HICKORY MOTOR SPEEDWAY A GREEN FLAG FOR CLEAN POWER: NASCAR UNVEILS ITS FIRST ELECTRIC RACECAR

Part of the experience of a NASCAR race is hearing the engine roar, the rumble of each car’s approach and the zip when it whizzes past at more than 150 mph.

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NASCAR unveiled its first electric racecar last weekend in downtown Chicago, but it doesn’t thunder when the grand marshal says “drivers, start your engines.”

It hums.

The top motorsports series in North America partnered with Chevrolet, Ford, Toyota and electrification company ABB to demonstrate a high-performance electric vehicle and gauge fan interest in electric racing.

They want to represent electric vehicles, and more broadly electrification, in racing as cool, fun and accessible, said Riley Nelson, NASCAR’s head of sustainability.

The media got a first look at the $1.5 million prototype. The only person who has driven it so far is semi-retired NASCAR driver David Ragan. The plan is to put the car on the Chicago street course for some fast laps on Sunday morning.

Ragan said the sound and smell were unlike anything he has experienced since first hitting the racetrack at age 11. He could hear squealing tires. He could smell the brakes. In gasolinepowered cars, the engine’s sound and smell and heat from the exhaust overpower everything else. But after hundreds of laps, this time Ragan’s ears weren’t ringing. It was really wild, he said.

Unlike typical sports coupes, the new car is actually a crossover utility vehicle. A huge wing on the back makes it aerodynamic enough to be a racecar.

It accelerates almost twice as fast as top gas-powered racecars and can stop almost immediately. But its lap time at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia was two-tenths of a second slower because it takes the corners slower due to being heavier. Ragan said it may go even faster; he wasn’t pushing the one-of-a-kind vehicle to its limits. Risk-taking is for racing, not testing, he said.