It’s ugly and looks like a LEGO car, but the Ariel Hipercar is probably not the strangest of them all. Ariel has a reputation for creating atypical cars with the most interesting names. They include the road-legal high-performance open-wheel Ariel Atom and the purpose-built off-road Ariel Nomad Tactical.
Such an artisanal approach to vehicle design and advanced automotive technology is why the British carmaker is called the Savile Row of the automotive industry. Ariel offers the chance to see, feel and drive real-life cars that belong in video games such as Forza Motorsport. A collaborative team led by Ariel and British car engineering company Cosworth launched the Hipercar a few days ago, and we’ve learned that the automaker has been quietly working on the project since 2014.
It is almost unlikely that a small brand that manages to produce a hundred cars a year would have the resources – money and expertise – to supercar EV ab initio. Well, thanks to the close collaboration of government-funded entities such as the Niche Vehicle Performance, the Hipercar is in the pipeline, electrified and ready to take the world by storm.
A Brief History of Ariel Motor Company
Ariel Motor Company Ltd is a small car brand from Somerset, based in Crewkerne, England. The tent is currently less than 50 employees strong, but serves customers from all over the world. Although the company is seen as a young brand that was founded in 1999, Ariel started as Solocrest Ltd in 1991 but was renamed Ariel Motor Company in 1999. Since then, Ariel has focused on low volume vehicles.
You are probably wondering if there is any connection between Ariel Motor Company and Ariel Motorcycles. Yes, Ariel remains a trading company of the Ariel Owners Motorcycle Club (AOMCC) Ariel Motorcycles company. Ariel Motorcycles started making bicycles in 1902, then moved on to motorcycles and then cars before the Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA) bought the company in 1951. The last Ariel-branded motorcycle was a three-wheeled moped introduced in 1970.
Autocar’s Sturmey Award-winning Simon Saunders revived the Ariel name in 1999, with Solocrest rebranded as Ariel to build what could be seen as legendary cars. The Hipercar is Ariel’s latest creation and a leap forward and sideways from the ‘naked-body’ performance models the brand was known for. The car runs on an electrified powertrain with lightweight aluminum carbon fiber.
Introducing the Ariel Hipercar
Ariel, along with Cosworth and other key partners, announced the Hipercar in August 2017. Hipercar is not just a beautiful name for a trendy supercar. It’s actually an acronym for High-Performance Carbon Reduction, which encapsulates what the car is all about. Hipercar uses an electric powertrain powered by Equipmake’s APM200 electric motors.
Equipmake says it designed the APM200 electric motor to meet the specific demands of high-speed performance cars such as Hipercar and that the motor has served in aerospace and commercial transportation applications. It features a unique spoke architecture that allows the rotor to be liquid cooled, effectively maximizing power.
Hipercar’s APM200 delivers peak speed of 10,000 rpm and peak torque of 331 lb-ft. It uses an integral 5.5:1 epicyclic gearbox so that the gearbox output shaft connects directly to the wheel hub. We’ll cover the Hipercar’s powertrain and chassis in a little more detail in the next subheading, but suffice it to say Equipmake has been developing and integrating industry-leading powertrains for electric vehicles for over two decades.
Ariel Hipercar’s powertrain and chassis
Do you see the photos of Hipercar in this article? You would rightly call it bizarre, but we expect the evocative, grotesque body structure of the Hipercar to go into production unchanged. The body is made of carbon fiber, while the chassis and subframes are aluminum.
“Everything has gone through a lot of development since 2017,” says Ariel founder and director Simon Saunders. “So the chassis and body are significantly more advanced, as are the battery, motors and control systems, but the basic idea and technical details are broadly the same. There has been a tremendous amount of aerodynamic work done on drag as well as downforce and cooling, but we have stuck with our original cool battery concept.”
At 3185 lbs curb weight, the Ariel Hipercar is heavier than up-and-coming high-end track cars like the Aston Martin Valkyrie and New Zealand-made Rodin FZero. Yet Hipercar is in the compact class, with an EV range of 250 kilometers. It is powered by four Equipmake APM engines rated at 290 horsepower on each wheel – with the option of 2 or 4 wheel drive – to deliver a combined power output of 1,180 horsepower.
The car will be offered with RWD and AWD variants with a small difference in power. The AWD variant has a total horsepower of 1,163 horses and 1,327 lb-ft of torque, while the RWD variant will deliver 581 horses and 664 lb-ft of torque. Hipercar will run at top speed on the track on a single charge for 20 minutes.
Ariel says the engine lineup will be able to vary the torque to each thru axle with an electronic system, in other words torque vectoring on the wheels. It will be supplied with a catalytic generator that extends its range in the form of a compact microturbine powered by any fuel. The motors get their power from a 62 kWh battery pack supplied by Cosworth that runs on an 800-volt architecture.
Ariel Hipercar Body, Interior and Features
The Ariel Hipercar is still under development, and the interior is barely done. But while the interior is unfinished, we get a general sense of a Le Mans-oriented interior vibe. People will never stop talking about the Hipercar’s LEGO-style bodywork, especially those headlights and running lights that look like screwed nuts. The center of the hood mimics F1 cars and merges almost imperceptibly into the alien front.
Only Ariel would come up with a roof vent that looks like a clown hat tail and aerodynamic fins in the fenders, of all places. But what we find most fascinating is actually not the strange bodywork, but the optional range extender. Ariel avoided conventional reciprocating engines or even a rotary engine as a range extender, opting instead for Cosworth’s 47 hp CatGen turbine engine that kicks in to charge the batteries when the car is in motion.
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