The Shape of Things to Come: Evasive Motorsports Pikes Peak/Time Attack Tesla Model 3

The cooler had two large brushless electric fans.

This is what the unit looks like with the cover on.

The ducting is enclosed and exits right above the rear diffuser.  The heat exchanger airflow fills the low-pressure wake made by the car to reduce drag and thus also passively sucks air through the heat exchanger at speed.  The heat exchanger exhaust airflow also helps activate the diffuser for more downforce.  The rear heat exchangers add another 30% capacity to the cooling system. The black tubes are for the chassis-mounted Varis Engineering wing.

If the temperature starts to climb out of the proper range, this CO2 sprayer is activated to provide another 2 minutes of additional cooling. The CO2 cannot drop the temperature but it can stop the temperature rise out of range.

Here is the front splitter under construction. The car uses an upcoming Heritage Spirits widebody kit to make room for the wide Toyo slicks. All removable panels are replaced with carbon fiber including all of the rear glass and the glass roof. In all over 600 lbs was removed from the car after the new stuff was added. The car is still very heavy at about 3800llbs due to the battery pack.

17 comments

  1. I am keen to see how fast this vehicle would go at World Time Attack with Dai driving. Any rough estimates Mike?

      1. That’s fantastic Mike, within 12 seconds of the PZ Tuning Civic unlimited record. I assume that would be equivalent to a low 1:40min time at WTAC in ideal conditions.

  2. They’re the future, they’re faster and better. I’ll still be an old dinosaur clutching to my ice powered vehicles thankyouverymuch.

  3. Ok, I swear you posted about this before the race and THEN removed and now this is a revised look? Very cool insight! Bummer they never figured out the speed limiting. I was wondering, and a lot of these look like the Instagram photos I was following that weekend, why the aero discs were used sometime?? Ones like these on the Model 3 are sick and I think it’d be cool to run some if they benefit more than just the aesthetic.
    FTR: I broke down and bought a used Model X for my run around this year, fastest car I’ve ever owned! Faster than my Scat Pack Challenger AND I’ve been too afraid to use Ludicrous Plus outside of a track setting. SOOO fast!

    1. It got turned on early by mistake before I could get event pictures and then something happened to my camera so it’s low res small format. I was mad but posted anyway and sorry for the small low-quality pics. The aero discs are always on the car when it runs and only on the rear. It’s because they are prototypes and Evasive only had time to make 2 of them. The design is being revised to make them easier to take on and off and they will be available for sale sooner or later. The speed limiting isn’t a problem, the car is very fast till about 100 mph, at Pikes Peak we encountered a weird CANBUS error that caused the car not to boot up correctly which limited the power to 50 KW. The car has not done that before or since. It went on to break the electric car record at Buttonwillow which has since been broken again by Unplugged Performance in their Plaid. We are going to do more electronic work and come back. We have 440 hp vs 1100 hp but if we can tap into it all at our control, we can go faster than we did before. If we can’t beat the Plaid we can perhaps be the fastest Model 3!

      1. What time was your run? Batteries could have been too cold.

        If you continue to run in those conditions, maybe you could build extra thermal management like a coolant preheater similar to coolant based oil filter type oil coolers.

        1. There is no such thing as too cold batteries in anything except drag racing. We try to let the batteries cold soak before we run after charging to give us a few more seconds of max power before derating.

          1. Watch for the Snowflake Icon
            “A blue snowflake icon may appear on your touchscreen if your car battery is too cold to access all of its stored energy. When this icon is displayed you may also notice that battery power and regenerative braking are limited. Once the battery is warmed, the snowflake will disappear.”

            “ For example, AAA’s testers determined that the Tesla’s range when fully charged at 75 degrees was 239 miles, but it fell 91 miles, or 38%, at 20 degrees.”

            “ “Ions are traveling inside of the battery between the positive and negative electrodes through a liquid electrolyte. As it gets colder, the liquid becomes thicker, now closer to freezing solid. So the ions move more slowly, which causes more resistance. The more the resistance goes up, the faster you lose power,” says Greg Less, Ph.D. He’s the technical director at the UM Battery Lab in Ann Arbor, Michigan. ”

          2. I have to somewhat disagree here. For Lithium ion batteries you can be too cold. There is a specific operating range that the batteries like to be in. The oem tesla thermal system will actually intentionally run motors and adjust the thermal system to create waste heat when the batteries are too cold. If you ever have a chance to read it, the Tesla patent on their thermal system control is quite fascinating.

          3. of course, that is obvious but when you are racing one of these cars, you need as much time thermal headspace as you can before the system starts to derate the motor to spare the battery. Preheating would make the car faster for the first minute or so but derating would start a couple of minutes later or less. For pikes peak you need to run something less than 11 minutes, we see derating after just two laps at Buttonwillow for instance. If we preheated the battery, the system would start to derate by the time the tires come up to temperature! Race one of these cars and see. We are working on a stand-alone control so we can control some of this stuff.

          4. Ah, interesting. The thermal control project sounds very interesting. Probably one of the big gain areas of EV racing for sure. Will be interesting to see what you guys end up doing.

  4. I don’t know why I meet soooo many people who absolutely refuse to think of the performance potential of plug-in hybrids. It’s baffling that even the younger generation (local to me at least) are so opposed to it. A model 3 is on my short list of cars I want in the future.

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