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[h=2]Why is Panoz going electric?[/h] Tuesday, 27 June 2017


Stephen Kilbey / Images by Panoz; Bloxham/LAT




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While much of the focus on electric power in Le Mans last week followed the announcement of the LMP1 2020 regulations and the planned introduction of plug-in hybrid technology to the LMP1 class, Don Panoz also turned heads when he took the wraps off his latest project.
As soon as next year, Panoz, along with a new company Green4U, is aiming to bring a fully-electric GT car – dubbed the GT-EV – to the race. The GT-EV will not be able to compete as a GTE car in the race, but will instead be entered under the Garage 56 banner, taking advantage of the ACO's provision for one technically innovative car to join the field each year without being restricted by the current regulations.
Garage 56 cars are not counted in the results, so the GT-EV will not be in the running for WEC points or a place in the overall rankings. But if it does compete, it will be a public showcase of what Panoz hopes is a revolution in sportscar racing, pioneered by his current plans.
"We're the candidate for Garage 56 next year, and as far as I know, the ACO doesn't have any other candidates," Panoz told RACER. "It's up to them to decide, though. But we've gone ahead and done all the design work with [automobile design consultant] Peter Stevens, and our engineers have been working together to get the package."
The car, which features a tandem cockpit, a low-drag body and a swappable battery pack, should enable the car to run at GTE pace for around 50-minute stints during the race.
It's an ambitious plan. Panoz hopes to have the car running by next February. Before that though, the choice of which battery technology to use looms large.
"We're doing some new stuff with hybrid battery packs, which is what we filed patents on about a month ago," Panoz explains.
"Hybrid battery packs are batteries with different personalities. Lithium ion takes about four hours to charge, and it absorbs energy very slowly. Whereas, a chemistry like lithium titanate, you can get to a full charge from complete depletion in six minutes. The difference there is that that output on energy is lower. So if you design the system so that it can use the best part of each battery's personality for the car, it's the best solution.
"For example, because titanate can recharge so quickly, it absorbs energy quickly. If you recover under braking, you use lithium ion and get about six percent efficiency. If you use titanate, you get six times that.
"It takes about 15 seconds to get to 150 miles an hour in an EV car, so if you brake at Mulsanne corner in about three seconds, lithium can't be effective with that – but titanate can recuperate energy under braking and use it quickly. Then lithium ion can carry the car through after the corner."

In order to pull this plan off, Panoz has partnered up with Green4U technologies, which has since merged with Panoz Motorsports ahead of this potential Le Mans birth.
Green4U specializes in fleet vehicles, and is attempting to carve out a niche in the booming electric vehicle market. It won't invest in battery technology, or even in-house road car development, for the most part. Instead, it aims to take 18 different standard vehicles, and convert them into electric vehicles using different battery technologies from other partners, along with its own packaging and solutions. Its product line will cover everything from an ambulance, to a school bus, to a military armored van.
Racing is not part of Green4U's CEO, Jack Perkowski's background, but he has bought into it since meeting Don Panoz a year ago, and thinks that his company's business model sits will with a racing program.
"Nobody else is focused on the fleets, everyone else wants to be the next Telsa," he tells RACER. "In order to focus on fleets, you can't just have one or two models. You need sedans, pickup trucks. We'll take the cars, then we'll add our own technology for the chassis and powertrain. We can then create batches of vehicles that would be considered too low a volume by the OEMs.
"By putting the Green4U concept by leveraging places like China, with the experience that Don and the team have had in Georgia with building and designing high performance cars... basically you put those two together; you can implement a strategy.
"Don has kept the whole racing heritage in this move, and to me, that's a priority for our business. Like all the companies that come to Le Mans, have learned over the years that if you can be successful on the racing circuit, what that tells the users is, you're at the cutting edge of technology."
In addition, Perkowski explains that next year's program with GT-EV, is the beginning of a long-term racing commitment from Panoz and Green4U.
"We're newcomers to the industry," he said. "But if all of a sudden we're racing that car in endurance races and are stacking up well against famous internal combustion-powered vehicles, then that gives us a real stamp of approval for the tech and innovation.
"That's one aspect. Maybe more important in a relatively short period of time is needing to come up with the battery tech to do what Don says, to go 50 minutes on one charge. To design the whole powertrain really helps push us to look around the world for the best technology we can find. That will then carry on into the Green4U vehicles.
"We see this Le Mans program as part of our long-term strategy. If you think about it, a new company like ours in the EV business... what other company has a strategy that has the infrastructure of building high performance vehicles, and a race team with heritage? It makes us a unique company, and we see racing as a core part of our strategy going forward.
"One of the reasons we're at this inflection point is, over the last five years, technology costs have come down substantially, battery tech is 20 percent [better than] what it was five years ago. As we go forward, there will be a lot of new technologies developed that will help improve the performance of EVs. Having an active racing program that's constantly pushing tech to the limits will make sure we're at the cutting edge of those technological developments."

Should Panoz and Green4U not be granted an entry to the Le Mans 24 Hours next year though, Don Panoz believes that there will be plenty of other opportunities to race the car elsewhere. He hasn't ruled out a multiple-race program for next year either.
"We're gonna race this car," he stressed to RACER. "We'd like it to be Garage 56 ¬ I think I've been the only one to live up to it so far with the Deltawing. [ED: Panoz's DeltaWing was the first Garage 56 entry in 2012, ABOVE]. There's a lot of other races that would love to have this car in it though. It won't run for points, but they would love the attraction of an all-EV sportscar. It could run at the Nürburgring, Spa, Daytona, Sebring, wherever.
"We're going to build it, and we're going to race it. We could do multiple races; we need to look at that. I think after Le Mans next year we'll probably go to Goodwood, it's going there as a show car this year. It's like Field of Dreams: build it, and they will come!"
The GT-EV is also being developed as a road car, which will use the same technology as the race car, albeit with a lower level of performance to boost its range, and a rechargeable battery instead of a swappable one. Panoz aims to sell more than 100 of those as a premium fully-electric sports car.
If this project succeeds, it could pave the way for further advancements in endurance racing for the future.
Unlike the other electric racing developments elsewhere such as Formula E and the Electric GT Championship, Panoz believes that racing at Le Mans is still the Holy Grail for showing off new technology.
"I think this is a challenge that nobody else has met," Panoz says. "What was the first advertisement you saw when you walked down the hallway to get to this room? 'Toyota Hybrid'. Well, we're going to make that obsolete."

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