Paddon’s e-rally car ready shortly

Kiwi rally driver Hayden Paddon is set to drive his ground-breaking electric rally car in September.

He says the first roll-out is expected in about three weeks.

It’s based on a Hyundai Kona EV with Paddon and his Cromwell-based team working on the project for two years, expecting to launch the car late October or early November following some private testing.

After the initial idea came together in 2017, a group of some of the brightest young engineers and technicians was formed in late 2018 to begin the project to construct one of the first EV rally cars in the world, Paddon Rallysport Group says.

Paddon revealed the electric rally car a year ago, the story featuring in EVs and Beyond in September 2019.

He and the team have been working with Stohl Advanced Research and Development (STARD) in Austria, the University of Canterbury, Hyundai New Zealand, and others to get the e-rally car ready.

Paddon reckons rallying will follow other motorsport like Formula E into electric racing in a few years as the drive for alternative fuels increases.

He says the e-rally car has been developed almost from scratch and he hopes to do some demonstration drives in October before having an eight-month development programme to sort out any bugs and fine tune performance.

The e-rally car was initially planned to be ready for competing in the New Zealand Rally Championship in 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the extensive EV development work needed may see that pushed out to 2022.