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Written by Paul Horrell
A few weeks back we showed you a rolling chassis for electric cars, designed by Williams Advanced Engineering. The spec looks ballistic: high-end carbonfibre structure, 652bhp torque-vectored 4WD. It even has a racy name: FW-EVX. A lot of you clicked, many of you commented and asked questions. So we"ve been to get a closer look and meet Williams Advanced Engineering"s technical director Paul McNamara.Williams has wrapped up its expertise from designing and making carbonfibre racing cars, and the batteries for Formula E, into the FW-EVX. It"s a rolling chassis that could be used by an existing or start-up car brand. The end result should be an EV that would have a combination of power, range and light weight that none of the big players have managed or expect to manage.McNamara says Williams could build a run of 100 or so of them using its carbonfibre, machining and battery workshops. Those facilities normally lie quiet in summer, having spent the winter making parts for racing cars.The weight is the really impressive bit. What you see here, the chassis with batteries, motors and electronics, even the wheels and tyres, is 955kg. Williams says it can do a vehicle the size of a BMW M4 for 1750kg.That"s with three motors, giving a total power of 480kW, or 652bhp. Which is more power than a top-end Tesla Model S P100D, which has an extra 400kg to accelerate.The gains come from system integration. Like a racing car everything has been designed to work together. The main sills don"t only co-depend on the battery modules for structure, they cool them too.Because it"s light, it"s efficient, and so Williams says it can do 343 miles on the official test cycle with just an 80kWh battery. That"s usefully beyond the 500km" [312 miles] that most European premium makers are aiming at.So far, these claims are calculations. But given Williams"s boffinry at simulation and aerodynamics, we can assume they"re not just back-of-an-envelope optimism but rigorous numbers.Battery modules aren"t only heavy, they"re expensive. The FW-EVX needs less battery for its range. Which goes much of the way to offsetting the cost of all the carbonfibre.On each side of the car, carbonfibre members run almost the whole length, supporting the suspension then flaring out to the sills. Most electric platforms build a solid and heavy aluminium box around the battery. The Williams car wraps each one of its 38 battery modules in relatively cheaply made carbonfibre boxes. That makes them resistant to crash damage, so the the sills don"t need to be as heavy as they don"t have so much protective work to do.
Date written: 18 Nov 2017
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 10014
A few weeks back we showed you a rolling chassis for electric cars, designed by Williams Advanced Engineering. The spec looks ballistic: high-end carbonfibre structure, 652bhp torque-vectored 4WD. It even has a racy name: FW-EVX. A lot of you clicked, many of you commented and asked questions. So we"ve been to get a closer look and meet Williams Advanced Engineering"s technical director Paul McNamara.Williams has wrapped up its expertise from designing and making carbonfibre racing cars, and the batteries for Formula E, into the FW-EVX. It"s a rolling chassis that could be used by an existing or start-up car brand. The end result should be an EV that would have a combination of power, range and light weight that none of the big players have managed or expect to manage.McNamara says Williams could build a run of 100 or so of them using its carbonfibre, machining and battery workshops. Those facilities normally lie quiet in summer, having spent the winter making parts for racing cars.The weight is the really impressive bit. What you see here, the chassis with batteries, motors and electronics, even the wheels and tyres, is 955kg. Williams says it can do a vehicle the size of a BMW M4 for 1750kg.That"s with three motors, giving a total power of 480kW, or 652bhp. Which is more power than a top-end Tesla Model S P100D, which has an extra 400kg to accelerate.The gains come from system integration. Like a racing car everything has been designed to work together. The main sills don"t only co-depend on the battery modules for structure, they cool them too.Because it"s light, it"s efficient, and so Williams says it can do 343 miles on the official test cycle with just an 80kWh battery. That"s usefully beyond the 500km" [312 miles] that most European premium makers are aiming at.So far, these claims are calculations. But given Williams"s boffinry at simulation and aerodynamics, we can assume they"re not just back-of-an-envelope optimism but rigorous numbers.Battery modules aren"t only heavy, they"re expensive. The FW-EVX needs less battery for its range. Which goes much of the way to offsetting the cost of all the carbonfibre.On each side of the car, carbonfibre members run almost the whole length, supporting the suspension then flaring out to the sills. Most electric platforms build a solid and heavy aluminium box around the battery. The Williams car wraps each one of its 38 battery modules in relatively cheaply made carbonfibre boxes. That makes them resistant to crash damage, so the the sills don"t need to be as heavy as they don"t have so much protective work to do.
Date written: 18 Nov 2017
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 10014
