It’s claimed that the base level of the upcoming second-generation Tesla Roadster will do 0-60 mph in 1.9 seconds, but could a radio-controlled (RC) car do better? That’s the question YouTube channel Engineering After Hours explored, continually modding and tweaking a vehicle in its attempts to do so. The answer, ultimately, was an emphatic yes, although topping the newly announced 1.1-second 0-60 mph time of the Roadster with the ‘SpaceX package’ will need a little more work.
The Roadster 2nd-gen was announced in 2017 and is due for a delayed release in 2022. Hitting 60 mph from a standstill in 1.9 seconds would be a record for a production car, according to Zeroto60Times.com. As such, for Engineering After Hours to beat it meant creating one of the fastest electric cars (of sorts) in the world.
To achieve the goals, the Engineering After Hours needed to give the car 2,400 watts of power to turn its two-inch wheels at 5,042 revs per minute and generate over 2G of force. The best result was a true 0-60 mph time of 1.73 seconds, which dropped to 1.46 seconds when factoring in the same rollout time that Tesla does.
The Problems Faced In Beating The Tesla Roadster
The main problem with trying to beat the Roadster’s 1.9-second 0-60 mph time was that sending so much power to the RC car’s wheels simply made them spin as there wasn’t enough traction. To solve this, the RC car was fitted with two electric jet fans that created downforce, pulling the car to the ground to provide traction and control and stopping it from flipping over. This was inspired by Gordon Murray’s 1978 Brabham BT46B Formula One ‘fan car.’
The fans caused their own problems, though, with the strain placed on the car’s components meaning some broke and needed upgrading. Track smoothness also caused an issue, as it does with speed tests for full-sized cars. Of course, those issues are magnified when the wheels are only two inches in diameter.
The biggest problem, however, was when Tesla inadvertently moved the goalposts from a 1.9-second 0-60 mph time for the Roadster to a 1.1-second time. Engineering After Hours thinks it’s beatable, though, commenting: “I’ll need a new motor/esc combo to fully get there and that’s a couple hundred… but I know it’s possible to beat the 1.1s with a rollout… maybe even straight up.”
Sources: Engineering After Hours/YouTube, Zeroto60Times.com
