Start with a $500 car. Cheaper is fine, but no higher. Then
decorate it outrageously. Maybe with a giant rubber ducky, or a flying pig. Now
put it on a racetrack with scores of other half-broken art-cars — and drive it
fast as hell for 14 1/2 hours.
اضافة اعلان
That’s the formula for 24 Hours of Lemons, a grassroots
race-carnival held since 2006. What’s the grand prize for completing the most
laps? A rusted trophy. Sometimes, you get a big bag of nickels.
Jay Lamm, the ringleader of this circus, hatched the idea
during a weekly lunch with car buddies at a Chinese restaurant in Berkeley,
California. Nearly 15 years later, Lemons is a multimillion-dollar franchise
held in dozens of cities across the United States, Australia and New Zealand.
It’s a real race, but winning is mostly irrelevant. What is
actually tested (and celebrated) is the ability of resourceful hobbyists —
armed with only basic tools and their wits — to revive a worn-out vehicle for a
weekend of low-rent, high-speed high jinks.
In arguably his most masterful act of provocation so far, a
year ago Lamm changed the sacrosanct laws of Lemons. He put up $50,000 to
create a prize for the first pure electric car to win any 24 Hours of Lemons
race. To up the ante, electric cars are exempt from the $500 limit. (For all
cars, that $500 mark does not include safety gear.)
Lamm sees the writing on the wall for internal combustion
and believes that hands-on enthusiasts need to embrace the potential of motors,
batteries and inverters as a new form of automotive self-reliance. “We’re
currently on the path to being marginalized wackos with a crazy hobby,” he
said.
Endurance car races are won not on pure speed but on
stamina. “You can’t be off the track for more than 60 to 120 seconds, refueling
or recharging as the case may be,” Lamm said. “You mathematically aren’t going
to win.”
Today’s EV batteries go for 322km or more, about five times
the distance needed for a typical American commute. But when accelerated to
racing speeds followed by hard braking, again and again, those battery packs
last perhaps a single hour. Gas cars can tank up in seconds and return to the
track for another couple of hours. But recharging an EV commonly takes minutes
or hours.
The only solution to winning Lemons in an EV is to engineer
a battery-swapping apparatus and show up to race with a truckload of spare
batteries. The approximate cost for the required set of five or so battery
packs could easily exceed $100,000, twice the purse.
Besides, battery-swapping for electric cars is an unproven
technology. Nio, a Chinese car company, is trying to build a battery-swap
network in China. It’s doing so with a $1.4 billion investment from the
municipal government of Hefei, the largest city in Anhui province.
Better
Place, an Israeli startup, raised roughly $800 million for battery-swapping
infrastructure before going bankrupt in 2013. Tesla tried battery swaps but
gave up. Could the low-budget Lemon racers succeed where giant companies
failed?
It’s doubtful. Lamm announced the $50,000 Lemons EV prize a
year ago. Since then, no one has tried to win in a pure electric vehicle. Maybe
his mountain of nickels is safe.
Then again, there’s Michael Bream, a two-time Lemons winner
with gas cars. In his first victory, in 2010, Bream’s 1989 BMW 3-Series beat
100 other cars at Buttonwillow Raceway in Bakersfield, where Southern
California’s gutsiest speed-shop mechanics compete.
After a second Lemons victory, this time at Sonoma Raceway
in 2011, he was ready for a higher challenge. “I don’t know where my brain got
the idea, but it hit me,” he said. “Let’s try to do an electric Pikes Peak
car.”
The annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, held since
1916, follows a steep, tortuous route with 156 turns — often through blinding
weather — to a 4303m summit. In 2012, Bream entered his 1995 BMW M5, with the
original straight-six engine replaced by an electric motor granting 900 pound-feet of
torque.
On his inaugural run, the electrified Bimmer stunned the
high-octane Pikes Peak crowd when it completed the 20km ascent in less than 12
minutes. On that day, Bream beat Nobuhiro Tajima, the hill climb racer known as
“Monster.”
“As soon as we crossed the line, it was confirmed,” Bream
said. “We tapped into the great equalizer with this electric stuff. All of a
sudden, it was Lemons on a world platform.”
Four years later, he gave up his day job, selling Gravity
Skateboards, the company he founded and ran for 23 years. “I needed all my
attention on the EV business,” he said.
That business, EV West, is a hideaway Wonka-like workshop on
the edge of a nondescript industrial park in San Marcos, California, 57km up
the coast from San Diego. It’s where iconic muscle cars and European classics
go to become all-electric beasts.
On any given day, the company’s sunbaked
parking lot might hold a converted 1954 Volkswagen Beetle waiting for Ewan
McGregor, Tony Hawk’s electrified 1964 Corvette, or a classic VW bus prepped
for Zach Galifianakis.
When I spoke with Bream in July, his team was frantically
moving between celebrity conversions, selling DIY electric components and
building a ground-up, all-electric salt-flat race car in the vintage 1940s
belly-tank style.
A month later, Bream took that vehicle, the Electraliner, to
the Bonneville Speed Week 2020 and its famed salt-caked racing bed. It took
eight runs, but his team left a grueling week in Utah with a land speed record
of 370kmh for the class of electric vehicles weighing about 908kg.
Winning Lemons with an EV will be more difficult. It will
require an ultra-durable endurance car and an apparatus capable of speedy
battery swaps. Blueprints don’t exist.
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