Records are meant to be broken, no doubt about that. This includes electric vehicle records, and word out of Japan is the world record for distance traveled by an electric vehicle on a single charge may now have been broken (though there’s a little confusion on this at first glance – see below), courtesy of a team which includes a noted Japanese rally driver who was the first from his country to win the world’s most famous endurance race known as the Dakar Rally.
The team, according to the Japan Times, set out last week to break an electric vehicle distance on a single charge of around 623 miles, which was apparently also held by the Japanese. They seem to have more than likely accomplished this, as Kenjiro Shinozuka, the rally driver previously mentioned,recently posted on his website word his group had gone a distance of over 807 miles.
image-via-Kenjiro-Shinozuka
The vehicle used to accomplish this feat was a modified Suzuki mini-vehicle equipped with a lithium-ion battery. There’s no more word than that as to what kWh the battery was rated at or anything on the electric drivetrain. One thing which may have helped in this endeavor is that those behind it drove a 15.5 mile course in a remote village in Japan day and night, likely in a circuit, going day and night at speeds around 18 miles per hour.
Shinozuka said he now plans to apply to the folks at Guinness World Records for “recognition of the feat.” A quick check of the Guinness website does not immediately indicate what the most current record is, but instead it heralds back to a mark broken by the team that was later eclipsed this month by Shinozuka’s crew. There’s also the question of a German team back in 2011 claiming to have gone more than 1,000 miles on a single charge. We will have to see what the folks at Guinness have to say.
* Nino Marchetti, EarthTechling
