EV on Ice!

This little green beast of a car is known as an "Andros Car". It's a purpose-built electric vehicle intended to compete in the Andros Trophy race series in France. It is, as far as I know, the first EV built specifically to race in what is otherwise a conventional racing series populated by gasoline powered cars (and bikes).

The Andros Trophy is a winter race series held on ice/snow covered tracks, and is basically a mix of rally super-special stages, conventional circuit racing, and drifting. The shells of small cars like the Toyota Auris, Kia Rio, BMW 1 Series, Renault Clio, Citroen C4 and others are mounted over radical race chassis with 300+ horsepower engines and all wheel drive, and are then subsequently thrashed around on winter race tracks all over France.

It's a whole lotta' fun!

Not only will this EV be competing against conventionally powered cars, it stands a decent chance of winning. Last year the 2nd version of the Andros car won the final event of the year. The 3rd iteration (pictured above) should be even better.

And starting in 2009, there will be a 100% electric class featuring 10 of these cars competing.

Finally, there is also an electric bike, the Quantya, competing in the 2 wheeled class of the Andros Trophy.

Two video's of the Andros Car 03, as well as the Quantya bike can be seen HERE as well as HERE.

As a passionate motorsports fan I have to admit that I have a hard time dealing with the lack of noise... part of racing is the awesome sound of a high performance engine but even so, I'm eager to see EVs shed their laughable sterotype - that of being slow, ugly, micro-cars that look like they belong on golf courses and retirement community driveways instead of the real road - and really start to show that they can perform.