Delphine Biscaye and her team at Venturi Automobiles want to more quickly integrate electric vehicles into society. Their method of development is optimizing efficiency and performance of electric vehicles through racing, hoping that as they optimize high speed vehicles the technology advances will trickle down to the vehicles of tomorrow.
Venturi is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to fund their September 2017 trip to the Bonneville Salt Flats that will attempt to attempt the electric speed world record. Along with their American educational partner the Ohio State University the team holds several world records in electric vehicle land speed through the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile. (List of Records - Category A is the document showing some of their records in the last few years in both the 1,500 to 2,000 kilogram and 3,500 to 4,000 kilogram categories.) Their current record in the lighter category is an astonishing 307 miles per hour speed.
This is the third vehicle to hold the name Buckeye Bullet, the first running on nickel metal hydride batteries in 2004, and Venturi Buckeye Bullet 2 that billed itself as the first hydrogen fuel cell land speed electric vehicle.
The Buckeye Bullet team says that their mission is to provide unique engineering challenges to the students of the Ohio State University, while proving that green technologies can be fun to drive and fast. This is an awesome educational opportunity for the students and a great example of corporate and academic teams working together to achieve a goal. Venturi's Kickstarter campaign will close on July 17, 2016.