chassis to become a structural component.

The battery is designed to be modular offering a range of power, capacity and weight configurations. Charging System: 20kW QualcommHalo wireless charging system

There seems to be plenty in store for the electric car-racing scene in 2014 and Drayson has hinted that they intend to enter Lola into next year’s Le Mans 24 hour race, suggesting that “the competition would act as a challenging test bed for technologies that could eventually find their way into road cars.”

However, an analyst suggested that while efforts such as those by Drayson Racing were an excellent way to promote electric vehicles, there were concerns regarding how this new technology would be transferred to the roads. Making electric cars go faster wouldn’t be the issue – the problems would come from making them go further and be more practical.

The Drayson Racing Technologies quest continues today, where they will attempt to break more speed records with the Lola B12 69/EV electric car.

We have several electric vehicles in stock (but none with quite as impressive a top speed.) Search by clicking below.