We knew, thanks to a couple of teasers released by Nissan, that their electrified Le Mans prototype was set to be shown today. However, up until this point, it had not been confirmed what sort of powerplant would motivate this new racing car. Now that photos and information have been released, we realize that more questions are raised than answered, and aside from the confirmation that the ZEOD RC is all-electric, not much information was shared.
There’s a lot of testing to be done as the car, which will reportedly be able to exceed 300 km/h or 186 mph, will make its debut at next year’s edition of the famed French racing venue.
Its battery pack uses the same basic technology as the Leaf road car, though, we expect the cells being used to be of higher capacity. The overall shape won’t change, as it seems that it was proven to be pretty efficient on the DeltaWing, hence its adoption for the new electric racer.
Executive VP of Nissan, Andy Palmer was quoted as saying: “Nissan has become a global leader in the development of zero emission automotive technology and the Nissan ZEOD RC will allow us to further develop those capabilities using the toughest endurance race in the world as a mobile test bed to test the potential of our planned LM P1 power train,” while adding that this new racing car “is a natural progression that follows on from the development of the Nissan Leaf road car and the Leaf RC race car prototype. The technologies developed through the ZEOD RC program will form part of future innovations for Nissan road cars.”
This should mean Nissan is planning on bringing a performance EV into their showroom, sometime in the coming few years, right? Who knows, maybe this is simply preparation for the making of the next Nissan GT-R, which has a very high chance to get electrified one way or the other by the time it comes out, in 2018.
By Andrei Nedelea
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