WORLDS FASTEST NURBURGRING HYPERCAR LAP - EVIJA X

[Music] Jackie Stewart called this place the Green Hill for a reason I'm convinced if the concept of this circuit was proposed in today's world people would think you're mad it's around 13 mi in length and around 170 turns that is depending on how one defines a corner but this is the most demanding stretch of tarmac in the world and today Lotus is pushing to the very limit of human and Automotive possibility by attempting a lap record in the Ava x a purpose-build prototype that's designed for ultimate speed on the nurburg ring I'm not actually sure I've ever been so nervous for somebody else driving a car I don't want to overstate this and and have it sound overly dramatic but what are attempting today is approaching a man on the moon moment in the automotive world there's one thing setting a category lap record but an out andout or even anything in the ballpark of what Lotus is trying to achieve today less than five people have ever been around this circuit that fast which is effectively at the very edge of Automotive physics and ultimately to achieve that there's a human inside it and he's got a piloted around with 4,000 500 kg of downforce in a car with over 2,000 horsepower they've got the track for the day but the nurburg ring is positioned amongst the Eiffel mountains on the other side of the circuit it could be wet on this side of the circuit it could be dry these guys have got to factor in so many variables to allow one lap one lap to come together to break some sort of world record for this Soto car and for whatever reason they've invited us along to document it exclusively so no pressure now at this point all of us are thinking of speed right but lotus lotus is thinking of money I cannot stress to you just how expensive and undertaking it is to a Pioneer a new EV platform and try a nurburging lap record attempt but the R&D the hours the development the trials tribulations Blood Sweat and Tears that goes into developing an unknown platform like this and try to break some sort of world record is I wateringly expensive so we bring in a team that do with a laser beam that runs across the track but then to double that and officiate it we have to hire in a legal notary so we fill in all the paperwork I have to certify who I am I have to certify who Dirk is and we have to certify the car to make sure it is what we say it is and then the notary backs up everything and he has two old school stopwatches but he is there just to make sure that whatever happens on the timing laser Beacon is verified and validated so that nobody can mess with the data or mess with the the signal that goes through it he backs all of that up no he's an external person he's a third party he's an independent body that we have to pay for and bring him in uh he comes from Adon now down in the town um and he's just a legal certified person that brings all the paperwork and all the equipment so there's going to be no messing with the timing and it's real because all the work that goes into this everybody wants every hundreds of a second out of it so we've got to make sure that we've done what we say we're doing um because the investment that we put into this is substantial and we want to make sure that we're true and correct as well with what we've done so this is ex and this is a modified version of a r Road goinging car uh the underpinnings of the car are all Road Car carryover Technology so Road car motors and Road Car gear boxes more downforce and we've added some competition like tires and carbon carbon brakes to increase performance on it but we're we're here today to push the boundaries of what an EV Road car can do so we're really working the battery it's a 2.2 megawatt battery and we're delivering 1500 Kow to the the four Motors round and we're trying to put that all down uh everything is running at its maximum performance and we're here to try and set a set a lap record what's it like having this much downforce to play with yeah well not only that much downforce I mean we have the trick look at here that's like F1 technology we have DRS this is for the last bit of this track because there's a long long very long straight and we definitely gaining uh top speed with it um reducing drag uh the whole car is super super fast I mean the 2,000 horsepower uh 4times 500 um they they give you a punch it's a different experience you as a driver you don't get really many laps by yourself on track and then you're out there and you're like how holy moly it's so fast I mean my reference is um speed like I do actually see speed digits um that's that's my reference points MH because I don't have The Brak markers because it's so different to what I'm doing normally on on here um that really gives me a good indication and as I'm doing a lot of stuff out of muscle memory um I have to chill them and make them hey not not too late start breaking earlier uh sail a bit more but no I'm I'm really pleased um you know we were playing with the multimatic damping which we see there right now gives me a lot of comfort a lot of feedback a lot of trust to put all the power down and to get around here and U I mean you see my smile it's it's you're sitting in a rocket ball yeah and it's it's not ending it's like oh that's jacket flag already unbelievable this track is today a RAC track but also a test track for the international automotive industry and every single corner is an adventure and the good ones on the N life is they drive during the night the same speed as during the day it's not a normal track it's not a race track uh you know for example like a Formula 1 track or something which is flat and safe and then and if you do a mistake the space where you're Landing with the car after an accident is the same like 1927 a [Music] we [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] come [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] a 6 Minute 24 second lap time makes the Lotus Avia X officially the third fastest car to ever lap the nurur grink and the only car in the top three to use the fundamental chassis and power Trin of its road legal sibling for context there are only two cars to have ever lapped faster both would dedicated prototype racing cars with no concessions to Road use like the Avia X this performance is Bonkers so the number Rings a tough time at any time of year you know it's the ultimate goal for most auto automotive manufacturers to come here and set set a record time uh the challenge for us is it's the first time we're bringing an EV here uh EVS uh are very hard to do lap time so we have to bring a lot of infrastructure here and we have to manage our thermal temperatures as we go around the lap we're talking mostly around the battery uh so we've got 2.2 megawatt battery which is generating heat and energy and we've got to disperse that uh and we've got to disperse that over the over the course of the lap now it's almost impossible to take 2.2 megawatts and have an equal amount of heat rejection so we're trying to manage that that thermal interaction over the course of lap so that we try not to derate um and try complete a full lap at the maximum performance that we we can deliver if you stress a car here and drive really fast and uh we would say that one lap means over 20 km is like 5,000 km on the normal road if my grandma is driving the bumps the steering the stress for the brakes but also for the body uh is unbelievable if you open a body after a or when a car has lift on the N life you see which parts are probably critical and you have to redo in engineering to get more stability especially in the development of new cars for example electric cars so in terms of benchmarks between an internal combustion engine GT3 racing car and then this what is the biggest you know changes what what is different is like you know the the parts getting the car ready like so you have to charge the battery that is it's known in the EV world right so you need to have ability for charging the battery at the same time then we you saw all the equipment then we are cooling down the battery make the battery happy nurse the battery and at the the end of the day um I want to I want to use that as as my potential for a whole Lab like on the nce on the GT3 coming here you bang like 100 laps yes because you just fill Quick Fill and then go out so that's that's you know that's the different kind of you know the Two Worlds basically yes but getting all the power out of the engines out of the four engines at the same time they are so powerful we have to control the fronts more than the rear we have with all the downfalls the way the weight distribution is the rear and the rear tires are a little wider so um we could put a bit more power control on the rear we have to come down the front otherwise they would just spin spin spinning at 250 kph seriously they not stop spinning so they still um keep going so that's the difference and then like on the GT3 over here you're basically yeah using the down FR of a GT3 you have abs you have um you know also High R Tires yes which we also have don't get me wrong uhh but you have less Mass sure a lot less power yes so you produce lap time different you produce a lap time and breaking late right maximizing every single bit in the corner and U you're just sitting duck on the straight of course and over here we are like massive speeds like really massive speeds like if you would compare it it's like it's almost like getting out of the chart uh when you're comparing like times like that yeah we have increased the around three times more than the road car so we're a little over 4,000 kilos Vmax condition on this car we are speed limited on this car and we're intentionally speed limited to manage the tires and the downforce around here 350k uh so that's about three over three times more than the road car on the road car already makes a significant amount of downforce you can see we've changed the wing on the back so it's a fixed Wing but we have a 1 DRS element so the top blade will rotate uh all activated by the driver when he feels the car is steamable at high speed so you still running the similar inard and third damper yeah apart from we we take the heave off you know because we are much more stiffly strong we've changed all the the damping because we are stiffly strong I know these are Road car tires just for transport we run we run six we do have an F1 type Tri Link Bar on the back for anti roll but this is essentially the battery here so you can see mid-mounted battery pack exact same as the road car yes the only changes we've made to the battery are just to remove some of the components that we're not using for charging so we don't charge um at 230 volts and we don't charge at 400 volts we only charge at 800 volts so it saves a little bit of weight but otherwise the battery pack is a completely standard battery pack inside the chassis is the road car uh Motor Supply by by Helix and Milt C fantastic company and the gearboxes are made by extra you know so very very good technical Partners on this it's a beautiful thing isn't it I mean it's just I mean from your side obviously incredibly technical from our side it actually looks a fairly simple thing it's so clean and it is yeah and we've tried to do that cuz we know that you know we wanted to make a very light competitive car we've got to look at apply the chap mini so simplify everything is lightweight more than one thing does multiple actions so the whole shs about 3.3 M it's done in a single shot so we don't have front and rear subframes one piece we have front and rear crash cans and on the road car not in this car but it gives us inherently stiff inherently light structure you know with really high torion stiffness really high bending stiffness so you know we know we can keep the ENT safe at all times sure but that means we can hang off everything everything yeah so there's no there's no other brackets there's no other subframes everything's to to the chassis and the benefit for that is and I'm sure Gavin will mention is the driver feels everything everything comes through the chassis he can feel it and he can respond to it so it's a very direct engage dri one of the things I was really taken with on on the Ava Road car was having hydraulic steering R just fantastic and you don't realize how much sort of feedback you're missing on more contemporary Epass systems it felt fantastic yeah so different on this so we have e pass on this okay interesting it's a colum outed e pass but I think uh uh racing feel is different you know and certainly from road cars uh We've not yet I guess found from a a Dynamics point of view an equiv uh eass system that matches Hydraulics you know so so we've got on the road car Air's got it and I think we still probably get the best infi because of the hydraulic rack yeah yeah but this is different cuz we're not really interested in steering field as long as the driver's happy with it sure so this is just about getting a little bit assist at high speed because we generate so much down for yeah do you need that assist because on the on the full load is it's hard work level yeah the DRS you can see here so so this this rear plane is uh the one that activates this one and it it'll rotate up so similar in concept to the road car that we have DRS but the road car we deploy it vertically and then we change the anle attack this is obviously fixed apart from DRS uh we intend to deploy the DRS only in the high speeed areas where the driver is happy and comfortable with it that's a substantial yeah yeah it's a bit a bit different yeah so I'm assume you modeled this in yeah but full cfd model we validated that against a road car uh rolling wind tunnels um uh so we're pretty happy we meet all the numbers all the car is instrumented so we've got load cells gauges all damper pot so so we know that how much time force we're making at any one point in time and we can corate that back to the a Maps so number ring uh is called the green Hell by by the way by Sir Jackie Stewart I think the green hell is describing every lap is different to the other one from lap to lap you have changing WEA the conditions the grip is changing because in some areas you have a lot of trees so you arrive in one uh lap and it's completely dry the next Lab you have something uh in the braking area which is absolutely changing your grip so you have to be always awake it's not forgiving even on the duting a Hur which is a straight of 2 kilomet where you Hammer with a race car between 280 or Durk is doing I think 350 or 360 which is believable since we are here in a volcano area the TAC is changing from year to year and even if they repair it it's always a little bit bumpy and the bumps are changing from year to year you are on the straight and you think okay I can relax but the car is doing like this what about breaking points I mean obviously with that much Arrow but you're are you approaching the corner faster a lot faster so does that mean you're breaking earlier or with you having so much downfalls you can still break fairly late a lot earlier like um I mean there's a point um um I did hit um 350 kph just approaching which is 100 kph faster than a GT3 so this is like such a big difference it's it's wild and so I have to live with my field so my body language tells me you have to break now okay because you don't get so many laps like basically you you're tuning the car tuning the car you have a few laps and then you have to just pass it together sure and what's it like having obviously it's got its own RPM as it were but obviously from an internal combustion engine there's quite a lot of audible connection with a car based on if it's on cam and stative engine in this youve you've adapted to a totally different feel yeah people were laughing because I'm still using um earbuds you know it's like so much noise at that speed it's just Aron noise it's um even the engines I can you know the Trin of the batter is producing a noise and everything is producing noise and yeah just driving it it is still kind of noisy in there so that's why I'm um I'm I'm wearing your protection but yes the biggest thing is just getting used to the high high high speed what sort of size team has been involved in this probably around 25 people it's quite I mean the core team is all here it's quite a small team very expert team very dedicated team you know uh uh we obviously uh We've engaged some technical Partners on it so we've got multimatic assisting with they how they're running in the car and the knowledge of running fast cars you know we've got eix on the on the edus uh and we've got extrack on the gearboxes and a lot of other people calls worth helping with the the software control so in terms of cooling one of the things for doing a fast lap on an EV car is preconditioning so you saw earlier we had some some uh external AC chillers and some dry ice atus 78° we're trying to blow cold air across the battery rator while running all the water pump so we can cool the core temperature of the pack down the idea is to start the pack around 15° okay that's about ambient today but on a hot day we want to be well below ambient when we start the lap so that preconditioning helps that means that we can deploy through the whole lap and not get to any kind of thermal D rate at the end of lap at very high speed uh the only really changing cooling system on the front is we double stack the radiator so we have a dedicated cooling circuit for the front edu and you can just see see inside uh and then the main batteries it's all all the same uh location apart from we flow about 40% more air through that because the the front splits and the front bumper are modified slightly to increase the air Flor over the road car because our duty cycle is so much higher than the road car wow uh we maintain the front Heath damper it's a very very long Heath damper that's just controlling the heave on the front it's so beautifully purposeful isn't it yeah when you see it it's it's also like deceptively simple cuz it looks very simple but when you drill down into it it's unbelievable [Music]

Channel: Mr JWW

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Id: 7x9amijnDt4

Length: 24min 55sec (1495 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2024