How About:Energy is helping McMurtry take on electric track records

Two years ago, the all-electric McMurtry Spéirling fan car shattered the Goodwood Festival of Speed’s hill climb record, clocking a time of 39.08 seconds. The hair-raising run shaved more than two seconds off the previous time, set by a Formula 1 McLaren in 1999. In the wake of its Goodwood success, McMurtry is now on the cusp of launching the Spéirling Pure, a track-ready version available to the public for a cool £1 million.

Needless to say, battery performance is fundamental to McMurtry’s endeavours. As well as powering the Pure’s 1000 bhp (745kW) peak output, its battery pack also serves the ‘Downforce-on-Demand’ fan system, enabling the vehicle’s incredible cornering speed. On top of this, the pack needs to be able to rapidly recharge so that a day out at the track doesn’t involve waiting around for hours in between each face-melting run.

So far, the various iterations of the Spéirling have been powered by the P45B, a high-performance lithium-ion cell manufactured by Taiwan’s Molicel. Production models of the Pure, however, are set to be equipped with Molicel’s follow up, the P50B, a 5.0Ah 21700 form factor cell, claimed to have one of the highest power densities in the world at 260Wh/kg.