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and then founded Renishaw Electrical in 1973 with John Deer to commercialize the product.
“We’re in a very fortunate position that Sir David McMurtry, who founded the company, is supporting us for the three- year design-and-build phase of this car,” said Turton. “Not many companies are able to do such a radical concept for such a long time in complete secret and then reveal a fully working prototype at one of the biggest motoring events in the world.”
Turton said that the car being shown at Goodwood is a high- performance track-car concept with extremely low drag. “There’s no front or rear wing, but instead, our downforce comes from an on-board downforce-on-demand system, which is a fan-based downforce system with over 80 horse- power sucking the car to the track,” he said. “What it means is when you’re going at extremely high speed, your car is low-drag, which reduces energy consumption. But you also get 100% downforce from 0 mph. Hence, launching off the line, taking hairpins, and going through high-speed corners, you’re getting peak downforce at all times.”
The key to keeping the car compact and lightweight was integrating the battery and chassis together, said Turton. “We’ve iterated to get the battery integrated right alongside the driver in the side part of the car and underneath the driv- er’s legs, and that battery layout is patented to our company,” he said. “In the battery pack, we’ve had extremely high-power cells, so we can charge and discharge at an extremely high rate. And because our car is so low-drag, we get the best of both worlds. You’re getting the high power for acceleration and charging and the low drag for speed and range. The bat- tery is over 800 V.”
A clear message from most of the engineers and product managers was that pushing the limits for experimental track hypercars, or even those going into production, paves the way for commercial application in road cars and elsewhere.
As Turton said, “Our long-term goal is to produce road cars, but it’s important for us to demonstrate something that’s really exciting and never been seen before.”
This article originally appeared on EE Times on July 10, 2021.
Nitin Dahad
is editor-in-chief of Embedded.
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ASPENCORE GUIDE TO SILICON CARBIDE
Pushing the limits for experimental track hypercars, or even those going into production, paves the way for commercial application in road cars and elsewhere.