From the bottom of a mine to the top of the mountain in just under 34 hours Engineering
Electric vehicles are becoming more impressive every year, and lately they've even been breaking records, as Porsche's Taycan Cross Turismo did recently by completing a three-mile climb up to the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado to break a Guinness World Record., covers the entire five-state, 1,400-mile journey into the record books for the greatest altitude change ever achieved by an electric car.
The reason why this record matters for an electric car is that major elevation changes considerably restrict the range of the car, asOne of the ways electric vehicles extend their range is through regenerative braking, which uses the energy produced by braking actions on flats or declines by the driver to recharge the battery. Without that extra charge from driving, you need to plug the electric car in more often, which takes more time, hence there being a world record for the climb.
The driving team began its journey at the bottom of the Eagle Nickel and Copper Mine in Michigan, the lowest driveable point in the United States, and trekked across five states, ascending 15,889 feet and ending at the summit of Pikes Peak in Colorado's Rocky Mountains. In total, it took 33 hours and 48 minutes, and the journey was threatened towards the end by threatening weather on the mountain, but team member Dai Yoshihara, who was a 2020 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb class winner, managed to get the Taycan Cross Turismo across the line for the record.
"You can plan for months, develop a highly detailed schedule, but at the end of the day it always comes down to execution and weather," said team member J.F. Musial."I couldn’t have been prouder of our team’s efforts. The weather—that was a different story. I’ve always been told that the mountain decides if it’ll allow you to get to the summit. Despite an incoming snowstorm, we got lucky and found a small 45-minute window to get to the top—the mountain let us get this record.