Venturi Buckeye Bullet 3 targets world’s fastest electric car speed record

Ever since the dawn of the internal combustion engine, pioneers and thrill seekers alike have been taking their machines to the legendary Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to text their limits. It is the place where almost all of the land speed records have been set, and it is where the great New Zealander Burt Munro carved his name in the annals of motorcycling history with his trusty Indian. As summer sets every year, and the salt hardens enough to let vehicles sprint over it in more or less a straight line, thousands of enthusiasts congregate to witness the limits of physics and aerodynamics being pushed to its limits.

This year around, the Bonneville Salt Flats will play host to yet another machine that wants to decimate the records book. However, it doesn’t have an internal combustion engine underneath it. Instead, it is electric. Meet the Venturi Buckeye Bullet 3.

The third product of a collaboration between Venturi Automobiles and the Ohio State University Center for Automotive Research (CAR), the Buckeye Bullet 3 follows its predecessors that set land speed records in 2009 and 2010. Externally at least, it is traditional speed machine fare with one notable exception: its long, thin and aerodynamic shape isn’t unencumbered by the draggy intakes required to feed air-breathing engines.

The previous Buckeye Bullet 2.5 currently holds the record for the fastest electric powered car, clocking in a whooping 494 kmph. What was remarkable about that car is that it had “only” 800 horsepower available to push its sleek, aerodynamic body down the salt. In contrast, the VBB-3 is equipped with two electric motors (nearly 1,500 horsepower each) for AWD and 2,000 lithium-ion battery cells that can supply 2,200 kW of power. It has a theoretical top speed of 600 kilometres per hour, but they’re working on stretching it to 640 kmph before August.

That would still be far short of the current land speed record of 1228 kmph - set by the turbofan-powered ThrustSSC — and no electric vehicle is likely to reach those speeds for the foreseeable future. While electrics have huge advantages for everyday driving, from better acceleration to a smoother ride to greater overall energy efficiency, current batteries can’t touch fossil fuels for providing the amount of energy needed to hit top speeds.