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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Global mining and construction equipment giant Liebherr recently rolled out its first-ever battery electric crawler excavator, setting a new standard in heavy earth-moving equipment capabilities with low noise levels and zero local emissions.
Liebherr has made headlines in the sustainability space with its massive electric haul trucks and stupefyingly quick 6MW cryo-cooled DC fast chargers, but its conventional mid-sized equipment lines haven’t electrified as quickly, leaning instead on hydrogen combustion and fuel cell efforts. That seems to be changing, however, with the launch of the 20-ton R 920 G8-E – the brand’s first-ever factory fresh HDEV.
The company’s official copy is characteristically low-key, with an emphasis on the facts and features instead of hype:
The new model completes the product range of Liebherr crawler excavators produced in Colmar (France). It is particularly quiet and emission-free. It generates the same output as a diesel machine in the same category and is particularly suitable for building sites that require low noise levels and avoiding exhaust gas emissions, such as in cities or underground operating locations.
Despite the lack of excitement in the release copy, there is a lot of excitement about the R 920 G8-E’s innovative new control cab philosophy.
Liebherr INTUSI controls
Dubbed INTUSI (for INTuitive USer Interface), the system integrates intelligent control logic with advanced machine learning capabilities to give operators a highly customizable interface that can follow them from asset to asset, from wheel loader to excavator to haul truck, dramatically flattening the learning curve for operators on a given job site.
Liebherr says INTUSI improves both operational efficiency and user comfort on Liebherr job sites through the integration of a number of new features. From the press release:
- Haptic feedback – vibrations alert the operator to critical conditions—such as reaching dynamic device limits—enhancing situational awareness and speeding up reaction times.
- Optical feedback – integrated RGB LEDs on the joystick provide real-time visual cues about device status and servo control, ensuring clear communication without distraction.
- Functional safety – control elements with status LEDs allow safe operation of critical functions—without requiring two-handed input—streamlining workflow while maintaining safety standards.
- Hand detection – capacitive proximity sensor detects the operator’s hand automatically, enabling seamless activation of controls only when needed.
- Display navigation – a mini-joystick embedded in the handle allows for quick and efficient navigation of the display interface, reducing the need to reach for external controls.
- Ergonomics – multi-stage handle height adjustment ensures optimal comfort and usability, adapting to different operator preferences and working conditions
In addition to the INTUSI-powered custom cockpit, the new Liebherr R 920 G8-E electric excavator ships with your choice of either a 188 or 282 kWh high capacity li-ion battery, which is capable of 150 kW DC fast charging. Fast enough, in other words, to power up the machine during shift changes, if needed.
Electrek’s Take
If the notion of a battery electric Liebherr excavator seems familiar, that’s because it should – the company first converted one of its ultramassive R9400 mining excavators last year, as a proof of concept co-developed with global mining giants Fortescue as they invest in new technology to decarbonize their mines.
Since then, Fortescue has used the machine to move millions of tons of dirt, and has ordered several more. And, because everything from excavators to loaders to heavy trucks are built to be powertrain agnostic, and manufacturers will often offer the same basic vehicle with Cummins, Detroit Diesel, or Volvo power, so there’s a degree of openness baked into those systems already. Liebherr is just taking that to the next level by installing an electric drive motor in place of an internal combustion engine, and I expect this excavator will be the first of many such machines from the brand.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Liebherr.
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Rivian has posted a job listing for a steering engineer, specifically mentioning work on a future steer-by-wire system for the company.
Steer-by-wire is an automotive concept that has been around for a long time, but hasn’t yet reached mass adoption. The idea is to replace (or supplement) mechanical linkages between the steering wheel and the wheels with electronic actuators instead.
There are a number of potential benefits to this, like allowing more customizability or adaptability to a steering system, reducing mechanical complexity, or adding speed-sensitive variable steering ratios.
Although there are also disadvantages, like a reduction in steering feel (although, since most cars are moving to electronic power steering, that was already gone anyway).
But few cars have implemented steer-by-wire systems, or at least not fully committed to them, given that mechanical steering racks are a relatively solved problem and the general inertia of the car industry which would rather stick with a solution they know than switch to something better (haven’t we here, at this EV publication, heard *that* one before…). There’s also the matter of regulations, which have often been written to require mechanical steering systems, and may need updating to allow for steer by wire.
But, steer by wire made it into mass production with the release of the Tesla Cybertruck. This was big news when Tesla committed to this – at the time, it was the only thing on the road to exclusively use a steer by wire system, though there are other cars with partial steer by wire (for example, mechanical front wheel steering, and steer by wire rear-wheel steering).
But it seems to have opened the floodgates, as a number of other companies are working on or have since released steer by wire systems (Lexus, for example).
And now, it looks like Rivian is one of those companies – though we don’t know if it’s for the front or rear.
The company posted a job listing for “Sr. Staff Technical Program Manager, Steering Actuator System,” based at its Irvine, CA headquarters (spotted by Rivianforums). This wouldn’t be so exceptional, except that the job posting also specifically points out that “you’ll have full cradle-to-grave ownership of the SBW subsystem.”
So – we know they’re working on steer by wire, to some extent.
But a few other EVs, particularly large EVs like the Rivian R1 platform is, use steer by wire just for the rear wheels – for example the Hummer EV and Rolls-Royce Spectre. These systems are particularly helpful for giant vehicles, because it allows them to be more nimble and make turns that otherwise would require a lot more… negotiation in a giant land yacht.
So it’s possible that Rivian is only working on rear wheel steer by wire here, but we’d like to think there’s a chance it’s working on steer by wire for the full vehicle.
We also don’t know if this would show up on all of Rivian’s vehicles, or only on certain models – the R2 and R3 are in development, and the R1 just got a big refresh. But, perhaps even more interestingly (and very speculatively), VW has invested heavily in Rivian for technology help, so we wonder if we might end up seeing this in VW group vehicles, or Scout vehicles eventually…
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Hyundai’s electric sports car just got a whole lot cheaper. The 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 N now costs $150 less per month to lease after another unexpected price cut.
How much is it to lease the 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 N?
The new and improved 2025 IONIQ 5 is coming off its best US sales month yet in July, but that isn’t stopping Hyundai from wanting more.
After Hyundai cut lease prices on all trims last month to as low as $179 per month, it’s now offering even more savings.
The 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 N is now listed for lease at just $549 per month. The offer is for 36 months, with $3,999 due at signing. At an effective monthly rate of $660, Hyundai’s EV is $150 cheaper a month than it was in July.
Hyundai is currently offering some of the best deals on electric cars, with the 2025 IONIQ 5 SE Standard Range listed for lease at just $179 per month.
The Standard Range model has a driving range of 245 miles. If you’re looking for more, the Extended
Range SE, with a range of 318 miles, is available to lease from $199 per month.
You can even lease the rugged new XRT trim right now for under $300 a month. All deals are for 24 months with $3,999 due at signing and end on September 2
| 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 Trim | EV Powertrain | Driving Range (miles) | Starting Price* | Monthly lease price July 2025 |
| IONIQ 5 SE RWD Standard Range | 168-horsepower rear motor | 245 | $42,500 | $179 |
| IONIQ 5 SE RWD | 225-horsepower rear motor | 318 | $46,550 | $199 |
| IONIQ 5 SEL RWD | 225-horsepower rear motor | 318 | $49,500 | $209 |
| IONIQ 5 Limited RWD | 225-horsepower rear motor | 318 | $54,200 | $309 |
| IONIQ 5 SE Dual Motor AWD | 320-horsepower dual motor | 290 | $50,050 | $249 |
| IONIQ 5 SEL Dual Motor AWD | 320-horsepower dual motor | 290 | $53,000 | $259 |
| IONIQ 5 XRT Dual Motor AWD | 320 horsepower dual motor | 259 | $55,400 | $359 |
| IONIQ 5 Limited Dual Motor AWD | 320-horsepower dual motor | 269 | $58,100 | $299 |
| IONIQ 5 N Dual Motor AWD | Up to 601-horsepower dual motor |
221 | $66,200 | $549 |
With the $7,500 EV tax set to expire at the end of September, Hyundai is offering savings across its entire electric car lineup.
Even Hyundai’s new three-row electric SUV is surprisingly affordable. The 2026 INIQ 9 is listed with monthly lease prices as low as $419 per month.
Looking to test drive one out for yourself? We can help you get started. You can use our link to find deals on the 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 at a dealer near you (trusted affiliate link).
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