2. Electric Drives

Driving a vehicle with an electric motor is not an idea of our time. It was merely brought up again by the public discussion on reducing the greenhouse gas CO₂. The first road vehicle to exceed the 100 km/h mark in a record-breaking journey was a torpedo-like single-seater in 1899. The record-breaking car was driven by two 25 kW electric motors on the rear axle. The fact that electric drive did not become established in road vehicles at that time had several reasons, one of which is still relevant today: the bulky volume and the large mass of the energy storage device, the battery. However, enormous progress has been made in the meantime in the field of electronics, which is important for the control of the electric motors and the service life of the batteries. For racing vehicles, with their requirements that differ from everyday vehicles, the consideration of electric drives looks considerably different, especially against the background of some of the environmental criticisms of racing.