Danger!Danger! Highvoltage
Hyundai and Nissan make a pair of exciting EV specials
Racing cars usually have an aura about them. They sit brooding in their pit garage, intimidatingly slick tyres stacked up nearby, looking ready to bite the uninitiated. But this is different. The aura surrounding the Hyundai Veloster eTCR is palpable, not least because of the warning hangars and actual cordon surrounding it.
It’s charging, y’see. This is an electric racing car – Hyundai’s first – and all of the training for its mechanics has come from the company’s motorsport HQ in Germany. It’s strict, then. As is my briefing about the dangers lurking beneath its baby blue surface. The words “probability of death” are used.
It’s a development prototype for Hyundai’s entry into eTCR, a new global touring car series that sits parallel alongside TCR, just with a row of chargers in its pitlane and cleaner trackside air. This year, there’s a trial season, with half a dozen individual events while organisers and entrants get their heads around how to make it a success. Unlike Formula E, which sits several rungs below Formula One in both speed and prestige, the idea is that eTCR and TCR live as equals. Bold, you might say.
The Veloster eTCR is one of numerous hands Hyundai’s playing, but it’s taking some getting used to as its team effectively morphs a front-driven, front-engined petrol racer into a rear-driver with its weight focused in the middle. Its 63kWh battery takes around an hour to power up from 30 to 95 per cent – the typical procedure during testing – which is enough for around 15 laps or 25 minutes at full pace with 300kW (402bhp). The car has a number of power maps, but this is likely to be the figure used in races themselves, given it matches current TCR outputs.
With no engine braking and another 400kg to slow down it takes a small amount of adjustment over its petrol-propelled equivalent, but with no regen it’s otherwise every bit as driveable as a paddleshifted TCR, perhaps even more so given how effortless and uninterrupted acceleration now is. Not so dangerous after all.
It’s easy to see a grid of these creating hilarious carnage in the best touring car tradition, as a rabble of eTCRs all put their power down upon first sniff of corner exit and fire forward at great haste together. And perhaps into each other. An element of complication has been taken from the driver’s to-do list and a whole extra sliver of brain capacity has been freed up for commitment and bravery. Add the potential of torque vectoring between the two rear motors and the series can only improve with time.
Whether it’ll be joined on the grid by a Nissan Leaf RC like you see in the other image on this page is… unlikely, apparently. Nissan’s all in on Formula E and this Leaf is described more as a test bed for future road cars. At its heart are the same battery, inverter and motor you’ll find in the showroom Leaf – so no deathy briefings before I drive this one – with the latter two doubled in quantity. So there’s a motor on each axle with a 62kWh battery
feeding the pair of them for four-wheel drive. Total outputs are 322bhp and 472lb ft, enough to shift the 1.2-tonne RC from 0-62mph in 3.4secs and on to a 137mph top speed.
It accelerates in the fashion of a road-going Leaf, just with extra urgency from its plumper power and skinnier kerbweight. Every control is measurably sharper and easier to read than the stock Leaf I was given for recce laps of Valencia to make sure I wouldn’t immediately throw myself into a gravel trap. I’m no longer battling understeer or top-heavy body roll and I quickly forget about the lack of ABS or traction control as there’s such transparency here: braking smoothly yet forcefully is simple, and trailing those brakes into corners to help the car turn comes pretty naturally. As with the
Veloster, I’ve suddenly a ton of free brain capacity from its easier to digest drivetrain.
Both of these cars eschew any lazy ‘milk float’ connotations by actually making a decent noise, too. Neither punches through cold circuit air like a nat-asp petrol engine can – obviously – but their transmission whine is as vocal as any supercharger, and more arresting from the pitlane than you’d dare hope.
At the moment these are quite different cars; the Hyundai a genuinely extreme racer, the Nissan occupying a curious middle ground between hatchback and motor show concept. But they have the same intention at heart: giving EVs a sense of humour. Let’s just hope Nissan changes tack so we do get to see them trading paintwork on circuit.