Le Mans 24-hour race gets electric car

The electric car is headed for its next real test of endurance – as a new model is entering the 24-hour race at Le Mans next year. Green cars are […]

The electric car is headed for its next real test of endurance – as a new model is entering the 24-hour race at Le Mans next year.

Green cars are no longer a strange sight at Le Mans as two hybrids won in 2012, with Audi’s E-Tron coming in first and second place.

However a hydrogen-electric car pulled out of this year’s competition after its developers said it was too soon for the car to hit the race as they did not want to “cut corners” in the design.

Now Japanese carmaker Nissan has announced its ZEOD or Zero Emission On Demand racing car will compete in France’s famed day-long race in 2014.

The ZEOD goes 300km per hour and uses the same lithium battery technology as its city roadster the Nissan Leaf.

Andy Palmer, executive vice president at Nissan Motor Company said: “The Nissan ZEOD RC 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 programme will form part of future innovations for Nissan road cars.”

Le Mans is the “toughest endurance race in the world” and will be “a mobile test bed” to test the potential of our planned LMP1 power train”, he added.

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