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W
Pushing the Limits of
Weight & Power Delivery
in EV Hypercars
By Nitin Dahad
hen I wrote in June that Ferrari was appointing a CEO from the semiconductor industry in pursuit of its electrification strategy, I didn’t imagine that a few
weeks later, I’d be out at a show for supercars and hypercars, talking to car designers about electric vehicle and hybrid vehicle strategies and design challenges.
When I was asked to cover the Goodwood Festival of Speed, I was concerned there might not be much to cover for EE Times at this motorsports event. I’d never been to the show before, but I knew that for most of the 160,000 car enthusi- asts who attend, the four-day event is all about performance and speed. They come to watch cars roar around the track and to gape at the huge, open-air exhibitions of race-track cars, hypercars, vintage cars, and performance road cars.
Once I arrived and started talking to product managers, though, the conversation easily turned to the technologies that enable these cars: the powertrain, the electronics, and the relevant communications architectures, as well as any- thing that helps optimize for speed and super-performance, as well as weight.
ON THE GOODWOOD TRACK (SOURCE: NITIN DAHAD)
DANISH HYPERCAR COMPANY ZENVO MAKES ONLY FIVE HYPERCARS A YEAR; IT DOESN’T HAVE PLANS FOR FULLY ELECTRIC HYPERCARS BUT WILL LOOK AT THE HYBRID ROUTE. (SOURCE: NITIN DAHAD)
The show saw debuts of both EV hypercars and pure internal-combustion–engine cars. Companies like Zenvo, a small Danish company that makes only five hypercars a year, said they don’t have plans for fully electric hypercars, as they cater to a market of car enthusiasts. A 25-person com- pany, Zenvo makes the TSR-S track-focused but road-legal car entirely in Denmark, including all the electronics and the powertrain. Interestingly, Zenvo opted to use a standard iPad for the display, as it has an interface that everyone uses. CEO Angela Hartman told us that they are looking at a hybrid strategy in the future, but their first plans were to start sell- ing in the U.S. in October and up production to 20 cars a year.
Meanwhile, Louis Kerr, chief platform engineer at Lotus, took time out to explain the company’s work on the Lotus Evija, an all-electric hypercar currently in the prototype phase. While the focus at this year’s Goodwood was on the launch of the brand-new Lotus Emira, the company’s last-ever petrol engine car launch, the Evija is really driving its design think- ing of the future.
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