Toyota’s EV Racecar Will Compete at Pikes Peak

Written by Naption on June 7, 2012. Posted in Rides

Last year, the first iteration of Toyota’s EV racecar ran a 7:47 lap at the Nurburgring. Next month, Toyota Motorsport will bring a more potent version of the car, TMG EV P002, to the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

This is the car during recent powertrain testing at Paul Ricard (video after the jump); by the time it gets to Colorado, it will be covered in Yokohama tires livery. Toyota tapped an accomplished rally driver, Fumio Nutahara, to drive it up Pikes Peak.

Of course, the powertrain is the main story on this car, as the chassis is sourced from Radical. In the Pikes Peak state of tune, the two rear-mounted axial flux electric motors make a claimed 469 horsepower and 664 pound-feet of torque. Max rpm is 5,000 and top speed is said to be 149 mph.

The batteries are mounted in the middle of the car, and they’re of the lithium-ceramic variety. Rated capacity is huge at 42kWh — for perspective, the Nissan Leaf has a rated capacity of 24kWh, the Mitsubishi i MiEV comes in at 16kWh and the Prius C hybrid has all of 0.94kWh.

It should be interesting to watch Toyota’s EV racer scale Pikes Peak… ah, wait, we still can’t because U.S. TV executives think hill climbs and rallies are boring.