BYU electric streamliner at Bonneville

[California98Civic]

Some last pics from me taken at the Bonneville Speedway "World of Speed" event last weekend. This is the Brigham Young University school of engineering electric streamliner that set the land speed record in its class last year at Bonneville (155mph). I saw two runs (64mph and 131mph). It was silent. It was fast:

[ecomodded]

Wonder what watt motor it uses, if it did it with a 500 watt motor on each wheel, that would be impressive.
Looks like beautiful weather you had at Bonneville, did you enter a vehicle this year California98Civic ?

[California98Civic]

Originally Posted by ecomodded

Wonder what watt motor it uses, if it did it with a 500 watt motor on each wheel, that would be impressive.
Looks like beautiful weather you had at Bonneville, did you enter a vehicle this year California98Civic ?

I did not enter a car, but it seems like it would be fun to do so in future, maybe at a closer event like the SCTA meets at El Mirage dry lake bed. I would be interested to see just what it could do, reasonably, in a longer run as flat-out top speed, but without torturing the thing, like those crazy dudes in the 36hp Challenge. It would just be fun to go as fast as possible, without worries about the law and other drivers.

As to BYU's car, as I recall, the track announcer on the radio said it was a 400watt, 400 amp motor. Sound wrong?

[metromizer]

BYU used to have a much larger electric streamliner, a longer Red one. I was at the salt for it's maiden voyage back in 2001 I think it was. I'm glad to see they are still at it.

While trouble shooting our own car, I also had a chance to talk with a young man associated with a BYU Diesel entry. Unlike the EV team, there's was a quick '3 month construction' deal, that performed about as well as they prepared, I guess. We talked about the importance of good leadership on a project like that, he mentioned their adviser had no racecar construction experience, which caused a little friction within the team, and may have shown through in the final product. All great lessons for college engineering students, more valuable than they know.

Very impressive college student projects to say the least.

[ecomodded]

Originally Posted by California98Civic

As to BYU's car, as I recall, the track announcer on the radio said it was a 400watt, 400 amp motor. Sound wrong?

It sounds incredible, thats for sure, I do not have enough knowledge to know if its possible or not to go so fast with such a big vehicle and small motor. I doubt it.

I just did a quick search and found this article -
Built for speed: BYU team aiming to set record at Salt Flats

quote:
The vehicle has about 200 horsepower in its deceptively small electric motor; that translates into 150,000 watts. That's more power than Baxter knew how to describe.

"It's hard to fathom," he said. "It's a lot."