The madlads did it: world’s fastest EV drives upside-down & beat an F1 car, too
The McMurtry Speirling, a tiny 1,000hp electric racecar known for smashing records, has now broken two new records in the same day, smashing a 20-year record at Top Gear’s test track and becoming the first(*) car to drive upside down.
The McMurtry Speirling is an interesting concept. Rather than working like the vast majority of other cars do, which simply send power to the wheels to drive the car forward, the Speirling sends some of its power to giant fans that suck air out from under the car, creating a vacuum effect.
At first glance this seems like a strange idea – why would you want to devote effort to pushing your car down, rather than forward?
What this does is increase the car’s apparent weight without increasing its mass. This means that the tires push down to the ground, sticking better, and giving you more contact patch to turn, accelerate or brake the vehicle. But since the car’s actual mass hasn’t increased, it isn’t any harder to accelerate in any direction – so you can just go faster.
Most cars approach this concept by adding wings and other aerodynamic elements to the car to increase “aerodynamic grip,” channeling air upwards as the car increases in speed.
Some cars approach this more aggressively than others – Formula One vehicles, for example, have obscenely large aerodynamic elements all around the vehicles, giving them incredible grip at high speed. Engineers have long bragged that F1 cars could drive upside down, at top speed, where they produce more than 1G worth of downforce… the only problem would be getting there, because they produce less downforce at lower speeds due to their use of traditional aerodynamic elements.
But these traditional aerodynamic features vary in their “aerodynamic efficiency,” because if you’re pushing air upwards, that means you’re applying force to something other than making the car go forward, which adds drag and slows you down (overall, you still go faster – but not as much faster as you could without drag).
There’s only so much aerodynamically efficient work you can do with traditional aerodynamic elements, generally via lowering ride heights and adding diffusers or other underbody elements that help to keep air moving smoothly under the vehicle, thus lowering air pressure and turbulence underneath.
So, the goal is to try to find as much downforce as you can in the most aerodynamically efficient way, and to have as much of that downforce working at lower speeds as you can. And there’s one idea that can do this, which has gotten a little bit of play in the past, and that the McMurtry Speirling uses to great effect today: a “fan car.”
The fan car concept has existed in motorsport since the 1970s, first appearing with the Chaparral 2J, a boxy monstrosity which competed in 1970 but was outlawed from competition due to its obscene aerodynamic advantages. Later, Brabham brought a fan car to F1 in 1978 and won its first race by a huge margin, but the concept was also immediately banned from competition there.
By sucking air out from under the vehicle, it creates a low-pressure area underneath the car, which is then pushed downwards by higher-pressure air from above. To make this effect work, the Speirling has incredibly low ride height and side skirts around the vehicle, letting little air in to spoil the vacuum pressure it’s creating underneath the car.
The net effect is that McMurtry says the Speirling can create 2,000kg of downforce on a 1,000kg car – adding double the car’s apparent weight without a change in mass. So not only can it stick to the ground better, it could even theoretically do it upside down ( or maybe not so theoretically – more on that in a minute).
Besides making a lot of noise (100dB) and spewing a lot of dust out the back and making an electric car look like it has an exhaust – what this does is it lets the Speirling completely annihilate every car ever on several tracks it has appeared on. See our previous reporting on how it smashed the record at Goodwood in 2022 (including a bonkers video of it looking like a slot car as it does so). It’s also capable of going 0-60 in 1.4 seconds, which is much quicker than what traction limits normal cars to.
McMurtry added another track to its list today, setting a 0:55.9 second lap around Top Gear’s test track, a repurposed airport runway which has been used by the show to compare the laptimes of many vehicles over the year. The previous 59-second record was owned by Renault’s F1 car from 2004, the only car to ever drive a sub-minute lap around the track, and the Speirling’s time is 13 seconds quicker than the fastest road-legal car to take the track, the Aston Martin Valkyrie.
This also beats the fastest electric car around the track, the Ford SuperVan, a heavily modified Ford eTransit which we’ve covered winning performances of before. The SuperVan did the track in 1:05.3, so the Speirling is almost a full ten seconds faster. (We’d love to see what Top Gear could do with a Lotus Evija, though)
But that’s not the only record the Speirling set today. For some reason, the company decided to announce two records on the same day, with the latter being one that makes the dream of “a car that can drive upside down” a reality for the first time ever.
There’s a bit of an asterisk on that, because a similar stunt has been done before when Hot Wheels created a real-life loop-de-loop and two rally drivers drove their cars around it, thus driving upside down for a moment. But those cars didn’t actually sustain upside-down driving for any period of time, merely used momentum to get there (not to say it isn’t an awesome stunt).
The Speirling, instead, managed to rotate upside down and stay there for a full ten seconds, during which it accelerated and then stopped, showing that control of the vehicle is possible even while upside down. In contrast, the rally cars in the Hot Wheels stunt would have had zero control over the vehicle at the zenith of the loop since there are no upward forces acting on the car at that moment.
The stunt is unfortunately less impressive than we’d like to see – imagine how cool it would be to see the car driving at high speed while upside down – but given it was a world-first attempt, that building an actual upside down road and a method to get the car onto it would be quite difficult and expensive, and that there’s an actual driver inside whose safety needs to be taken into account, we understand the need for caution here.
Nevertheless, it’s bonkers to see a car, that thing that you see every day planted firmly onto the ground where it belongs, doing exactly 180º opposite of what it’s always been doing every other time you’ve seen it.
So now, that old idea about whether a high-downforce car can drive upside down is no longer theory, it’s reality. It may not have gone far or fast, but it did go, completely under its own power, completely upside down.
McMurtry says that it would like to go further from here – the company called this a “proof of concept” and “perhaps just the beginning of what’s possible.” “With a longer inverted track or a suitable tunnel, we may be able to drive even further,” said co-founder Thomas Yates today.
So… stay tuned for more?
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Watch the world’s quickest electric car drive upside-down in a world first
Watch the world’s quickest EV beat an F1 car and then drive upside-down
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Ford is jumping into the battery energy storage business, betting that booming demand from data centers and the electric grid can absorb the EV battery capacity it says it’s not using.
To achieve this, Ford plans to repurpose its existing EV battery manufacturing capacity in Glendale, Kentucky, into a dedicated hub for manufacturing battery energy storage systems.
Ford pivots from EVs to battery storage for data centers
Ford says it will invest about $2 billion over the next two years to scale the new business. The Kentucky site will be converted to build advanced battery energy storage systems larger than 5 megawatt-hours, including LFP prismatic cells, BESS modules, and 20-foot DC container systems — the kind of hardware increasingly used by data centers, utilities, and large-scale industrial companies.
The company plans to bring initial production online within 18 months, leaning on its manufacturing experience and licensed battery technology. By late 2027, Ford expects the business to deploy at least 20 gigawatt-hours of energy storage annually.
The move follows a joint venture disposition agreement reached last week between Ford, SK On, SK Battery America, and BlueOval SK. Under the agreement, a Ford subsidiary will independently own and operate the Kentucky battery plants, while SK On will fully own and operate the Tennessee battery plant.
Ford is also planning a separate energy storage play in Michigan. At BlueOval Battery Park Michigan in Marshall, the company will produce smaller amp-hour LFP prismatic cells for residential energy storage systems. That plant is on track to begin manufacturing in 2026, and it will also supply batteries for Ford’s upcoming midsize electric truck — the first model built on the company’s new Universal EV Platform.
Electrek’s Take
Overall, the shift reflects Ford’s broader push toward what it calls “higher-return opportunities.” Alongside taking a step backward to add more gas-powered trucks and vans to its US manufacturing footprint, Ford says it will no longer produce some larger EVs, such as the Lightning F-150, where softer demand and higher costs are resulting from the lack of support for EVs by the Trump administration. (Batteries produced at the Glendale plant were for the all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning. The best-selling electric truck in the US in Q3, before the federal tax credit expired, was the Ford F-150 Lightning, with 10,005 EVs sold, a 39.7% year-over-year increase.)
With tax credits eliminated and regulatory uncertainty, Ford is pivoting to adjacent markets, including grid-scale and residential energy storage, to keep its battery plants running and justify billions in sunk investment.
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Stellantis may have backed away from planned EVs like the all-electric Ram REV and range-topping Dodge Charger Daytona R/T EV, but the company isn’t standing still. A newly awarded patent outlines an innovative, foam-based thermal runaway suppression system that’s built into an EV’s battery pack.
The indisputable fact of the matter is that electric vehicles catch fire far less often — and far less frequently — than their combustion-powered brethren. Still, a number of highly-publicized early Tesla fires and poorly managed recall on the first-gen Chevy Bolt have linked “electric car” and “fire” in the minds of many Americans, and the ones who have been waiting to test the EV waters until a better safety solution came along are going to absolutely love this latest setup from Chrysler parent company Stellantis.
MoparInsiders is reporting on a new Stellantis patent awarded on a proactive battery safety system that’s designed to stop thermal runaway (read: fire) before it can cascade through an entire EV battery pack.
Rather than relying solely on passive barriers or post-event containment, Stellantis’ freshly patented system uses strategically placed foam channels and deployment mechanisms that can flood the affected cells with high insulation foam when abnormal heat is detected in a cell, isolating the problem area and dramatically slowing (if not outright stopping) the chain reaction that leads to catastrophic battery failure.
The patent describes an electric car battery that, on the outside, will look familiar to EV enthusiasts, but there are some key differences “layered in” around the familiar bits. These include:
- A bladder filled with a fire-retardant chemical; located close to the battery cells, typically between the cells and the top of the pack. It’s made from a flexible polymer, so it can be punctured when needed
- Two sets of blades; the first aimed at the bladder, ready to pierce it and release the fire-retardant chemical while the second targets specific points on the coolant inlet line, outlet line, or heat sinks to rupture them and release cooling foam directly where it’s needed
- Special coolant line sections; designed with small sealed apertures that closed off with a soft plug material that’s easy for the blades to pierce but strong enough to maintain pressure during normal operation
- Actuation devices tied to a controller; that push the blades into the bladder and coolant components when a thermal event is detected
Special coolant lines
The system relies on a suite of existing temperature sensors throughout the battery pack, and seems like a viable enough solution to a problem that, while rare, certainly exists — and which looms large over America’s Early Majority tech adopters.
As for me, I think Stellantis should focus on bringing more compelling products to market and stop looking for ways to blame the customer, market, and government for its inability to sell Jeep products that, apparently, have enough markup to cover nearly $30,000 in discounts to help dealers move their metal. I look forward to hearing about your take in the comments.
SOURCE | IMAGES: US Patent Office, via MoparInsiders.
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It’s official. The all-electric pickup is dead, but Ford is promising the F-150 Lightning EREV will be “every bit as revolutionary” as it shakes up EV plans once again.
Ford reveals next-gen F-150 Lightning EREV
Ford confirmed production of the current F-150 Lightning has ended as part of its updated Ford+ plan, which the company revealed on Monday.
The changes come as part of a broader shift from larger EVs, like the Lightning, to smaller, more affordable models.
While Ford still plans to launch lower-cost EVs based on its Universal EV Platform, the company is expanding its hybrid and extended range electric vehicle (EREV) lineup. By 2030, Ford expects 50% of its global volume to be hybrids, EREVs, and EVs, up from 17% in 2025.
As part of its new plans, Ford said the next-generation F-150 Lightning will switch to an EREV powertrain. It will be assembled at the Rouge EV Center in Dearborn, Michigan, replacing the current all-electric pickup.
With production of the current-generation Lightning now concluded, Ford is sending workers from the Rouge EV Center to its Dearborn Truck Plant as it doubles down on gas and hybrids.
During its Q3 earnings call last month, Ford said the electric pickup would remain paused following a fire at Novelis’ plant in New York that disrupted aluminum supply.
The F-150 Lightning is a “groundbreaking” vehicle, according to Doug Field, Ford’s chief EV, digital, and design officer, that showed an electric pickup can be a great F-Series.
Field claims the “next-generation Lightning EREV is every bit as revolutionary.” It will still offer 100% electric power delivery, sub-5-second acceleration, an estimated combined range of 700+ miles, and it “tows like a locomotive.”
Ford also plans to replace its electric commercial van for North America with affordable gas- and hybrid-powered versions. It will be assembled at Ford’s Ohio Assembly Plant.
The move comes as part of Ford’s plans to launch five new affordable vehicles by the end of the decade, four of which will be assembled in the US. Ford also plans to offer gas, hybrid, and EREV options across nearly every vehicle in its lineup by then.
The first vehicle based on Ford’s new Universal EV Platform will be a midsize electric pickup, starting at around $30,000. It’s expected to be about the size of the Ranger or Maverick.
The news comes after SK On announced last week that it planned to end its joint venture with Ford to build EV batteries at three US gigafactories.
Ford is now planning to use the wholly owned EV battery plants in Kentucky and Michigan to launch a new battery energy storage business. The company plans to begin shipping BESS systems in 2027, with an annual capacity of 20 GWh.
“The operating reality has changed, and we are redeploying capital into higher-return growth opportunities: Ford Pro, our market-leading trucks and vans, hybrids, and high-margin opportunities like our new battery energy storage business,” CEO Jim Farley said on Monday.
The changes are designed to improve profitability and returns. Ford’s EV business, Model e, is now expected to reach profitability by 2029 with improvements in 2026.
Model e lost another $1.4 billion in Q3, bringing the total to $3.6 billion through September. Around $3 billion was due to its current EVs, while the other $600 million was spent on its next-gen models.
Although sales of the F-150 Lightning dropped 60.8% last month following the expiration of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, Ford’s electric pickup remained the best-selling pickup in the US through September.
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