Australia's Most Efficient Manned Land Vehicle

Post by **Coulomb Racing** » Sat, 19 Dec 2015, 04:26

Preface: I usually don't contribute unless I actually know as much as those around me and so I'm usually more of an observer than an active poster on this forum. However, I've been learning from all of you, the internet and through trial and error by entering the Perth Electric Vehicle Challenge since 2009 and the Hunter Valley EV Festival since 2013 with my 'team' (brother and myself and some sponsors/friends)operating with the name Coulomb Motorsport. After a lot of money, time and learning I'm very happy to announce the following.

On Monday the 7th of December 2015, my brother Peter and I headed out to the RAC to conduct a test of equal distance to that of the Shell Eco-marathon Asia, 10 laps of the 1.6 km long track, and work out how efficient our new car really is. In reasonably high winds, Peter steered the car around the track at an average speed of 31 kph consuming only 122.18 Wh to achieve 16 km.
This works out to be 7.63 Wh/km or 131 km/kWh. This would've been enough for us to place 6th in the battery electric class at the 2015 Shell Eco Marathon Asia as seen in the results photo.
For all those who don't do wH/km, our efficiency is equivalent to 1170 km/L of Unleaded 95**

*To our knowledge after extensive research online and using Shell EcoMarathon as gold standard of efficiency.
** Based upon 42,900 kJ/kg value of 95 Unleaded, converted to kWh and assuming 0.71 kg/L.

James Hill

Post by **Coulomb Racing** » Mon, 21 Dec 2015, 23:55

I'm still trying to overlay our telemetry onto our full efficiency run, however here is an onboard video of a quicker run that we did after the efficiency attempt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BahIDb-LFgs

We will be unveiling the car at the 2016 Electrikhana in March

Post by **Coulomb Racing** » Wed, 23 Dec 2015, 05:55

It took ages to upload in HD but here is the full efficiency run with the telemetry displayed at the end as well for verification.

We're going out on track in early February to try and achieve 5wH/km before doing a large upgrade.

The car is capable of more than the 32 kph average it is holding, achieving 58 kph with the current gear ratio. We are already looking at a few more records to beat, such as the electrathon land speed record (177 kph).

https://youtu.be/3Jb3tiC2_0Q

Post by **jonescg** » Wed, 23 Dec 2015, 06:01

Looking forward to seeing it James!

Electrikhana is going to be huge this year, so it will mean all hands on deck from our awesome team of volunteers here in Perth.

Don't forget to invite the rest of the EV Challenge folks too okay?

Post by **Coulomb Racing** » Wed, 23 Dec 2015, 17:46

Thanks Chris,

The eV Challenge Committee will be down in force again. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to help organise the event.

Is it alright to launch the car at some point during the day? It's under wraps until then but all I can say is aerodynamics and Carbon Fibre