An electric Nissan Skyline drift car!? Photo by Craig Toull at CRT Photography.
As fossil fuels run out and everyone tries to save the planet, the car industry is switching to electric power. Love it or hate it, electric power is here to stay. Fortunately, there are companies like ZeroEV, who are into electric power for performance reasons as much as the green, ecofriendly environmental ones.
ZeroEV boss Chris Hazell explains: ‘We’ve built this fully-electric Nissan Skyline to prove that electric cars can compete and win, against internal combustion engined cars. The car is built with a mix of drifting and gymkhana in mind. The Skyline is running one of our large drive unit kits, and all the parts on the car are available from ZeroEV. We provide electric vehicle kits for anyone to convert their car, we can also offer high-performance motorsport conversions as well for anyone who wants one.’
Chris adds: ‘I know that ripping out the six-cylinder RB engine and replacing it with electric motors and batteries will get people’s backs up – that’s exactly what I want!’ The car is powered by a small 16kW battery pack but is 390v and capable of outputting 2000 amps, with a pair of 10kW Tesla generators. Chris adds: ‘It’s making roughly 530bhp at the moment but is capable of over 600bhp if wound up, possibly even 700bhp. I’ll get in on a rolling road soon to find out.
The torque is the killer, with an estimated 1000lb ft! 0–60mph on slick tyres should be under three seconds.’
Those are extremely impressive figures. Sure, an electric car lacks the noise of an internal combustion engine but, with performance like that, maybe we’ll be featuring electric-swapped cars in JP sooner than we think?