Daily Archives: June 3, 2017

NIO’s EP9 EV beats every production car ever with a Nurburgring lap record of 6:45.90

One by one, EVs are decimating records set by internal combustion engine vehicles. NIO/NextEV’s $1.48 million electric supercar, the NIO EP9, has set a new lap record around one of the world’s most famous and grueling racetracks, the Nurburgring Nordschleife.

The car managed a time of 6:45.90, which is the fastest lap ever set by an electric vehicle around the track – and in fact is faster than any production vehicle, electric or otherwise, beating the Lamborghini Huracan Performante by just over 6 seconds.

This would be the fastest lap ever done by any production vehicle – assuming we count the EP9 as a production vehicle.  Currently, NIO has built seven EP9s, and plans another production run of ten more cars.  While this is certainly a small number of units, other cars with smaller production runs (and similarly-high prices, like the McLaren F1 XP5 prototype, of which 5 were built) have qualified as “production” vehicles for these purposes, so the EP9 probably deserves the title.

We haven’t seen the new lap yet, but NIO plans to release a video sometime within the week.  For now, have a look at their edited video of the previous EV-record-setting lap here:

https://youtu.be/NRTloURydAo

Read more: electrek

The Arctic as it is known today is almost certainly gone

Energy and Climate Change, News, Reviews and Comment

On current trends, the Arctic will be ice-free in summer by 2040.

THOSE who doubt the power of human beings to change Earth’s climate should look to the Arctic, and shiver. There is no need to pore over records of temperatures and atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations. The process is starkly visible in the shrinkage of the ice that covers the Arctic ocean. In the past 30 years, the minimum coverage of summer ice has fallen by half; its volume has fallen by three-quarters. On current trends, the Arctic ocean will be largely ice-free in summer by 2040.

Climate-change sceptics will shrug. Some may even celebrate: an ice-free Arctic ocean promises a shortcut for shipping between the Pacific coast of Asia and the Atlantic coasts of Europe and the Americas, and the possibility of prospecting for perhaps a fifth of the planet’s undiscovered supplies of oil and natural gas. Such reactions are profoundly misguided. Never mind that the low price of oil and gas means searching for them in the Arctic is no longer worthwhile. Or that the much-vaunted sea passages are likely to carry only a trickle of trade. The right response is fear.

Read more: The Economist