The Japan EV Club got famous last year, when they built a car that drove 345-miles without recharging. That car was a small Daihatsu, that the club bought new with a gasoline engine, before converting it electric drive. They used Sanyo batteries (cylindrical lithium-ion, 18650-type), 8230 of them, assembled by hand (!) to form a pack with a 74-kWh capacity. That was enough to drive 345-miles, a record established on public roads, driving at traffic speed. The Japan EV Club got another idea then. How about driving that same car at a low constant speed on a racetrack?

That’s what they did last week-end. Slowly. Very slowly, as they never drove past 25-mph. With drivers changing every hour, the team manage to drive for 625-miles, with an average speed of 22.7-mph. That is a new world record, but we expect that the next person who will try to beat it will give higher consideration to speed. We guess that same car could pass the 1,000-miles mark at an average 15-mph speed, but who cares?

The video below is very explicit. Good thing that it’s short, it would be soporific otherwise…