Watch Ken Block Win The First Ever Fully Electric Rallycross Race

3 years, 7 months ago - 17 September 2020, InsideEVs
Watch Ken Block Win The First Ever Fully Electric Rallycross Race
This was the inaugural round of the Projekt E race series, the world’s first electric international rallycross series that features road car-based vehicles.

Ken Block recently tried out this mad 600+ horsepower all-electric rallycross car based on the current Ford Fiesta ST. Shortly after, he participated in the first ever Projekt E race, which he won.

Projekt E is the world's first electric rallycross competition and one key part of the idea behind it is for the vehicles that participate to be based on actual road cars. Block drove the Ford Fiesta ERX, a crazy all-wheel drive car created by STARD in Austria specifically for this competition.

It packs 1,000 Nm (737 pound-feet) of torque and 612 horsepower courtesy of three electric motors (one powering the front wheels and two powering the rear wheels). It can sprint to sixty in well under 2 seconds and hit a top speed of 240 km/h (150 mph), and even though it's a few hundred kilograms heavier than a car with similar power derived from an engine, it's still very capable.

Block did point out that unlike a similar gas-powered Fiesta rallycross car, this one does tend to want to keep on sliding once a slide is initiated. He also says that this behavior could be ironed out over time through testing and fine tuning suspension setup, but he had no trouble winning the Projekt E race which was held around Sweden's Höljes track.