Michael Andretti Now Sees the Potential of Electric Cars

Electric street cars with license plates and AC can go from 0-60 in less than 3 seconds - so imagine what an electric race car can do.

Michael Andretti - son of arguably the most successful race car driver in history - has a pretty good idea. It’s probably why he’s teamed up with McLaren F1 CEO Zak Brown and UK racing powerhouse United Autosports to form Andretti United Extreme E, which will compete in electric off-road racing this spring. In addition, the Andretti Team will be using a new high tech thermal management system to protect the integrity of their batteries that is currently being utilized on the Mars Perseverance Rover and International Space Station designed by KULR Technology Group Inc. (OTCQB: KULR), a San Diego-headquartered developer of lithium-ion battery safety and thermal management technologies.

The Andretti team isn’t new to electric racing, having been involved in Formula E, the electric version of open-wheeled (“Indy car”) racing - both under his own flag and with BMW, one of the first major automakers to get heavily involved in this newest form of motorsports.

Electric race cars have a number of advantages over piston-driven, combustion-powered race cars- the chief one being the tremendous power of electric motors is instant-on. A piston engine has to be revved to make power, which takes time - even for a race car engine. Some race car engines - like Indy Car engines - make so little power until they rev that pit crews have to push the car to get it going.

No such problems with electric race cars. Instead of 550-700 horsepower at 10,500-12,200 RPM an electric car motor can make 1,000 horsepower at 0 RPM. That means zero lag when the green flag goes down and the race begins - and acceleration that makes piston-engined race cars seem slow. 

Which means it's a better show. The Andretti team knows that a good race means lots of fans - people who want to watch the race.

And electric racing is a whole new kind of show. 

For one thing, electric street car engines make more power than Indy Car piston engines - and they do it without pistons or turbochargers and multiple valve cylinder heads and hundreds of small parts, each one a potential catastrophic failure point.

An electric motor has just a few moving parts and so fewer potential failure points. That should translate as greater durability under the extreme conditions of racing - especially the off-road racing series that Michael Andretti and his team are getting ready for - because electric motors don’t need to breathe and so no worries about inhaling sand or hydro-locking the pistons because water got sucked into the intake tract.

Electric motors would work just as well in the vacuum of space.

So long as there’s current, they’ll spin. And there’s almost no limit to how powerful they can be, as is the case - in practical terms - for piston-driven race car engines.

They make power not just by burning fuel but by moving air. Which must be turned into power (along with the fuel) inside each cylinder by burning the air-fuel mix in a precisely timed sequence of events. Four specific events - the intake, compression, power and exhaust strokes.

It’s a complicated process and how much power is made also depends on how much air (and fuel) can be stuffed into each cylinder for each combustion event. Race car engines often use turbo-superchargers to force air (along with fuel) into the cylinders, to make even more power. But there are physical as well as practical limits to how much air and fuel can be stuffed into a cylinder; a dragster’s heavily supercharged engine - which makes about 2,000 horsepower - runs on the verge of self-destruction from all the pressure - and usually has to be torn down and rebuilt after just a few passes down the track.

But electric motors can produce that kind of power simply - and reliably. A Tesla Model S, for instance, has an electric motor that makes between 670 and 1,020 horsepower - as much (or more) than an Indy car like the one MIchael's father Mario drove when he won the Indy 500 and other F1 races - but on the street and with the AC blowing and no problem plugging along in stop-and-go traffic.

The potential of electric motors is barely tapped - as opposed to nearly maxed out.

Electric racing does have one thing in common with piston-engined racing: The development and refinement of technology that ends up on the street. Most race fans know all about the pioneering development of the famous Chrysler Race Hemi engine back in the '60s, which led to the development of the Street Hemi engine, a descendant of which is still in use in current Fiat-Chrysler (now Stellantis) vehicles such as the Dodge Charger and Challenger as well as Ram trucks.   

Electric racing will likely lead to similar breakthroughs in electric battery endurance and quick-charge technology, two of the issues which electric street cars still need some help with before they can outlast piston-engined cars and recharge as quickly as piston-engined vehicles can refuel. 

Racing will accelerate that process while giving race fans the show of their life. That's a win for the Andretti racing team - and for us, when the lessons learned on the track filter down to the street and under the hoods of the cars we'll soon be driving every day.