EVs well represented at Pikes Peak 2012
Electric Vehicles (EVs) were well represented at the 2012 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb event this year. Of the 87 cars entered seven were electric. Two of those cars finished in the top ten overall.
Pictured above is the racing EV of Nobuhiro “Monster” Tajima, running a fully electric race car up the hill for the first time. The 2012 E-Runner Pikes Peak Special was built specially for this race in association with the Association for the Promotion of Electric Vehicles (APEV). Mr. Tajima (which we’ve written about before), is currently the all-time record holder up the hill. He was hoping to break that record this year in his all electric E-Runner. It was not to be as EV racecars are just as susceptible to racing problems as gasoline engined cars are. Mr. Tajima’s record breaking attempt was cut short in a puff of smoke shortly into his run up the mountain with an electric motor failure. Mr. Tajima’s reason for going electric? “I will be entering this year’s Pikes Peak International Hill Climb with my new electric race car. The reason I made this change is that I would like to help save our beautiful planet earth for our children.”
The Toyota Motorsports entry which we wrote about last June, finished sixth overall and first in the Electric division. Fifteen seconds and two slots back came the Mitsubishi i-MiEV Evolution (which looks nothing like the production i-MiEV) in eighth place overall. Mitsu also had a fully production i-MiEV on hand with requisite safety equipment, just as Nissan had a stock LEAF drive up the mountain last year.
For the record, the LEAFs time in 2011 was 14:33. The Mitsu this year? 15:10.