1700 kilometres on a Single Charge!

Coulomb Motorsport:
In 2009, I, James Hill, was a 15 year old high school student with a passion for the environment.
I became inspired by a local Electric Vehicle (eV) Competition and decided to enter an electric vehicle of my own. With almost no knowledge of vehicle design, electronics or racing in general, I, with the help of my parents bought a 500 Watt hub motor and incorporated it in an ex-land yacht frame that was donated by a generous neighbour.
Having made the mistake of lacing the hub motor into a 16" wheel, the car had a top speed of 9 km/h and despite this it finished the 1 hour long eV Challenge.
This early success and learning ignited an intense passion for eV's – for both myself and my younger brother Peter (then aged 11).

Fast forward 7 years and our relentless pursuit to develop the most efficient single seater prototype electric vehicle has led to our latest car we have developed being comparable to those from the Top 20 universities that compete in the 'gold standard' of efficiency competitions, the Shell Eco-Marathon.
The path to creating our latest vehicle, 'Quark-16' has been long, expensive and highly educational with alot of blood, sweat and tears thrown in.

Here is a brief summary of the past 7 years;
- 2010 we built a tilting chassis with a belt drive system, it placed 9th out of 54 competitors at the Perth eV Challenge and won the Design and Technology Award. This vehicle can be seen here:
- 2011 we substantially modified the chassis and ran a 8 speed in-hub gearbox with geared DC motor drivetrain. This wasn't entered into the eV Challenge due to my Year 12 commitments but was a substantial improvement on the 2010 car's drivetrain.
Ride onboard a test lap of that car in the video below:
Between 2012 and 2015, we built an additional two chassis and also entered into the Hunter Valley eV Prize held in Newcastle, NSW. I took out a loan and flew myself and Peter over East to become the first interstate team to compete in the competition.
In 2013, we placed 3rd in Qualifying and 8th in the race, in 2014 with a different drivetrain and dual suspension bike, we placed 2nd in Qualifying and 3rd in the race and in 2015 with the bike seen below we took Pole Position in Qualifying, set a new lap record for our class and finished 3rd in the race.
Since 2009, we've built 6 cars and 3 motorized bikes, with a total of 9 different drivetrains.
All of this R&D has has culminated in the car you see below, which currently is achieving 4.2 wH/km (3000+ km/L) and has a number of upgrades still to come which should bring it down to the 3.35 wH/km necessary.

About the Attempt:
In 2010, a group of EV enthusiasts in Japan loaded up their modified Diahatsu Mira with batteries and at a speed of 40 km/h drove it 1003 km in 27.5 hours.
In 2011, the University of Applied Sciences from Offenburg, Germany, sponsored by a number of prestigious companies, built a single seat electric prototype vehicle with 23 kWh of battery capacity. Driven around the Bosch Test Track for 36 hours, they set a record distance of 1636 km which remains unbeaten to this day.
Click HERE to read about the previous attempt.

Using a 5.55 kWh custom built battery pack weighing ~35 kg, we will attempt to complete 1063 laps on the RAC Driving Centre track in September or November this year. It's expected to take us 44 hours including pit stops to rotate our 4 drivers.
We will video the entire attempt and have a timing/lap count system in place to record the attempt.
Ride onboard for a lap of the track we plan on using:

Where the Funds will go:
The 5.55 kWh battery pack (about 500 mL's worth of petrol in terms of energy) required for the attempt is going to cost us $3000 for the pouches and a further $500 to manufacture.
This is the single largest cost involved and whilst I will be paying for the majority of it, any money that you donate will help free up funds that can used to purchase additional wheels, motor and controllers in order to fully prepare for the attempt.
We will provide photographic proof of the battery purchase and updates on its construction on this campaign page and on our Facebook Page and Youtube Channel .

Rewards:
The reason behind this attempt is not just to demonstrate the work put in by the Coulomb Motorsport team in designing, developing and testing our highly efficient drivetrain. It also serves to show that the future of transport is here and whilst battery technology  still has a lot of development required to bring it up to date with petrol, we already have the technology and ability to transport ourselves in a much more sustainable and cheap way!

Donations of $5 or more will be rewarded with your name riding on the car during the attempt.
Please email us ([email redacted]) if you wouldn't like this to occur.
Donations of $200 or more can be rewarded with your name or company name/logo being featured on the front wing of the car or another prominent position.

Thank you for your support, it is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

James Hill and the rest of the Coulomb Motorsport team.

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an attempt and a number of external factors such as a crash, massive escalation in cost, weather and Murphy's Law may lead to the attempt not occuring or being unsuccesful. Either way, your money will be going towards the Research, Development and Promotion of alternative propulsion technology.