EXCLUSIVE: This is the Ariel Hipercar - a 1180bhp electrified coupe with a staggering 1342lb ft of torque - and we were among the first to drive it! ⚡ Read our exclusive first drive now - you won't want to miss it...
The Ariel brand has had two starkly different historical phases. It was established in 1870 by ‘pennyfarthing’ bicycle pioneers James Starley and William Hillman , but by 1902 it was making motorcycles. These thrived at first but, like many British brands, their fortunes faded in the 1950s and 1960s in the face of Japanese competition.
“Preserving the environment is something we should all care about,” he says. “It’s only right that Ariel should do its bit.”Simon Saunders and Ariel first started thinking about an EV nearly 20 years ago, when a customer – a founder of Tesla, as it turned out – set out to electrify an Atom.The car was good, but compared with the regular petrol-powered Atom 2, it was heavy and very expensive. And slower. “We learned a lot,” says Saunders, “but mainly that this wasn’t the way to go.
The new car’s required properties soon became clear. It was going to be more expensive, so it needed to be faster than an Atom. It needed to push existing EV technology to the limit – even though there were few ready-made components or suppliers for such cars, and very little existing infrastructure. The Hipercar would need stellar circuit performance but it would also need respectable endurance, difficult to provide for a car with so much performance.
Besides, calculations of his own and by suspension consultant Richard Hurdwell indicated that the aluminium-versus-carbon weight saving would be small. The suspension is double wishbones with outboard coilover units and anti-roll at either end, and the brakes are large AP Racing discs, although, as with most EVs, retardation is greatly assisted by regenerative braking.
As our main story shows, the acceleration is extraordinary, limited mostly by wheelspin in the test phase even though the car already has an electronic traction control mechanism while a more advanced torque vectoring system is developed. “Some people think that engineering an EV is easy,” he says, “but we’ve learned that it can be extremely complex. But we’re proud of what we’ve achieved, and we reckon it can have a big future. Hipercar is go!”After two development stages, concept and prototype, the Ariel Hipercar is poised to begin its vital third phase: production.
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