WORLDS FASTEST NURBURGRING HYPERCAR LAP - EVIJA X

Jackie Stewart called this place Green Hill for a reason. I'm convinced that if the concept of this circuit were proposed in today's world, people would think you were crazy, it's about 13 miles long and about 170 turns, depending on how you define it. a curve, but this is the most demanding stretch of asphalt in the world and today Lotus is pushing the limits of human and automotive possibilities by attempting a lap record in the Ava x, a prototype specially designed for maximum speed on the ring. Nurburg. Actually, I'm not sure I've ever been so nervous about someone else driving a car.

I don't want to overstate this and make it sound overly dramatic, but what we're trying to do today is get closer to the man on the moon moment in the car. In the world, it's one thing to set a lap record in a category, but it's something absolute or even something close to what Lotus is trying to achieve today. Fewer than five people have ever been on this fast track, which is effectively at the very edge of automotive physics. In the end, to get a human inside and pilot it with 4,000 500 kg of downforce in a car with more than 2,000 horsepower, they have the track for the day, but the Nurburg ring is nestled between the Eiffel Mountains on the other. one side of the circuit could be wet this side of the circuit could be dry these guys have to take into account a lot of variables to allow one lap, one lap to come together to break some kind of world record for this Soto car and for Whatever the Which is why we've been invited to document it exclusively, so there's no pressure now, right now we're all thinking about speed, but Lotus Lotus is thinking about money.

I can't stress to you how expensive and complicated it is for a Pioneer. new electric vehicle platform and attempt a lap record attempt at Nurburging, but the hours of R&D, development testing, tribulations, Blood Sweat and Tears that goes into developing an unknown platform like this and trying to break some kind world record is incredibly expensive, so we bring in a team that does it with a laser beam that runs along the track, but then to duplicate it and officiate it we have to hire a legal notary to complete all the paperwork. I have to certify who I am.

I have to certify who Dirk is. and we have to certify the car to make sure it is what we say it is and then the notary backs everything up and has two old school stopwatches but is there just to make sure that everything that happens on the timing laser beacon is verify and validated so that no one can alter the data or the signal that goes through it he stands behind all of that no, it's an external person, it's a third party, it's an independent body that we have to pay for and bring it in, uh, he comes from Adon now in the city um and he's just a legally certified person who brings all the paperwork and all the equipment so there won't be any problems with time and it's real because all the work that goes into it everyone wants every hundreds. of a second, so we have to make sure that we have done what we say we are doing, because the investment we put into this is substantial and we want to make sure that we are true and correct.

Also, with what we've done, this is ex and this is a modified version of an r road car. The underpinnings of the car are all road car transfer technology, so road car engines and road car gearboxes have more downforce and we have added some competition like carbon tires and brakes. to increase performance, but today we are here to push the limits of what a road EV car can do, so we are really working on the battery, it is a 2.2 megawatt battery and we are delivering 1500 Kow in the four rounds of engines and we are trying to reduce that.

Everything is running at peak performance and we are here to try to set a lap record. What's it like to have so much downforce? to play, yes, well, not just so much downforce, I mean we have the trick, look here, it's like F1 technology, we have DRS, this is for the last part of this track because there is a long, very long straight and we are definitely gaining top speed. with that, um, reducing the drag, uh, the whole car is super super fast, I mean the 2000 horsepower, 4 times 500 um, you get hit, it's a different experience. You, as a driver, don't do many laps alone on the track and then. you're out there and you're like holy moly is so fast I mean my benchmark is um speed like I really see speed digits um those are my benchmarks MH because I don't have The Brak markers because it's so different than what what I'm doing normally here, um, that really gives me a good indication and since I'm doing a lot of things with muscle memory, um, I have to cool them down and make them, hey, no, it's not too late, they start breaking down sooner, uh.

Browse a little more, but no, I'm very happy. You know, we were playing with the multimatic cushioning that we see there now. It gives me a lot of comfort, a lot of feedback, a lot of confidence to put all the power. and to move around here and U I mean, you see my smile, it's that you're sitting on a rocket ball, yeah, and it doesn't end, it's like, oh, that's the jacket flag, it's already amazing, this track is today a RAC track but also a test track for the international automotive industry and every corner is an adventure and the good ones in life N is that they drive during the night at the same speed as during the day it is not a normal track it is not a race track uh you know, for example, like a Formula 1 track or something that's flat and safe and then, and if you make a mistake, the space where you land with the car after an accident is the same as in 1927, we Oh come, a lap time of 6 minutes and 24 seconds makes the Lotus Avia Trin from his road legal brother.

For context, there are only two cars that have ever lapped faster, both of which would be a dedicated prototype. uncompromising racing cars for road use like the Avia cars come here and set a record time, uh, the challenge for us is that it's the first time we've brought an electric vehicle here. EVS are very difficult to achieve lap times, so we have to bring a lot of infrastructure here and we have to manage our thermal temperatures as we go through the lap. We're talking mainly about the battery, so we have a 2.2 megawatt battery that generates heat and power and we have to disperse it and we have to disperse it over the course of the turn, now it's almost impossible to take 2.2 megawatts and have the same amount of heat rejection, so we are trying to manage that thermal interaction over the course of the lap to try not to reduce power and try to complete a full lap at the maximum performance we have.

It can give results if you stress a car here and drive very fast and we would say that one lap means more than 20 km is like 5,000 km on a normal road if my grandmother drives, the potholes, the steering, the stress for the brakes, but also for The bodywork, uh, is incredible. If you open a body after a or when a car has lift in N life, you see which parts are probably critical and you have to redo them in engineering to get more stability, especially in the development of new cars, for example electric cars. so in terms of benchmarks between a GT3 race car with an internal combustion engine and then this, what's the biggest thing, you know, it changes, what's different, it's like you know the parts that prepare the car, so you have to charge the battery. in the world of electric vehicles, then you need to have the ability to charge the battery at the same time, then we looked at all the equipment, then we cool the battery, we make the battery happy, we take care of the battery and at the end of the day, um, I want, I want to use that as my potential for a whole lab like the time in the GT3, when you come here, you do like 100 laps, yeah, because you just fill the Quick Fill and then you go out, so you know, that's the different type of You know the Two Worlds, basically yes, but by getting all the power from the engines of the four engines at the same time, they are so powerful that we have to control the fronts more than the rears, we have all the disadvantages in the way in which the weight is distributed.

They are the rear ones and the rear tires are a little bit wider so we could put a little more power control in the rear, we have to go down the front otherwise they would just spin, spin, spin at 250km/ h, seriously, they wouldn't stop spinning, so still, um. go on, that's the difference and then like on the GT3 here, you're basically using the FR down of a GT3, you have abs, you have, um, you also know, High R tires, yeah, which we have too, don't get me wrong , uhh. but you have less mass, sure, a lot less power, yeah, so it produces a different lap time, it produces a lap time and brakes late, maxes out every part in the corner and U, it's just sitting on the straight of course, and over here we are like huge speeds, like really huge speeds, if you compare it, it's like it's almost like going off the graph, uh, when you compare moments like that, yeah, we've increased about three times more than the street car , so 'We're at a Vmax condition of just over 4,000 kilos in this car, we're speed limited in this car and we're speed limited intentionally to manage the tires and the downforce around here 350k uh, so that's about three or three times more than the road car on the The road car already generates a significant amount of downforce.

You can see that we have changed the spoiler at the rear to be a fixed wing, but we have a 1 DRS element so that the top blade rotates, all activated by the driver when he feels the car. it can vaporize at high speed, so you're still using the same internal shock and the third shock, yeah, other than us, we take the boost off, you know, because we're a lot stiffer and stronger. We changed all the cushioning because we are stiff and strong. I know these are road car tires for transportation only, we drive, we drive six, we have an F1 type Tri Link bar on the back for stabilization, but this is essentially the battery here, so you can see the battery pack mounted in the middle exactly the same as the road car, yes, The only changes we have made to the battery are simply removing some of the components that we do not use for charging, so we do not charge at 230 volts and we do not charge at 400 volts, We only charge at 800 volts. so it saves a little bit of weight but otherwise the battery is a completely standard battery inside the chassis it's the road car uh Motor Supply from Helix and Milt C, fantastic company and the gearboxes are made for extra as You know, very, very well.

Technical partners on this, it's a beautiful thing, right? I mean, it's just I mean, on their side, obviously, incredibly technical on our side, it actually seems like a pretty simple thing, it's very clean and it is, and we've tried to do that because we know you know we wanted to make a very competitive car. lightweight, we have to consider applying the chap mini to simplify, everything is lightweight, more than one thing performs multiple actions, so everything weighs around 3.3M and is done in one shot. so we don't have one piece front and rear subframe, we have front and rear shock cans and on the road car not on this car, but it gives us an inherently rigid and inherently lightweight structure, you know, with a torion rigidity really high, really high bending rigidity, so we know we can keep the ENT doctor safe at all times, but that means we can hang everything, yes, so there are no other supports, there are no other subframes, it all depends on the chassis and the benefit of that is and I'm sure.

Gavin will mention that the driver feels everything that goes through the chassis, he can feel it and he can respond to it, so it's a very direct connection. One of the things that really captivated me on the Ava Road car was having R power steering. Just fantastic and you don't realize how much type of feedback you're missing on the more contemporary Epass systems. It felt fantastic, yes, very different in this, so we passed it on. Okay, interesting, it's an uncovered column, but I think uh uh. The feeling of racing is different, you know? I think we probably still get the best infi because of the hydraulic rack, yes, yes, but this is different because we are not really interested in the steering field, as long as the driver is happy with it, so it is just about to get a little help. high speed because we generate a lot of fall, yes, do you need that assistance?Because fully loaded it's a hard working level, yes, the DRS can be seen here, so this rear plane is the one that activates this and It will spin up so similar in concept to the road car that we have DRS, but In the street car we deploy it vertically and then change the angle attack.

This is obviously fixed apart from DRS. We intend to deploy DRS only in the upper part. speed areas where the driver is happy and comfortable with that, that's substantial, yes, yes, it's a little different, yes, so I assume you modeled this itself, but in the full CFD model we validate it against a road car , uh, rolling wind tunnels, um, uh. so we are very happy that we hit all the numbers, the whole car is instrumented, so we have load cells, gauges, all the shock absorbers, so we know how much time force we are generating at any given time and we can calculate that back to Maps, so the number rings.

It's called Green Hell, by the way, by Sir Jackie Stewart. I think the green one. Hell is describing that each lap is different from the other, from lap to lap you have changes in WEA, the conditions, the grip is changing because in some areas you have a lot of trees so you come in one lap and it's completely dry in the next. I have something in the braking area that absolutely changes your grip, so you always have to be awake. He doesn't forgive even in the Hur dutting, which is a 2 kilometer straight where Hammer with a race car between 280 or Durk is doing it. think 350 or 360 which is believable since we are here in a volcano area the TAC changes from year to year and even if they fix it it is always a little bumpy and the bumps change from year to year you It's on the right track and you think okay, I can relax, but the car is going like this.

What about breakpoints? I mean, obviously, with so much Arrow, but you're approaching the corner faster, much faster. So many drops that you can still brake quite late much earlier, like um, I mean, there's a point, um, um, I hit 350 km/h just approaching, which is 100 km/h faster than a GT3, so this is it. such a big difference, it's wild and like that. I have to live with my field, so my body language tells me you have to brake now, okay, because you don't do as many laps as you're basically tuning the car, tuning the car, you have a few laps and then you have to do it. just run it together, sure, and what it's like to have it, obviously, it has its own RPM, so to speak, but obviously, from an internal combustion engine there's quite a bit of an audible connection to a car depending on whether it's on the cam and the engine is static on this one. .

I've adapted to a totally different feeling, yeah, people were laughing because I'm still wearing headphones, you know, it's like a lot of noise at that speed, it's just Aron noise, it's even the motors, I can, you know, the batter's Trin it's making a noise and everything is making noise and yes just driving it there is still a little bit of noise there that's why I'm using your protection but yes the most important thing is to get used to the high speed. What kind of team has been involved in this? Probably around 25 people, that's quite a lot.

I mean, the core team is all here. It's a pretty small team. A very expert team. A very dedicated team. You know, obviously, we've hired some technical partners. So we have multimatic helping them with how they race in the car and the knowledge of racing fast cars. You know, we have eix in the edus uh and we have extrack in the gearboxes and a lot. from other people call it worth helping with software control, so in terms of cooling, one of the things to do a fast lap in an EV car is preconditioning. As you saw before, we had some external air conditioning coolers and some dry ice at 78°.

We are trying to blow cold air through the battery processor while running the entire water pump so we can cool the core temperature of the pack. The idea is to start the package around 15°. Okay, that's about room temperature today, but on a hot day. We want to be well below ambient temperature when we start the lap so the preconditioning helps, that means we can roll out for the entire lap and not get to any kind of thermal D rate at the end of the lap at a very high speed. The only cooldown that really changes. The system on the front is we double stack the radiator so we have a dedicated cooling circuit for the front education and you can see the inside and then the main batteries they are all in the same location other than it flows about a 40 % more air. through that because the front splitters and the front bumper are slightly modified to increase the air flow over the road car because our duty cycle is much higher than that of the road car.

Wow, we kept the front Heath shock, it's a very, very long Heath shock. That's just controlling the movement in the front, it's so beautifully useful, isn't it? Yes, when you look at it, it's also deceptively simple because it seems so simple, but when you dig into it, it's amazing.