Take YASA P400 motors and an Xtrac P1227 lightweight transmission and the considerable expertise of Williams Advanced Engineering and build upon their FW-EVX rolling chassis.
Williams has wrapped up its expertise from designing and making carbonfibre racing cars, the batteries for Formula E and YASA P400 e-motors, into the FW-EVX. It’s a rolling chassis that could be used by an existing or start-up car brand. The end result should be an EV that would have a combination of power, range and light weight that none of the big players have managed or expect to manage.
The weight is the really impressive bit. What you see here, the chassis with batteries, motors and electronics, even the wheels and tyres, is 955kg. Williams says it can do a vehicle the size of a BMW M4 for 1750kg.
That’s with the three YASA motors, giving a total power of 480kW, or 652bhp. Which is more power than a top-end Tesla Model S P100D,
The gains come from system integration. Like a racing car everything has been designed to work together. The main sills don’t only co-depend on the battery modules for structure, they cool them too.
Because it’s light, it’s efficient, and so Williams says it can do 343 miles on the official test cycle with just an 80kWh battery. That’s usefully beyond the ‘500km’ that most European premium makers are aiming at.
