The Buckeye Bullet Electric Vehicle Will Go 400 MPH (preview)

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Few petroleum-powered cars have ever surpassed 400 miles per hour. Now a group of students plans to do it in an electric vehicle

By Gregory Mone

Electric Flash: The Buckeye Bullet 2.5 hit 307 miles per hour on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in 2010. Image: COURTESY OF BARRY HATHAWAY AND THE CENTER FOR AUTOMOTIVE RESEARCH, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

In Brief

• The Buckeye Bullet team at Ohio State University is building what it hopes will be the first electric vehicle to break 400 miles per hour, something only nine gas-powered cars have done.
• Earlier iterations of the vehicle have already set electric-vehicle speed records, but crossing to 400 mph requires that the team invent solutions to a host of engineering problems.
• Among the challenges: generating enough power from the four electric motors, tweaking the aerodynamics to keep the car fast but stable, and making sure the tires don't blow apart.
• If all goes as planned, the team will make its attempts at breaking the 400-mph barrier during test runs this coming September on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats.

As he was walking to a math class during his freshman year at Ohio State University, R. J. Kromer spotted a poster for a student-run team designing a fuel-cell-powered car. He had never built anything more complex than Lego-based robot kits, but he sent an e-mail to the group asking to join anyway. To his surprise, the team members responded immediately. ?I thought there would be all kinds of requirements,? Kromer recalls, ?but they said, ?No, just show up.??

So Kromer headed over to the team's work space at the school's Center for Automotive Research (CAR). He quickly learned that the unique tribe of mostly baby-faced engineers behind the Buckeye Bullet vehicles, a series of world-record-breaking alternative-fuel cars, planned to test his dedication first. Kromer started out in the engineering equivalent of the mail room. For the first few months he was mostly sweeping the shop or arranging and organizing various tools and spare parts. Between custodial tasks, though, senior team members started teaching him about wiring, control systems, and more. Soon he was learning more in the shop than he was in class. The next year two seniors graduated, and Kromer was in charge of electrical engineering. ?It turns out if you're willing to not sleep, you can pick up on things pretty fast,? he says.

This article was originally published with the title The Battery-Powered Bullet.

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