Kleenspeed EV-X11 Sets Another Lap Record Electric Cars

There doesn’t seem to be more than a week or so without yet another electric car breaking a record of some sort. This time, it was Kleenspeed with their EV-X11.

Kleenspeed, the Californian electric vehicle company founded in 2007 has finished testing its purpose EV-X11 with a lap record at California's Sonoma raceway on Friday by booking the 2 and half-mile track in 1 minute 35.99 seconds. That is an average of 93.2 mph with a top speed of over 130 mph.

According to the driver Kevin Mitz: "It's pretty good. The same cars we run with a gas engine, 1 liter gas engines, motorcycle engines, they are about 400 pounds lighter than this one so we're at a disadvantage with the weight, but we're only about 3 to 4 seconds slower on your average comparable car to this."

You might recall having heard about the EV-X11. We mentioned a previous project 4 years ago tested in the desert tracks with great success. This project took five years to develop and Timothy Collins, who is Kleenspeed’s president, CEO and founder said it was part of NASA Ames Research Park.

If You Race It, You Can Sell It. And since we’ve said many times before, if you race it, you can sell it, Kleenspeed has decided to do the same, much as Lightning, Brammo and others in the electric motorcycle field. Kleenspeed understands it needed to race the electric car in order to develop and test its core technology. It was aiming all the while for its use in mainstream vehicles.

Spoiler Hint! According to Collins: "Once you develop a race car system, you can migrate those into the passenger cars.” Kleenspeed will have a passenger car that should be available in October. Although the electric vehicle will not be for sale, it will serve as a passenger test vehicle and should pack an impressive 150 mile range. This project basically bears the fruit of Klinespeed’s race efforts and will be incorporated into a future passenger electric car.

By upping the amount of laps raced every year, Collins admits it’s a slow task but a rewarding one. A wall is built one brick at a time, and certainly Kleenspeed has done a tremendous job advancing electric vehicles to the rank of commercial vehicles. But Kleenspeed is doing more than just race on Sunday, sell on Monday. Kleespeed is building the next generation of electric vehicles, the ones that should go beyond the psychological 150 mile range barrier.

In the meantime, we can only welcome their efforts and wait until Kleenspeed offers us an electric vehicle we can drive around an entire week without worrying about recharging.