Electric Vehicles - Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Electric Dragster with A123 Li-Ion Pack Sets Record
by Bill Dube (1/30/2007)
Here is what we did last Friday at the drag strip in Jupiter, Florida.
Derek transported the A123 Systems Li-Ion battery pack (from the KillaCycle) from Denver to Florida. We installed it in Shawn Lawless's dragster "Orange Juice". This is about twice the HP and much less weight than Shawn has ever run on this machine. Thus, the chassis set-up was far from optimal. Even as it was going across the finish line at over 130 MPH, it was still smoking the tires!
I'm confident that if he got the weight distribution and the tire pressure right, Orange Juice could be running in the 8's with the KillaCycle.
Please excuse the crappy video. :-)
Bill Dube'
Editor's Note: In case you're wondering, this drag vehicle has 6 wheels, 8 motors, a 2000 amp motor controller, and 880 A123 battery cells. It did the quarter mile in 10.9 seconds.
Hats off to the OJ Team, the KillaCycle Team, and A123!
Wednesday, September 08, 2010 
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