Electric cars cannot abuse energy consumption. Although they accelerate in extraordinary times, doing that often will kill range because battery packs cannot store that much energy. That said, a convertible electric sports car is almost impossible to imagine with current battery technology, but the rendering artist Theottle helped us with a roofless Lexus Electrified Sport Concept.
As usual, the final result is as interesting as the process itself, which Theottle presents in videos on his YouTube channel. In this Lexus’ case, the rendering artist used a Porsche 911 Cabriolet as the donor of the roofless appearance – which sounds contradictory, we know, but makes a lot of sense watching the video. Theottle adapts the structure a 911 Cabriolet presents to make it fit perfectly with that of the Lexus concept.
The final product can be seen in the images in our gallery. However, it makes us wonder if any high-performance electric car will be sold without a hard roof. The original Tesla Roadster does not count because it was based on a Lotus Elise. The future one does not have good perspectives of reaching production lines: it made sense when Tesla was trying to fund mass production with an expensive car. Now, it has other priorities to achieve the massive sales volumes it set for itself.
Such a car would only make sense with new battery cell technology, capable of offering more energy density and a long range despite the aerodynamic disadvantage the lack of a hard roof represents. At high speeds – which is the purpose of performance cars – range would drop as quickly as such a vehicle could go from 0 to 60 mph (97 kph).
Even the Electrified Sport Concept would only be produced with solid-state cells, as Toyota already said. The goal is to offer a vehicle that can travel more than 700 kilometers (435 miles) with a full charge. A convertible would only reach the same range if it traveled at very low speeds, in which aerodynamic drag did not make much of a difference. Dream about it with Theottle’s help and pray for scientists to come up with a solution for that soon.
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