Tesla crushes petrol-powered racers in Targa West rally

A brave team of motoring enthusiasts has given the internal-combustion engine a good kicking after entering a Tesla Model 3 in the Targa West tarmac rally, and driving away with a category victory.

Toceva Racing’s Model 3 finishedfirst in the Targa165 category, and a hugely impressive 10th overall, beating about 50 competitors in total. Unsurprisingly, it was the only EV in the rally, which runs for four days over around 1000km of racing stages.

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Driver Jurgen Lunsmann told the ABC that the first time he entered the rally, two years ago, he had to put up with at least 200 jokes about having brought a long enough extension cord, but a lot fewer people were laughing this year.

The Tesla that roared belongs to John Edwards, a retired oil and gas engineer who is now a passionate advocate for electric vehicles and saw the Targa West event as a way to put EVs on the radar of hardcore enthusiasts.

“We’re in a group of diehard petrolheads and a lot of them are never going to change, but a few of them are very interested,” Edwards said.

“We don’t know of anyone who’s doing this kind of EV rallying in Australia.”

Last year, Toceva racing won the 130km/h speed limit category, the perfect segment for a car like the Model 3. The 165 and 200km/h categories would prove a huge strain on the batteries, which, as you can imagine in a race where charging stations are few and none between, is the biggest challenge for the Toceva team.

At semi-legal speeds, driver Jurgen Lunsmann reckons the Tesla is almost unbeatable, due to its torque delivery, punchy acceleration and excellent handling, but as the speeds rise, the challenges of battery technology become almost insurmountable in road-rally conditions

Edwards explained that once speeds exceed 135km/h, battery use becomes extreme. 

“Our consumption goes through the roof,” Edwards said. “At 200km/h, we use 2.5 percent of our battery per kilometre.”

Basically, at those speeds, the team can’t keep the Tesla charged up enough to finish the rally, and the petrol-powered dinosaurs become unbeatable for an EV, and this has been the challenge for Toceva over the past few years. 

This year, however, they were ready, having put together a fleet of “mobile charging units”, including a truck-mounted diesel generator powered by waste vegetable oil; an EV battery mounted on another truck; and a modified EV that could share energy from its own batteries.

The team took every opportunity to keep the Tesla charged up, plugging it in every single moment that it was sitting still, and with the juice problem sorted, they entered the 165km/h category, to see how far they could push it.

Despite the inherent advantages of the age-old tool – the jerry can – the Tesla topped that category this year, in a huge win for the team, and the technology.

“The jerry can was a WWI invention and it’s still the prime way of getting energy to race cars at motorsport venues,” Lunsmann said.

“With EVs at the moment, there’s not a simple solution. The behind-the-scenes challenges of racing an EV are quite significant. You have to throw a lot of energy into cars in a short space of time.”

As you might have guessed, Edwards wants to step up to the top level – the open category – for Targa West in the years to come, to really push the technology as far as it can go, and open people’s eyes to the possibilities. 

“What I’m trying to do is win the hearts and minds of other competitors and the public, that these cars are real and very competitive,” Edwards says.

“With a bit of tweaking, we can come in the top five.”