But the noise of Racing will not be greatly missed in most venues. I imagine NASCAR fans will seriously miss the noise (aside from the crashes, and the drivers, the noise has to be the only other infield draw). I won’t. The thing is, the silence suddenly becomes an important tool. You will hear a mechanical problem before it becomes bad enough to kill the car. More tracks can be built closer to cities because the cars are quieter and thusly much less obtrusive. It used to be that cities and town s did not have suburbs spread far and wide so tracks could be built and used frequently much closer in.

Johnnycanuck,

I wouldn’t laugh too hard. Some engineers postulated in the early 1980s such racing cars would simply run a recharge rail in pit lane to recharge for another 20 or so laps. Today that would mean smaller batteries more aggressive motors, as range is not as much of an issue, and the fastest pit times imaginable no battery swaps.

Electric motors are resoundingly simple engineering affairs so it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to simply built more of these high output motors for consumer use, though with some obvious changes for daily use (i.e. not eating the battery in under 30 miles or out stripping a generator).

I wouldn’t knock EP autoracing, “Competition improves the breed”. A Racing series would allow engineers to really work on something new and make bring the cars back up to the fore along side or a head of the drivers.

This car is cool and I hope it does well. I hope it wakes people up to realise we need more nuclear power plants and cheaper electricity.