Electric cars at the Pikes Peak Hill Climb

Electric cars finish in top tier of rescheduled Pikes Peak Hill Climb

Among the vehicles at this years Pikes Peak International Hill Climb were several electric cars, along with drivers and teams hoping to test electric vehicles with the race to the clouds. These teams included Toyota Motorsports Group, Mitsubishi, Elias Anderson (NovaKar), Michael Bream (EV West), Ikuo Hanawa (Ibaraki Japan Summit), and Nobuhiro Tajima (Monster Tajima). Of the electric cars that finished the race, three of them were within the top fifteen of all competitors.

The best times overall were Rhys Millen, 9:46.164 lap time, driving a Hyundai chassis, and Romain Dumas, 9:46.181 lap time, driving a Porsche chassis.

The top electric finisher, Fumio Nutahara, driving the Toyota Motorsports Group EV P002 electric race car. The EV P002 is built on a Radical race car chassis, and has pair of a axial flux electric motors with a top output of 350 kilowatts, with a predicted top speed of 150 miles/hr. Their lap time was 10:15.380, for an average speed of 70.201 miles/hr, which was good enough for a 6th place finish.

Not far behind was Hiroshi Masuoka driving the Mitsubishi i-MiEV Evolution, with a 10:30.850 lap time, average speed 68.479 miles/hr, good enough for 8th place. Masuoka crashed during practice, and the team performed a major reconstruction on site rebuilding the broken front end.

Coming in at 13th place was Elias Anderson, driving the NovaKar to a 11:00.857 lap time, average speed 65.370 miles/hr. The NovaKar is based on Jim Novak's F600 race car chassis, it has a 240hp electric motor and weighs 880lbs ready to race.