Buckeye Bullet Sets EV Speed World Record

With more and more students and universities getting into the fight for establishing a new land speed record for battery electric powered vehicles, we are likely to receive more and more news like this one here. For now however, a team of students from the Ohio State University leads this race, after their battery electric vehicle smashed the records on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

The streamliner in question is called Buckeye Bullet and it managed to run at averages speeds of 495 km/h (307 mph, speed measured by track sensors), way faster than the previous record of 395 km/h (245 mph) set in 1990s by Pat Rummerfield in his White Lightning.

Although not yet certified by the International Automobile Federation, such an outcome is expected over the next few weeks. Pat Rummerfield already admitted his record has been broken and congratulated the team.

To certify the record, the governing body will have to average the two opposite direction runs made by the vehicles within 60 minutes of each other. According to the team, during one of the runs, the car hit 320 mph (514 km/h).

Buckeye Bullet is powered by a 600-kilowatt lithium-ion battery pack sourced from A123 Systems. The battery packs contains 1600 compact lithium-ion batteries just like the ones used in laptops.

"We've been at this for 16 years now - our latest lithium-ion powered vehicle was actually capable of going much faster," team manager David Cooke was quoted as saying after the run.

We'll probably hear from the team as soon as the record will have been certified.