And you thought Mini Coopers are slow...

[Leedogg]

All electric Mini Cooper does 0-60 in 4.5 seconds

The Mini Cooper is a nice little car that isn't exactly known for being a hot rod. Now a Hampshire, UK-based company has converted the Cooper into a hybrid electric car that can race from 0-60 mph in about 4 seconds. The company also claims the car can produce 640 bhp.

PML Flightlink took eight months in making the Mini QED, short for "quad electric drive". It's one of two such vehicles in development which contain an electronic motor in each wheel and a set of batteries and ultracapacitors in the trunk. In addition to the fast 0-60 time, the car has a maximum speed of 150 mph and gets around 65 to 80 mpg, the developers claim.

The braking system of the Cooper consists of regenerative pads which recover "almost all energy" back into the batteries, according to PML. A 250cc 2-cylinder gas engine will kick in when the battery is discharged. The Mini QED can also be plugged into the wall to recharge over night.

PML Flightlink hasn't said if it plans to eventually commercialize the Mini QED.


http://images.tomshardware.com/2006/09/01/cooper.jpg

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/09/01/minicooper_allelectric/

Boy could I surprise some people with that^

[speed stick]

If this is real this is damn amazing. Thats crazy. 4.5 seconds is sick. The mileage is insane. Wonder how much it will cost though. I like the idea of the brakes being used to recharge, makes a lot of sense. I am looking forward to more information on this.

[Xer0]

I wonder how far this thing can travel on a single charge, i doubt very far. And how are they getting that 640 hp number i wonder, i hope they aren't adding the power of each electrical motor and the engine. And i wonder how much additional wieght four motors will add to the mini. So basically, I'm guessing here, we will end up with a car thats way too heavy, not easily controlled (Even if it isnt making 640 hp, its still making a lot and all that power to the front wheels will not be a fun drive), and not fun to drive. The Telsa roadster is a lot more interesting then this, imo

[speed stick]

Well we don't really know how big these motors are yet. If they are in the mini, they must be small.

[The Dude]

I'm terrified of Mini Coopers. When I autocross they constantly out run Vettes Vipers and even Miatas by a few seconds. They are monsters when it comes to cornering

[Rizon]

Minis are awesome.
One of my work mates has one. Stupidly insane little things. The most he's ever gotton out of it was 110mph. And it does seem alot faster due to you being near enough sat on the road.

[cpiasminc]

I wonder how far this thing can travel on a single charge, i doubt very far. And how are they getting that 640 hp number i wonder, i hope they aren't adding the power of each electrical motor and the engine.
I'm willing to bet it's a sort of "equivalent" figure. Brushless electric motors can generate massive torque even through a pretty large rpm range and thereby accelerate you to speed very quickly, even if they can't necessarily rev very high w/o heat and vibration issues (which is the main factor in limiting speed here). Bear in mind also, that since the motors are in the wheels, there are no gears here, so the rpm of the motor is the rpm of the wheel, so even 500 rpm or something is some decent speed.

Standard Mini Cooper tires are 195/55/16, which gives a tire diameter of approximately 24.44 inches. That gives a tire circumference of about 76.8 inches or 6.4 ft. 6.4 ft * 500 rpm = 3200 ft per min. Assume that a little of that is lost due to the tire slightly flattening under the cars weight (and that I rounded up on a few figures), so it's more like 3100 feet per min -- that's about 35 mph.

The other thing is that motors are usually rated by their continuous power rating, which is the highest power output they can give without having measurably significant probability of overheating. The peak power can be up to quadruple that. A 21-hp rated electric motor can actually have a peak power delivery around 85 hp. It can also deliver about as much torque at 300 rpm as an 80-90 hp gas engine could at 3000. This is actually *sort of* fair because a gas engine is always rated according to its peak power, but it's also unfair because going above the continuous power is invariably bad for an electric motor, and there's a pretty wide range in power differences there, whereas a gas engine can operate safely (though inefficiently) near its power peak as long as you don't redline it as well.

If the peak power of the 4 electric motors put together is about 640 hp, then you can probably say that the rated power on those things adds up to about 150 hp. Even then, I don't think that much would actually be used in some of the specific tests. For instance, they say that regenerative braking can recover most of the power, but they don't say that it would do this in the same test that got it from 0-60 in 4.5 seconds -- regen braking is in almost all hybrids nowadays, and it isn't that impressive yet. Similarly, if a 2-cylinder quarter of a liter gas engine is supposed to keep the batteries charged, again, it would only probably have that effect in normal driving. You certainly can't deliver 640 bhp without consuming at least 710 hp (or 530 kW) of electrical power even with the most efficient electric motors, and there's no way a 2-cylinder gas engine can recharge all that, or even 150 hp, for that matter, so it's only going to get ahead of the motors' consumption when you're stopped.

[speed stick]

Damn thats some insane stuff you just said there.

[masonite]

the motors might be heavy, but the batteries are the things that add insane weight. say goodbye to your boot (trunk), and goodbye to road handling too.

power is delivered through all four wheels (motor on each wheel remember) but it still would understeer like a bitch.

[cpiasminc]

power is delivered through all four wheels (motor on each wheel remember) but it still would understeer like a bitch.
Not necessarily. For one, the batteries are most likely in the rear as you said, which puts more weight on the rear. Moreover, because it's all electric power delivery, you can individually control each motor so that there is a dynamic power delivery bias, and it doesn't require any sort of fluid or friction-based linkage -- it's purely electronic. If you bias more power to the rear and more specifically to the outer rear tire on a turn, you can easily be loaded with oversteer if you so chose.

That's really up to how someone wants to program the darn thing and how they decide to handle local traction problems. They also don't say much about things like suspension, but I think it's safe to assume that due to the high weight, they had to go stiffer.

[homelesscarl]

No, I think Mini Coopers are gay