Toyota Motorsport GmbH (TMG) has knocked more than a minute off the lap record for an electric vehicle (EV) at the Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit. With a time of 7 minutes, 47.794 seconds, the TMG EV P001 beat the previous record of 9 minutes 1.338 seconds set by the Peugeot EX1 in April. TMG achieved its aim of becoming the first EV to break the eight-minute barrier on August 29 in fine weather with the track temperatures remaining relatively low.
With Jochen Krumbach at the wheel, the TMG EV P001 completed the new lap record on road-legal tires, using the complete Nordschleife track and was verified by independent lap timing. TMG says the performance of the vehicle, which boasts a top speed of 260 km/h (161.5 mph) and 800 Nm of torque, shows its electric powertrain comprising two electric motors is ideal to power any future single-make electric motorsport series. It plans to begin commercial sales of the technology in 2012.
"The goals for this project were twofold: obviously we wanted to set a new EV lap record and I am very pleased we could achieve that so comprehensively," said Pascal Vasselon, TMG's Technical Director. "On the other hand, we also wanted to learn more about the operation of our electric powertrain in extreme circumstances; in motorsport there is no more extreme circuit than the Nürburgring."
"On the record lap the TMG EV P001 performed better than in testing due to the improvement we already could make based on that experience. We have enhanced our electric powertrain development thanks to the information our engineers have gained and our future EV products will benefit from this project," Vasselon added.
Check out the onboard video of the record-breaking lap below.
