Here's The Aspark Owl Hypercar Doing 0-62mph In 1.9 Seconds

Footage of the fully-electric hypercar doing an acceleration test in curiously confined conditions has been released

19 Feb 2018

The makers of the dubiously-named Aspark Owl made an astonishing claim when revealing the car at the Frankfurt Motor Show. Few technical details about the car’s powertrain had been revealed, but nonetheless, a ridiculous sub-two second 0-62mph time was touted.

Well, now that boast seems a little less ridiculous, as footage of an Owl prototype hitting the benchmark speed in just 1.921 seconds has been released. But there’s a fairly hefty caveat to go along with the feat: the car was wearing slick tyres.

It’s still impressive though, particularly given where the car was doing the test runs: at the back of a warehouse, with barely enough room for the car to get to 62mph and brake to a standstill. The Japanese firm behind this thing are clearly happy to shirk health and safety considerations for the sake of Internet glory…

Here's The Aspark Owl Hypercar Doing 0-62mph In 1.9 Seconds

The Owl (nope, still sounds weird) is powered by a pair of electric motors, putting out a combined 429bhp and 563lb ft. Doesn’t sound like a huge amount, but it weighs just 850kg - hence the sub-two second 0-62mph sprint. Given time, it might well manage that on road tyres too.

It’ll have a range of 94 miles, and a top speed of 174mph. Assuming it goes into production and doesn’t end up being yet another piece of hypercar vapourware, just 50 will be made, costing $4.4 million each.

Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.

Comments

Wow 94 miles. That needs a range extender. In fact … I will get a 918 and a P1 instead.

On a serious note though. It would be cool to see how this kind of tech develops in the future. The Tesla Roadster 2020 would have more than 6 times the range and higher top speed but may be far, far heavier so handling will be affected. But if battery/ capacitor technology can be developed more to be lighter and make the denser then we could see cars like these racing in a GT1 like discipline.
Imagine race ready Roadsters, Rimac Ones, Nio EP9s and Owls.

Weird car,weird name,out of this world speed

Tesla, THIS is how you do 0-60 in under 2 seconds. You take a lightweight car and give it just enough power to be traction-limited up to 60. Taking a 2+ tonne car and pumping tons of torque into it just won’t work as the grip won’t be there.

It could work with AWD (Veyron, Chiron), but Roadster is RWD, right?

I dont want to upset anyone, but this surely is a very “american” approach.

This looks like the car we would all design back in 2005 playing a video game it looks like paper mache and glue sticks

Best place to test the 0-100 kph capabilities of your 4.4 million dollar hypercar? Definitely on a parking to behind a warehouse that is barely long enough, definitely.

Okey, huge shame on you, Mr.WriterMan.
First of all, fact check your story.
Secondly, do you even have the slightest grasp of physics?
“The Owl (nope, still sounds weird) is powered by a pair of 40kW electric motors, putting out a combined 429bhp and 563lb ft. “ 2*40kW is 80kW which is 107.2bhp.

KiloWatt is the standard measurement of power, bhp is also a measurement of power.
If the car makes 429bhp, it’ll be outputting almost 320kW.

Those are the sort of mistakes that should never happen.

TBH yes they made a mistake, but don’t shame them. They do more posts about cars with internal combustion engines than posts about electric cars. Possibly their own lives rotate more around cars with engines than electric cars. Even for me, I know way more about internal combustion engines than electric motors.
Therefore, just have some sympathy for them.

Got our wires crossed (sorrynotsorry) with the kW figure. Not sure what happened there but we’ve corrected, anyway. But ‘huge shame on you’? A tad dramatic, maybe!

Edit: 40kW actually comes from Aspark itself, although it looks like something was lost in translation, as I’m not certain what it is they mean here: “our Owl prototype uses two 40kW motors. According to calculations, 320kW of power is control technology to draw 160kW of power from those 40kW motors”

https://www.aspark.co.jp/ev/owl_book_OL.pdf