Let those who doubt the performance possibilities of an EV gaze in awe upon White Zombie, the DIY EV from Oregon that’s just done the quarter mile in 10.400 seconds at 117.23 mph.
That’s supercar territory, folks.
Anyone who’s been following the EV scene awhile knows about John “Plasma Boy” Wayland and White Zombie, the 1972 Datsun 1200 he’s been running for 16 years. This thing long has been a force to be reckoned with in the National Electric Drag Racing Association. Wayland has been a member of the organization’s 100 MPH Club since May 9, 2004, when he did 100.76 mph.
This year, Wayland dumped the A123 Systems battery he’d borrowed from KillaCycle in favor of his own pack. He’s running a 22.7 kilowatt-hour lithium manganese cobalt polymer pack comprised of 192 Dow/Kokam cells. It is nominally rated at 355.2 volts.
The juice goes to a Siamese 9 motor with a Zilla Z2K 2,000 amp controller. Wayland also reworked the suspension and rear end — a modified Ford 9-inch setup — to handle the power.
Wayland brought the car to Portland International Raceway on Friday. According to the first-person account posted at EV World, things got off to a rough start with some electrical gremlins. Once he excised them, the car peeled off an 11.111 second-run at 117.77 mph. That was a full three-tenths of a second faster than the car’s previous best time.
Six minutes later he did the quarter in 11.069 at 117.70.
And then, disaster. During his third run the wiring to the forward/reverse switch on the dash shorted, shutting off power. Despite the failure, the car still recorded a time of 11.170. An hour in the pits and White Zombie was ready to roll. Wayland and his crew fixed the short, boosted the power to 1,800 amps and increased the motor current to 2,000 amps.
That did the trick. Racing against a Nissan GT-R with 485 horsepower, the little Datsun tripped the timer at 10.400 and 117.23 mph. And the GT-R?
It was about a second behind.