Honda has announced that it will enter an all-electric NSX concept at the famous Pikes Peak International Hill Climb next weekend. The car will be piloted by Tetsuya Yamano, who campaigned last year’s Honda CR-Z-based electric prototype to its class win.
Motorsport has long been used as a development bed for emerging automotive technologies, and there are few tougher environments in which to test systems than Pikes Peak. The hill climb, based in Colorado, USA, is aptly nicknamed ‘Race to the Clouds’.
It runs almost 12.5 miles up the Pikes Peak mountain, starting at 9,390 ft (more than twice the height of Britain’s tallest mountain Ben Nevis) and finishing 156 turns later at the 14,115 ft summit. A number of difficulties make the run challenging, though electric cars have the benefit of not relying on low levels of oxygen at altitude that petrol-powered cars run. However, with harsh drops and tight corners, the run is a challenge for all entrants.
Running in the exhibition class will be the Honda NSX-based EV Concept. Using four electric motors, the car features Honda’s intelligent Super Handling All Wheel Drive (SH-AWD) system, which us effectively four-wheel torque vectoring. This new model features three times the output of last year’s electric prototype, and uses a number of features that appear on the road-going version of Honda’s forthcoming hybrid supercar.
