VW aims for the sky with electric Pikes Peak challenger

20th March 2018

Bob Murray

Volkswagen has unveiled its electric car to challenge for the title in the infamous Race to the Clouds at Pike’s Peak in Colorado. It’s a smooth-bodied, single-seater, closed-cockpit machine with a giant rear wing – plenty of downforce always a good thing when you are attempting to drive flat-out for 12 and a half miles (20km) up the side of a mountain to a peak 4300m above sea level… in under nine minutes.

The record attempt will be part of the Pikes Peak hillclimb which this year gets under way on 24 June. VW’s involvement aims not just to get into the record books but also to act as a high-profile sporting introduction to VW’s coming new ID family of electric cars. VW has pledged to have 20 fully electric machines in the showrooms by 2025.

The battery-powered racer, called ID R Pikes Peak, also promises to result in new sporty R models developed with Volkswagen Motorsport, the competition arm having worked with VW to develop the Pike’s Peak car. It’s not a natural name, ID R, but in time it’s likely to mean as much as GTI for driving enthusiasts.

We don’t know much more about ID R Pikes Peak, though in the past VW has said it’s all-wheel drive and features innovative battery and drive technology.

VW has history at Pikes Peak, narrowly missing out on the record with a 650bhp twin-engined Golf in 1987. To take the prize this year it will be competing in the electric prototype class where the ID R will need to beat the 8 minutes 57.118 seconds set in 2016 by Rhys Millen.

Electric cars have dominated at Pikes Peak in recent years – in 2015 all class honours went to battery vehicles – but they still have a way to go to beat the outright record of 8:13.878 set by Sebastien Loeb in the petrol-powered Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak.

Over the year Loeb’s formidable machine has been a great crowd-pleaser at FoS and we look forward to VW showing us what its ID R Pikes Peak can do – on our rather less hilly but still challenging Sussex race to the top!