The Prius Setes New Landspeed Record At Booneville

[Sportivo Concepts]

Yes, there is a hybrid-car land-speed record, and the "Prius Greensport" owns it. In August, a small team of Toyota Associates and a Car and Driver writer arrived at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to see just how fast Prius would go. The Bonneville environment is challenging: hot, dry and high in altitude. It is naturally paved with a flat bed of salt that stretches for miles, in what was an ancient salt lake.

The Prius hit the measured mile at 130 mph, crested 131 a quarter of the way through, and exited the back door around 129. The official speed: 130.794 mph. Thunderstorms rolled in before even larger tires could be tested, but the car went 134.339 with its seams and lower grille taped up, an illegal modification in a production class but okay for a car with no class.







Damn'it Toyota beat me to it, well now i know what I need to strive for,


(more pics)

[dna59]

Whoa that's sick. I surely wouldn't have thought a prius would do that. I wonder what would have been the difference with the larger tires.

[Sportivo Concepts]

I know when they was running with a stagger tire set-up(19/20, 20/21) it threw the computer off big time, at one point the car would not start at all, then they lost traction control due to what the computer was reading from the sensors.

They wanted to use 21/23 but thats when the rainstorm hit.

[Squidward]

Originally posted by dna59
Whoa that's sick. I surely wouldn't have thought a prius would do that. I wonder what would have been the difference with the larger tires.

The larger tires effectively give the car a taller gear ratio which would increase the top speed.

I wonder what they have done to the Prius to get it to go that fast? From the pictures it looks like either a fire suppresant system or a NOS tank.

[Sportivo Concepts]

thats a fire extquinisher (sp?), all they really did was reprogram the electric motor and ecu.......

[Squidward]

Yeah, that was what I thought.

I guess I'll need to keep my eyes open for Prius with taped seams...

[Piddy]

I read that C&D article. They had to push the Prius with a truck up to 40mph before the car actually went on it's own to preserve the battery life. The car couldn't get up to that speed with the alloted 'juice' in the batteries.... oh well .... it still got there.

[Sportivo Concepts]

alot of cars get the push/pull jumpstart, including a couple of rocket cars

[TrafficInLA]

So what kind of mileage did it get at that speed?