Electrathons on the Salt Flats



Electrathons are small, efficient electric vehicles. A normal electrathon competition involves seeing how many laps an electrathon vehicle can complete in just one hour, on just 67 pounds of battery (about the weight of a truck battery). You can see more details at http://www.electrathonamerica.org/ .

A spin-off sport has arisen. Electrathons now do land speed racing on the Salt Flats at World of Speed http://www.saltflats.com . They are allowed to accelerate for 1 mile (1.6 km) and then the speed is measured. 2007 was the first year electrathons were allowed to run, and one ran 89 mph (142 km/hr). You can read more about that at http://explodingdinosaurs.com .


Several electrathons ran this year. I heard secondhand that one ran 110 mph! Here are a few pictures of one of the electrathon racers. Here you can see the electrathon getting taped up. Taping over seams can add to the top speed. The race crew would ask the driver if he was OK, and then he would roll off on his run.


More taping... of the video sort. There were several film crews on the Salt, including the BBC show Top Gear.

This is a great looking little racecar!


If you click this picture, or the first one, for a bigger image, you can see "Alltrax" and "Odyssey" stickers. Alltrax is an electric motor controller, which is a device that gradually ramps up voltage to the electric motor. Suddenly slamming the motor with full voltage can cause arcs, broken driveline parts, and wheelspin. Odyssey is a powerful lead acid battery, http://www.enersys.com .



He's off! I really like how this picture and the next one show how vast the Salt Flats are. The salt is hard enough powerful cars leave burnout marks.


This electrathon ran all four days of the meet. It was neat to see the speed kept going up. His fastest run was 93 mph (149 km/hr)!

More Electrathon pics

Electrathon on the Salt Flats 2007
Electric barstool sets world speed record of 51 mph in 2008

Electric barstool goes 48 mph in 2007
Electric dragster on the Salt Flats

My general electric and car racing interests
Photo credit for pictures goes to my good friend CE.