Hi everyone, Some of you may know that NovaRace designed and built a rolling chassis/body assembly for an electric powered racecar for the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. We designed and built the chassis for a Texan racer, engineer and fabricator Elias Anderson. Elias had seen our F600 car and thought that the chassis design fit his needs and was right in line with his concept of a small and very light electric powered race car. In the space of a couple of month I designed and built, with Dave Piontek (Piontek Engineering) a redesign of our new F600 chassis but built to the saftey rules of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb (full roll cage etc). I re-designed the back of the car around the electric motor and battery package that was supplied by his motor supplier. The majority of the chassis design is exactly the same as our new F600 but with wider 10" diameter wheels and bigger Hoosier tires. It has the same body, suspension geometry, brakes etc as our new F600.
Elias Anderson received the rolling chassis/body from us a few months ago and in that time he totally assembled and finished the completed race car. This of course included installation of the batteries, motor, controller and wireing as well as all the paint and fab work required to finish the car to a raceable state. A massive task for such a short period of time and this project would be no where without Elias's brilliant concept and hard work.
Now to the exciting news. This little monster, with Elias Anderson at the wheel, works. The car has a high hp electric motor and weighs 880lbs ready to race. This Wednesday Elias Anderson has qualified the new NovaKar for the Pikes Peak Hill Climb 3rd in the electric car class and 6th OVERALL for all cars. Today (Friday) he was only 13 seconds slower than the Toyota Factory Electric Car effort on the top section of the hill. What an accomplishment for Elias Anderson and all who have worked with him.
Elias is excited with the potential of the car and since this was his very first time up the hill he is jumping up and down excited for when he gets more time on the hill.
What a huge thrill for all of us involved with this very cool project. MANY THANKS to Elias Anderson for giving us the opportunity to work with him on this project.
Great shot of the car. The car is still very early in the development process. We did not have time to put the good aero bits on the car. It will be even better with some serious downforce.
Thanks Chris, yes the chassis is VERY stiff. As you probably know I am a fan of large section tubing. I learned this when I was doing NASCAR design work for Ford Racing. It is not the absolute lightest solution but is is the stiffest solution by a significant margin. It also adds a lot of driver protection particularly with the side panels that are not shown in those pics. It is actually a more efficient structural solution in that the stiffness to weight ratio is better if the design is properly done. This particular chassis is exceptionally stiff because it has a full roll cage and this adds a lot of stiffness.
I would love to have had the rear wing. difusser and front splitter on the car but there simply was not enough time. Next year there will be more power and better aero. Lots of plans.
Wait till you see the new F600. I am very excited about the design.
I've been thinking about large box sections since I saw them on some successful Formula Vees many years ago. A really clean and simple solution... if a chassis' stiffness-to-weight ratio is somewhere in the ball-park.
Have you actually twisted and measured this little beauty? If so, would that data be classified?
Our last f500/600 chassis twisted at 4500 ft-lb/degree. We did not twist this chassis as there was not time. I am certain this chassis is much stiffer.
I've been thinking about large box sections since I saw them on some successful Formula Vees many years ago. A really clean and simple solution... if a chassis' stiffness-to-weight ratio is somewhere in the ball-park.
Have you actually twisted and measured this little beauty? If so, would that data be classified?
Thanks,
Chris
people use large box section tubing on Vees because it is easy to fab.......however you cannot beat large diameter tubing for structural efficiency (strength to weight ratio)
Elias Anderson in his electric race car (NovaKar chassis/body) finished 3rd in the electric car class and 13th overall at the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. There were 170 entrants with over 150 entrants taking the green flag. What a major achievement by Elias Anderson and his crew.
in reality battery packs and to a lesser extent motors will be what becomes obsolete - not the chassis itself.
Just like any other racing series the battery packs will propigate down to lower levels of racing when they become superceded. Probably the lower end will be your local bracket racer who wants to run an EV.
Of course the real game changer is when the electric motors become sufficiently small that one can be assigned to each driven wheel. Then torque distribution and dynamic response will be tunable purely via electronics.
An interesting thing is occuring in the production electric vehicle market. There is a very active secondary market for old battery packs for industrial applications / standby power. The secondary market may make the batteries the part of the vehicle which depreciates the least.
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Mark Silverberg - SE Michigan
Lynx B FV & Royale RP3 FF
Zink C4 - For sale / rent
PCR, Coyote, CRG & Birel karts
An interesting thing is occuring in the production electric vehicle market. There is a very active secondary market for old battery packs for industrial applications / standby power. The secondary market may make the batteries the part of the vehicle which depreciates the least.
What about the battery performance makes it no longer suitable for automotive use but still viable for industrial and standby? Just curious since this is certainly different from what I'm used to with consumer lead acid, NiCd, and Li.
Automotive EV storage batteries will tend to lose range over time and at end of life only have 70% to 80% of initial rated capacity - perhaps less in high temperature locations.
This is still plenty of capacity for a stationary application where one or more batteries can be used to provide standby power to critical equipment or help reduce peak load coming off the power grid at a specific location. Space (energy density) is not as critical in these applications and in general they would not see the rapid power draws and recharging that will occur in heavy acceleration and braking in EV. Thus the batteries would have a very long service life in their next application.
From a sustainability aspect a secondary service life is a better soloution that recycling.
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Mark Silverberg - SE Michigan
Lynx B FV & Royale RP3 FF
Zink C4 - For sale / rent
PCR, Coyote, CRG & Birel karts
Automotive EV storage batteries will tend to lose range over time and at end of life only have 70% to 80% of initial rated capacity - perhaps less in high temperature locations.
This is still plenty of capacity for a stationary application where one or more batteries can be used to provide standby power to critical equipment or help reduce peak load coming off the power grid at a specific location. Space (energy density) is not as critical in these applications and in general they would not see the rapid power draws and recharging that will occur in heavy acceleration and braking in EV. Thus the batteries would have a very long service life in their next application.
From a sustainability aspect a secondary service life is a better soloution that recycling.
Thanks for the info and I agree that secondary service life is much better than recycling. Save that for when the secondary service life ends.
I wonder if there are secondary service applications for all those cell phone, tablet, and laptop batteries that only last a couple of years?
Given the performance of the f600 chassis based vehicle and the relative cost vs. the other cars I can't help but think other hill climb racers will have the same thoughts for next year.
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Mark Silverberg - SE Michigan
Lynx B FV & Royale RP3 FF
Zink C4 - For sale / rent
PCR, Coyote, CRG & Birel karts
I think that this project has proven the functionality of our new chassis with approx 240 hp. Now I want to put a SERIOUS HP motor in one of these cars. The car would be at least 150 lbs lighter than the electric car.
Thanks ... Jay Novak
How about a turbocharged 600cc bike engine? If you think about the space available in some of the turns a shorter wheel base narrower track vehicle may have an advantage. You could easily run multiple engine calibrations to account for the altitude change - if you link it to GPS the calibrations could change automatically.
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Mark Silverberg - SE Michigan
Lynx B FV & Royale RP3 FF
Zink C4 - For sale / rent
PCR, Coyote, CRG & Birel karts
I was reading the rules over and they are kind of interesting. They seem pretty antiquated really as there are no provisions whatsoever for carbon type monocoques that I can find. Additionally, the rules appear to not allow racing slicks.
Jay, perhaps you can help elaborate. Admittedly I spent just 25 minutes reading the rules.
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Chris Livengood, enjoying underpriced ferrous whizzy bits that I hacked out in my tool shed since 1999.
Chris, as the rules are written, all cars including open wheel must have a tube frame structure. I suspect that if someone wanted to race a modern tub car they MIGHT let them but I doubt it.
Saftey is their overiding concern. So many cars have gone off the road and the drivers survived because a tube frame can take an amazing amount of abuse.
Chris, as the rules are written, all cars including open wheel must have a tube frame structure. I suspect that if someone wanted to race a modern tub car they MIGHT let them but I doubt it.
Saftey is their overiding concern. So many cars have gone off the road and the drivers survived because a tube frame can take an amazing amount of abuse.
Pikes Peak Hill Climb - NovaKar
Didn't know we were on the leading edge. 
