Nissan ZEOD RC takes racing all-electric!

Nissan showcased its latest electric prototype, ZEOD RC, at Le Mans, claimed to be the world’s fastest electric race car capable of touching speeds in excess of 300km/h

When it comes to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Nissan seems to have been making all the big news as far as Garage 56 is concerned – the pit box reserved for experimental machines that could shape the future of racing. Last year, the Japanese manufacturer’s high performance tuning arm Nismo showed off and competed with the Deltawing that bore the number ‘0’. The little black sleek car’s fate didn’t exactly turn out the way its manufacturer wanted it to, with the car crashing out way before the 24 hours were up, but it did end up supplying a whole lot of data in terms of aerodynamics and reliability. Regardless, the guys at Nissan haven’t been sitting still and this year they took the concept a little further.

Displayed near the Circuit de la Sarthe at the 2013 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans was the prototype race car you see above and below – the ZEOD RC. While it may look like a closed-cockpit version of the Deltawing, the ZEOD RC has a lot more that it isn’t showing off just yet. There will be no conventional fossil-fuel-burning powerplant under all that sleek bodywork when the ZEOD RC runs as the Garage 56 entrant at next year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans – it will be propelled by all-electric power. While Nissan hasn’t revealed any technical specifications of its electric powerplant yet, they have clearly suggested that over the course of the months leading up to the next iteration of the legendary race they will be trying out various different capacities of motors and battery packs before finalising on one.

The ultimate aim of the ZEOD RC according to its designer Ben Bowlby will be to introduce and define a set of rules for an all-electric LMP1 class in endurance racing – a big step towards the electrification of the race car. While Formula E also aims to attain the same impact, the draw of endurance racing for electric car technology is far more relevant considering the trickle down effect of this technology to road cars. Unsurprisingly, the ZEOD RC should see a lot of learnings from the Nissan Leaf electric car being race-applied when it runs at next year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. Come summer in Europe, the ZEOD RC should be making its testing debut and we can only hope that it has better fate in the actual race than the Deltawing had.