Zero to 62mph in 1.9sec: witness £2m Aspark Owl electric hypercar's wild acceleration
Silent flight
ELECTRIC CARS are often viewed as being sensible cars best suited to drivers who want to lower their fuel bills and do their bit for air pollution. But one Japanese car maker believes that the characteristics of electric motors makes them better for something entirely different: out-running the world’s fastest supercars.
Aspark, which revealed its new £2m Owl electric hypercar at the Frankfurt motor show, last autumn, has held informal performance tests to demonstrate how fast the two-seat, carbon-fibre electric car can accelerate.
It has released video footage of the Owl’s first test, and claims to have managed a 0-62mph acceleration run of just 1.92 seconds.
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The most amazing thing is that the Owl returns to zero before Aspark’s frighteningly short test track comes to an abrupt end.
Should the claims live up to scrutiny, it would mean the little-known manufacturer has outperformed all members of the so-called Holy Trinity – the Ferrari LaFerrari, McLaren P1 and Porsche 918 Spyder, tested here by Chris Harris.
It would also make it even faster than the claimed time for the new Tesla Roadster, announced in November, which is said to take the same time to get to 60mph. It was also recently captured on video running its own acceleration tests.
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Aspark is run by Masamichi Yoshida, a Japanese technology entrepreneur working in partnership with Ikeya Formula, a motor sport component manufacturer.
In the video, engineers strap down the front of the car, so the test driver can perform a ‘burnout’ of the rear tyres, which makes the slick racing tyres hot and sticky, to give maximum grip as the driver floors the throttle.
Because the Owl weighs just 860kg – about the same as a Lotus Elise – but boasts the equivalent of just under 900bhp and has four-wheel drive, its creators have one simple objective: accelerate from 0-62mph faster than any other supercar.
One record that is clearly documented is that set by the Academic Motorsports Club Zurich (AMZ). Its Grimsel pint-sized electric racing car has sprinted from 0-62mph in just 1.51 seconds, in a space of no more than 30 metres.
Impressively, the Grimsel is built by engineering students at ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences.
