Nissan has erased all doubts about the ability of an electric car to go uphill with a win at the 89th running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Nissan became the first time winner in the inaugural season for the Electric Production Class with a run up the side of Pikes Peaks’ 12.42 mile course in 14 minutes 33 seconds in a specially prepared LEAF driven by veteran Nissan off-road truck racing champion Chad Hord.
“The LEAF was great fun to drive up the mountain” said Hord. “With the instant torque from the electric motor we were able to jump out of the many slow corners and the performance was very consistent from the bottom to the top since the electric motor wasn’t affected by the high altitude near the summit like the gasoline powered cars.”
The 12.42 mile course has 156 turns and begins at 9,390 feet and finishes at the 14,110 foot summit of Pikes Peak. As the drivers climb toward the summit, the thin air slows the reflexes and saps the muscle strength of drivers who are not use to working at the higher altitude. The thin air also robs internal combustion engines of up to 30% of their power by the time they reach the summit while robbing nothing from a car that is powered by electricity.
You would think that going up the side of a mountain would not be something an electric car would excel at. However, thinning air does not starve an electric engine like it does a gas or diesel motor. Advantage Nissan LEAF, with LEAF’s electric motor not feeling the impact of the thin air and its electric motor producing the same amount of power at the bottom of the mountain as it does at the summit the LEAF was running at full power when it crossed the finish line.
Feeding off its battery and not combustion, the LEAF zipped from corner to corner in near silence other than the sound of squealing tires and the high pitched sound of a warning beeper installed at the request of the race organizers to warn spectators, workers and the occasional wondering wildlife that call Pikes Peak home. The LEAF comes from the factory with a pedestrian warning system that makes an annoying sound up to about 30 miles per hour but since Nissan apparently feels that when the LEAF travels faster than 30 miles per hour any pedestrian standing in a fast moving LEAF’s way will be out of luck warning sound or no warning sound. The folks who run the Pikes Peak event figured out the LEAF running up the mountain would reach speeds greater than 30 mph so a supplemental system was added to warn those along the course that it was approaching.
Since the competitors can only practice a third of the run at a time during the week leading up to the race, the final run was the first time Chad and the LEAF had completed the entire race distance in a single run. “The Nissan LEAF and Chad both performed flawlessly this week” said Ron Stukenberg, senior manager, Marketing Communications, Motorsports. “This was an innovative way to demonstrate that 100 percent electric vehicles perform very well in highly demanding situations like the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.”
Electric cars have a long way to go before the driving masses accept them. Demonstrations like Nissan’s LEAF running up the side of Pikes Peak brings that acceptance just a little closer to reality.
