A Tesla Model S driven by Blake Fuller, CEO of GO Puck, set a new record for a production electric vehicle at Pikes Peak International Hill Climb this weekend with a 11:48 run. At first, the Model S Fuller was expected to be racing up the hill was thought to be heavily modified with a new smaller battery pack, but as it turns out, the vehicle is almost stock in term of performance and the main modification was to strip the interior and replace it with a cage.
Fuller and his team beat the production electric vehicle record by a full minute with the Model S. They placed 65th in total and among the top 5 in the overall leaderboard, 3 vehicles were in the ‘electric-modified’ category.
The Pikes Peak track measures 12.42 miles (19.99 km) with over 156 turns, climbing 4,720 ft (1,440 m) from the start at Mile 7 on Pikes Peak Highway, to the finish at 14,110 ft (4,300 m), on grades averaging 7.2%.
To get the battery pack through the strain of dragging the 4,000 lbs (~800 lbs lighter than stock) vehicle up the hill, the team had to resign to unconventional methods to cool the battery, like giving it an ice bath as pictured here:
Congratulations to Blake Fuller #GOPUCK !! Broke the previous #electric production record 11:48. Good times 🙂 pic.twitter.com/3CMEeZoGlE
— ROBRADY design (@ROBRADYdesign) June 26, 2016
The previous record for a production electric vehicle at Pikes Peak was set with a Zero electric motorcycle at 13 minutes.
Fuller and his team hope that other Model S owners wanting to build a cage for their vehicle in order to race it will be able to use the concept developed for their Model S P90D at Pikes Peak. Here Fuller describes the modifications they had to make in order to ready the vehicle prior to the race:
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