ABB-Powered Electric Car Attempts to Break Land Speed Record in United States
April 21 2005 - 9:00AM
PR Newswire (US)
ABB-Powered Electric Car Attempts to Break Land Speed Record in
United States ABB e=motion team confident of success in Nevada on
May 5 NORWALK, Conn., April 21 /PRNewswire/ -- A high-speed
electrical car, powered by ABB motors and drives, will attempt to
break the land speed record for an electrical vehicle on May 5 in
Nevada, U.S. (Logo:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050421/CLTH002 ) The 32-foot
(10 meter) long, mustard-yellow ABB e=motion car will try to beat
the current official FIA (Federation Internationale d'Automobile)
electric land speed record of 245 mph (394 kph) and become the
first-ever electrically powered vehicle to break the 300 mph (483
kph) barrier. The car, whose main sponsor is the global engineering
company ABB, will make the record attempt on a closed, secured
section of paved road near the city of West Wendover, northeastern
Nevada. The FIA, the world's leading motorsports ruling body, will
monitor and certify the attempt. To qualify as an official land
speed record under FIA rules, the car must perform two recorded
runs at better than 252 mph over a distance of 0.622 miles (one
kilometer). The e=motion car is the brainchild of Britons Mark
Newby and Colin Fallows. It has already delivered spectacular
acceleration during tests in the U.K., easily reaching 146 mph (237
kph) in just 1,000 yards (914 meters) - the longest distance
available to the team in the U.K. - and unofficially breaking the
139 mph U.K. record for an electric vehicle. "With this sort of
performance, we're confident that our car will easily beat the
existing electric car land speed record," says Newby. The ABB
e=motion car has no mechanical gears - acceleration is controlled
entirely by ABB variable speed drives regulating two 50-horsepower
electric motors from ABB. "ABB technology has put this car in the
super-speed league, and demonstrates our unique ability to meet
unusual technology challenges with a pioneering spirit," said Ron
Kurtz, ABB U.S. spokesman. The current FIA electric car record is
held by the White Lightning team from the U.S. Other record
attempts have been made, but not under FIA rules. An ABB e=motion
attempt to break the record on salt flats of Tunisia in 2004 was
postponed after the surface was deemed unsafe due to unusual
weather conditions, but there are no such doubts about the road in
Nevada. Further information about the e=motion record attempt,
including pictures and additional technical detail, is available on
ABB's Web site ( http://www.abb.com/e=motion ). ABB e=motion: key
technical data An ABB industrial drive and two 50 horsepower AC
motors will be used to power ABB e=motion The motors produce a
combined output of more than 500bhp (brake horsepower, i.e. power
measured at a vehicle's crankshaft). As a comparison with
gasoline-driven cars, the new Chevrolet Corvette, launched this
year is fitted with a 7.0-litre (427-cubic-inch) V8 engine that
produces 500bhp. ABB's system uses a regenerative standard inverter
from its ACS800 motor drives line to convert the 600V DC (direct
current) output from the car's four packs of 52 lead-acid batteries
into AC (alternating current) power for the two motors. To prevent
overheating during the record attempt, each motor has been adapted
to include a forced-ventilation system that is comprised of a
series of 24-volt DC fans, to help keep the motors below their
maximum operating temperature of 180 degrees C (356 degrees F). ABB
sensors fitted to each motor winding provide real-time information
about motor temperatures and help protect the motors. High torque
for immediate acceleration Fast acceleration is the key to the
record attempt. For this reason, ABB's motor/drive system also uses
the company's Direct Torque Control drive technology, which
provides excellent control of motor torque, with full motor torque
available even at zero speed. "Other challengers to the record
commonly use gear-driven systems in their cars to achieve the
fastest possible acceleration, whereas the technology we've
supplied steadily controls torque across the whole speed range,"
says Frank Griffith, one of the ABB team who helped to develop the
car's power system. "Although a geared vehicle can achieve 100 mph
in a few seconds, its rate of acceleration falls away much more
quickly compared to our system; this one will continue to
accelerate even past the 300 mph mark, provided sufficient battery
power is available." Design challenges in building the car Newby
and Fallows struggled for 18 months to find a company that could
supply the equipment needed to power the car, before contacting ABB
in November 2002. "Of the companies we originally approached, none
could provide either the technology or expertise that justified a
world record attempt of this magnitude," said Fallows who designed
the car. "We initially approached ABB because we were aware of the
company's profile in the world of electrical engineering. Its
solution, based on standard industrial motors and drives, proved
extremely compact, which was very important as we only had a
limited amount of space available in the car." One of the biggest
challenges was the need to simulate the vehicle dynamics and
performance likely to be experienced during the record attempt
without physically testing the car on a track. "Likely performance
was modeled and calculated using a set of estimated conditions
involving factors such as rolling resistance, drag and battery
discharge rate," says Griffith. "Much of this information either
did not exist or else had to be extrapolated from data found on the
Internet." To help fine-tune the system's performance, ABB used
data from the two independent four-channel data loggers
incorporated within the drive. "The data loggers enabled us to
improve the performance of our system in the same way as Formula
One teams do with their cars," explains Steve Malpass, a member of
the ABB design team. "One of the data loggers was set to a rapid
sampling rate of one sample per millisecond to record all the
actual events as they happened. "By setting the other logger to a
slower rate, we were able to record information on trends that
occurred throughout the test runs, which provided us with an
overall picture of how the car was performing." Environmental
benefits ABB is the world's largest manufacturer of electric motors
and drives. They are designed to be environmentally friendly,
reducing energy costs for customers and sharply cutting emissions.
The company's variable speed AC drives, installed around the world,
cut global C02 emissions by an annual total of 68 million tons -
equivalent to the emissions of a country the size of Finland. The
energy saved is annual equivalent to the output of ten average
sized power plants. ABB has a massive installed base of these
drives - more than one million in the past 20 years. ABB (
http://www.abb.com/ ) is a leader in power and automation
technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve
performance while lowering environmental impact. The ABB Group of
companies operates in around 100 countries and employs about
102,000 people. The company's U.S. operations employ nearly 10,000
in manufacturing and other facilities in 30 states.
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050421/CLTH002
http://photoarchive.ap.org/ DATASOURCE: ABB CONTACT: Media
Relations, U.S., Ron Kurtz of ABB Corporate Communications,
+1-203-750-2407, or ; or Media Relations, international, Thomas
Schmidt or Ron Popper of ABB Corporate Communications, Zurich, +41
43 317 6568, or fax, +41 43 317 7958, or Web site:
http://www.abb.com/
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