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A flashy new advertisement by engineering company ABB shows off a sleek, all-electric NASCAR racecar.

A flashy new advertisement by multinational engineering company ABB shows off what could one day be the future of American auto racing body, NASCAR: a sleek, all-electric racecar.

While NASCAR, which is considered one of the top ranked motorsports organizations in the world, is broadly speaking associated with tailgating rural culture — and seminal pieces of cinema like "Tallageda Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby," starring Will Ferrell — the vehicle presages a future in which electric motors could replace the iconic, steady drone of brawny gas engines ripping around an oval track.

The ABB NASCAR EV prototype, a collaboration between the body's OEM partners Ford, Chevrolet, and Toyota, was first shown off at the Chicago Street Course last year.

"If you look out across the landscape, one thing that’s for certain is that change is accelerating all around us," said NASCAR senior vice president and chief racing development officer John Probst in a statement at the time.

"The push for electric vehicles is continuing to grow, and when we started this project one and a half years ago, that growth was rapid," NASCAR senior engineer of vehicle systems CJ Tobin told IEEE Spectrum in August. "We wanted to showcase our ability to put an electric stock car on the track in collaboration with our OEM partners."

Besides pushing the boundaries when it comes to speed, the association is also looking to cut emissions.

"Sustainability means a lot of different things," said NASCAR's head of sustainability Riley Nelson last summer. "And for our team right now, it’s environmental sustainability."

The prototype features a 78-kilowatt-hour, liquid-cooled battery and a powertrain that produces up to 1,000 kilowatts of peak power. Regenerative braking allows it to race longer road courses as well.

In the latest advertisement, ABB also showed off the latest generation of its single-seater racecar, developed for its Formula E World Championship, which has been around for over a decade. The specialized vehicles are among the fastest electric racecars ever built, and are designed to reach speeds of over 200 mph.

It's not just ABB that's looking to develop all-electric contenders for NASCAR. Earlier this year, Ford revealed a new electric NASCAR prototype, based on its road-legal Mustang Mach-E.

While it could make for an exciting new development in the motorsport, NASCAR isn't quite ready to fully commit to electric drivetrains — at least for the foreseeable future.

"There are no plans to use [ABB's] electric vehicle in competition at this time," a NASCAR spokesperson told IEEE Spectrum last summer. "The internal combustion engine plays an important role in NASCAR and there are no plans to move away from that."

More on racecars: Scientists Teach Rats to Drive Tiny Cars, Discover That They Love Revving the Engine

The post NASCAR Now Showing Off Fully Electric Racecar appeared first on Futurism.

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NASCAR Now Showing Off Fully Electric Racecar

Wheels Up

The wins keep coming after Manhattan initiated its congestion toll on cars early this month. Now, the latest data is showing a massive decrease in crash related injuries.

New data from the first 12 days of congestion pricing shows that total injuries below 60th street — the zone where congestion pricing takes effect, charging drivers up to $9 to enter — dropped 51 percent compared to the same period in 2024. Total crashes, meanwhile, dropped 55 percent.

The analysis comes courtesy of outspoken transit advocate Gersh Kuntzman and his team at Streetsblog NYC. He cautions that it's too early to take a victory lap, given that the figures do not account for variations in weather between 2024 and 2025, but they are promising. This is the latest indicator that the congestion pricing is working as intended — kids are getting to school faster, the city is quieter, bridges and tunnels are seeing significantly less traffic, and the air is becoming a bit cleaner. And these are just the knock-on effects of traffic reduction.

The real winners are New York City's public transit riders, whom the congestion toll is meant to directly benefit via station improvements, critical infrastructure repairs, extended bus routes, and a resumption of the much-needed 2nd avenue subway extension project, which had been stalled for years.

In other words, if the good news keeps coming, the initiative could become a compelling proof-of-concept for other areas of New York and more crowded cities around the country.

Cutting Edge

That's in a perfect world, of course. While adding friction for cars is looking like a major win for New York so far, it comes at a time when common-sense transit projects across the country are flailing. Some are way overbudget, outsourced to pie-in-the-sky tech startups, or falling to a busted legislative process.

And that's even if a city ponies up the will to make affordable, car-free transit a priority at all.

Going forward, there's very little evidence that investments in crucial infrastructure will be coming from the federal government — Trump has already cut Biden's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in favor of his Stargate gamble — making state and local policy like the Big Apple's congestion pricing all the more crucial.

While other cities spend taxpayer money to beautify parking lots, New City is leading by example and showing the rest of the country what people-first transit policy can do for their communities. In a country dominated by cars, this rare win for public transit is worth imitating.

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NASCAR Now Showing Off Fully Electric Racecar

Manhattan Shows Huge Reduction in Car Crashes After Instituting Congestion Pricing

Wheels Up

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