Kit cars are a lot of fun, although you have to be an at least halfway decent engineer to make them actually work. The iRACER is hoping to make building a green vehicle actually fun both to do and to watch.
The iRACER has a few limits: You’re going to have to buy the drivetrain and the batteries separately, putting the cost of building this as high as $80,000.
On the other hand, you do get to build a car designed exclusively for racing, with a top speed of roughly 115 miles per hour, unless you leave out the governor, then it’s 130 to 140 mph. The batteries will only last about twenty-five minutes at that speed, however.
Knowing that gasoline-powered cars can go faster, the team behind this wisely included a boost button you can press. Every eighteen seconds of boost will cost you a kilowatt hour from the batteries, but, first of all, it’s a racecar with a boost button. Secondly, this adds an aspect of strategy to EV racing.
And if nothing else, this is a whole lot less dorkier than most mass-market EVs.
iRACER [Birmingham City University]