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Electric VW Pikes Peak Car Gets a Name and a Shape

This June the Volkswagen I.D. R will attempt to set a record at Pikes Peak in the electric prototype class.

The car is designed to show what Volkswagen’s electric vision for the future can achieve and the Pikes Peak Hillclimb is one of the better places to do that since it already has an established electric class thanks to the electric-motor-favoring altitude.

“We want to be at the forefront of electro-mobility with Volkswagen and the I.D. family,” said Dr. Frank Welsch, head of Development for VW, in a statement. “Competing in the most famous hill climb in the world with the I.D. R Pikes Peak is a valuable test for the general development of electric cars.”

Along with the reveal of the name, VW has released a pair of pictures and confirmed, somewhat unsurprisingly, that the race car will be four-wheel-drive.

Volkswagen previously announced that Le Mans winner Romain Dumas will pilot the car to the peak. Dumas was recently featured in a press video receiving a racing suit from Jochi Kleint, who drove a twin-engine Golf (most of the way) up Pikes Peak in 1987.

“It is about time we settled the score,” said Sven Smeets, Volkswagen-Motorsports director in a statement. “The I.D. R Pikes Peak represents an extremely exciting challenge for us, to show what is possible in motorsport with an electric drivetrain. The entire team behind our driver Romain Dumas is highly motivated to set a new record for electric cars.”

When it heads to Colorado in June, VW will be chasing a time of 8:57.118, the record in the electric prototype class set by Rhys Millen in 2016.

The post Electric VW Pikes Peak Car Gets a Name and a Shape appeared first on VWVortex.



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