Posted on: Oct 02, 2012 | 6,839 reads

Toyota Sets New EV Lap Record at the Ring

TMG takes its Pikes Peak record-breaking electric racer back to Le Mans to shatter its own lap record.

Back in August, Toyota Motorsport GmbH hit the Nurburgring with an electric LMP called the EV P001. There it set a lap record for electric vehicles that trounced the previous time of 9:01:33 (set by Peugeot's EX1) with a blistering 7:47:79. But that wasn't enough for Toyota. The division that ran the company's Formula One team and now fields the TS030 Hybrid in the FIA World Endurance Championship further developed its electric prototype with the EV P002, and ran it at Pikes Peak to a new EV record.

With the famous hillclimb event now behind it, however, Toyota Motorsport GmbH has taken the new EV P002 to the Nurburgring and beat its own record by a further 25 seconds. The prototype is powered by a pair of axial flux electric motors producing a whopping 470 horsepower and 663 lb-ft of torque, juiced by a 42 kWh lithium-ceramic battery.

Capable of reaching speeds up to 240 km/h (149 mph), the TMG EV P002 set a new lap record of 7:22:33, securing its place as the undeniably fastest electric vehicle ever to run the infamous 20-kilometer circuit known as the Green Hell. We'd be eager to see how the Kleenspeed EV-X11, which holds the electric lap records at Laguna Seca and Sonoma, would do at the Nurburgring against Toyota's time - or for that matter, how the two would shape up in a one-on-one race for electric LMP supremacy.

Toyota Sets New EV Lap Record at the Ring

by Noah Joseph
Toyota Sets New EV Lap Record at the Ring

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Toyota Sets New EV Lap Record at the Ring

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