Subaru has built a 1000-horsepower electric weapon

Monday, 17 January 2022

This is Subaru’s latest concept, and boy, were we not expecting it.

Subaru arrived at the Tokyo Auto Salon last week with something rather special – a 1043hp (800kW) electric racer.

Called the STI E-RA (Electric Record Attempt), the bonkers machine was developed as part of an in-house study looking into future technology for carbon-neutral racing.

Subaru wants to lap the Nurburgring in 400 seconds, or six minutes and forty seconds.

Evidently, racing in the future is ridiculously quick, given the E-RA houses four Yamaha-developed electric motors generating 200kW each, and the body features a huge front splitter and rear wing, along with a diffuser the size of a small house and a roof-mounted intake.

Mention which, the E-RA’s batteries have 60kWh of capacity, which might not sound like much compared to the 100kWh-plus units of some road-going cars, but remember that this doesn’t need to drive long distances. It needs to drive fast. We’d assume it has a high-voltage fast-charging system as well, but Subaru hasn’t said.

* Subaru preparing all-electric STI

Wonder if the Toyota GT3 Concept has any relation to the STI E-RA...

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The racer also has a new torque-vectoring system which can apply the “optimum drive torque' to each wheel as the load shifts. It uses signals from sensors in wheel speed, vehicle speed, steering angle, G-force, yaw rate, brake pressure, and wheel load to determine the drive or braking torque of each wheel to gain a target stability factor.

But more interesting is the possible relationship between the E-RA and Toyota’s recently revealed GT3 Concept. The two companies share a lot of parts and knowledge, so for both to reveal high-performance racers at the same event is notable.

While there are obvious differences that would set them apart – Subaru’s being all-electric versus Toyota’s supposed hybrid (but they haven’t revealed any actual details yet) – there’s a chance the underlying platform is the same, at least by eyeballing the provided images.

The wheelbase looks roughly identical and, if you move the greenhouse of the Toyota forward to match the Subaru, the overall shapes aren’t that dissimilar. Perhaps the two companies are working on a new racing-oriented halo platform?

You could also consider the fact that Yamaha also has history with Toyota, as well as producing the motors for the E-RA…

In any case, the E-RA’s four-motor layout is said to be included in the regulations for the future E-GT racing class, which means there’s a chance we could see the E-RA actually compete against other EVs, like the Porsche Mission R or Volkswagen’s ID.R from a few years ago, assuming VW can switch it from hillclimb mode to circuit racing.

Until then, Subaru wants to unleash its creation on the Nurburgring from 2023 onward, with a goal lap time of six minutes and 40 seconds, or 400 seconds. That’s as fast as a racing-spec Porsche GT2 RS.