Behold! Europe’s Quickest Street Legal EV

Apologies for going quiet on the blog recently. If you’ve been following me via Twitter (@carpervert) you may know that since late April the Flux Capacitor became track-worthy and ready for shakedown. Here is what happened when I first got behind the wheel after 3 years of getting the Flux Cap to this level. Be warned, I was a little excited …

Within half a dozen runs on Santa Pod’s strip we’d added amps gradually and gone from a 16 second to a 12 second quarter mile. The first weekend’s racing finished on a 12.56 second pass @ 101mph. We broke the 100mph barrier at 1400 (of the 2000 available) amps.

The Flux Cap Enfield wasn’t even breaking a sweat, or traction for that matter. The wheelie bars were there for precaution, but the street tyres and four-link rear suspension seemed to cope just fine. The next event we experienced a technical brain freeze with the ECU, which was deflating, but came back to Santa Pod raceway the following meeting with repairs made and teeth gritted. It was time to feed in a few more amps (which is torque) and volts (which dictates our top speed). In July I entered the 11 second bracket, which was a speed I’d never thought possible in the Enfield. We also started baiting Supercars, like this modified 600bhp 997 911 Turbo (with launch control – something I definitely don’t have) and losing windows at speed. The latter wasn’t so much fun, so I’ve now bolted them in:

And then

And then we pitted up against a fully fledged BTCC touring car Audi A4, complete with slicks. Bear in mind I’m always racing on street tyres. Let’s just say Rob Austin Racing didn’t enjoy getting their arses kicked by a 9ft long yellow Lego brick.

Without the help and tireless R&D of Olly Young at Current Racing this project would never have got this far. Olly and his brother Sam are the only other electric drag racers in the UK, so we thought we’d have a heads-up race. I lost, but mine is street legal 😉

With careful tweaks to the ECU and working our way up the amps slowly, the Enfield kept progressing. We had no idea that the car could go beyond an 11.67 @ 109 mph, but we wanted to give it a shot. So, we changed the rear axle gears for a taller final drive. Until now it was 3.00:1 ratio, and it was swapped for a very rare (totally obsolete) 2.49:1 ratio. Why? Because the Enfield’s twin 9″ electric DC motors were hitting their 5000rpm limit before the finish line, and as we had no gearbox, the only solution was to bring the revs down by making the gearing higher. The results were good. Very bloody good actually. First early 11s were achieved. Which pricked up the ears of the BBC regional news…

And then, with an MoT and all, we smashed the Tesla Model S P85D quarter mile of 11.6 by going into the 10s. Here’s what it looked like. Smooth and stable, and rather slow when racing next to a 2000bhp Nissan GT-R:

We were now going properly fast. 0-121mph in 10.84 seconds. 0-102mph in 6.9 with an estimated 0-60 up there with P1s and LaFerraris. I’m serious. It’s now I need to thank the people who have enthusiastically and patiently supported the project from the start; Adrian Flux Insurance, npower energy, Hyperdrive Innovation, Red Maple IT solutions, Plastics4Performance, Black Cat Race graphics, Roadhouse Retro, BG Developments, Wicked Wheels and my good friend / crew chief Nick at Gas It refillables. Amazing to think it all started like this in 2012: