Sanyo recently announced its official entry into the Guinness World Records. It comes courtesy of the company’s new lithium-ion array, which they used on a Daihatsu Mira EV to travel 345 miles on a single charge.
The record-setting journey was made back in November of last year, when Sanyo’s battery car solution powered the Mira on a trip from Tokyo to Osaka. Just in case you were wondering, there’s no Mira EV on the market yet. The car in question was custom-modded to go from gas-sipping compact to a full-fledged electric car by the Japan EV Club.
Did Sanyo use revolutionary new battery tech to achieve it? Hmmm…not really. Instead, they just used tons and tons of 18650-type cylindrical lithium ion panels – 8,320 pieces of it, to be exact. It has a rating of 240.5V, with an approximate total energy of 50kWh. As a comparison, the market-setting Tesla Roadster used 6,831 similar batteries.
Of course, the Mira is already an economical car to begin with. Add to that the likelihood that whoever drove it was doing serious hypermiling and you can get a good picture of how they did so well. Still, that’s the longest distance ever traveled on an electric car and remains an impressive feat, bringing us closer to a future of diminishing dependence on fuel for our daily travels.
[Sanyo via Crunch Gear]