Meet The Mad Scientists Just Getting Started With 209 MPH Electric Corvettes

Most Corvettes are fast. That's the whole point. But not all
Corvettes can do 209 mph while breaking records because they run purely on—get
this, and be ready to horrified if you're a Corvette purist—electricity. That's
what the Corvettes from Genovation Cars
do. And they come from a humble shop in Rockville, Maryland.

I went there to see how these cars are made, including the planned
$750,000
C7 Grand Sport-based electric car as well as an aspirational all-wheel
drive supercar built purely in-house. It turns out big things come from small
places.

Tucked in the back of a typically nondescript business park
in the D.C. suburb of Rockville, Genovation is run by a fellow called Andrew
Saul. The CEO himself met me at their front door and gave me the tour of their
facility. Well before the black on black on black Z06 broke an all-electric
standing mile record by topping 200 mph on Kennedy Space Center's 3.2 mile
runway, Andrew and his colleagues have been tinkering with electricity.
Littering their shop are a half a dozen non-petrol-powered machines.

Genovation got their start building a modified electric Ford
Focus, dubbed the G1, meant for fleet use. A local county government was slated
to buy a bunch of them when the economy tanked in 2007. After the recession
hit, budgets were slashed and the mayor pushing the project was not reelected.

The conversion vehicle industry was also affected when the Nissan Leaf arrived
in 2010. Suddenly you could buy a post-rebate $20,000 EV with a warranty versus
spending around the same to convert a used vehicle with no warranty and typically
less range.

Some of the G1 Focus prototypes sit under a cover in
Rockville and you'll also find a working electric-converted BMW Z4 taking up
some real estate. The small company decided to begin research on producing
their own vehicle, the result was a whole lot of data and a wind-tunnel model
called the G2 which has a coefficient of drag of just 0.2 Cd. It was through
the G2 project that they enhanced their technical capabilities within the
industry working with companies like Dana, Metalsa and Tata Technologies.

As they attended conferences and trade shows, it became
evident that there was a confluence of new technologies and components that could
enable the development of an EV Supercar. So they decided to put the G2 on the
shelf and focus their next project on something else: speed.

The choice of starting platform for Genovation's next car
was pretty easy: they went with the new-at-the-time C6 Corvette. The C6 Z06
Corvette's aluminum frame with carbon fiber floor was very cutting edge when it
came out in 2006.

Plus, Andrew noted, the Corvette is such an American icon
that reinventing its drivetrain with the latest cutting edge—American designed EV
technology—seemed to make sense.

With a goal of starting from scratch, Andrew acquired
a C6 development chassis (no. 16 of 44) from Dana Corp,
the original manufacturer of the C6 chassis for GM. It was about to head
to the smelter but was given a reprieve and Genovation had two weeks to get to
Kentucky with a trailer. However, they had to sign an agreement not to put a gas engine in it. Boom, done.

Andrew told me that the goal was never
to break records; they just "wanted to change consumer perceptions of what an
EV could be" by building a manual tranny prototype car that you could actually enjoy
driving on the street and still take to the racetrack for a day of fun. Looking
to keep things green, they found a composites company
to manufacture soy resin-based body
panels. Instead of investing in expensive CAD designs, they made their molds directly from a C6 owned by their CEO.

A noble goal, but eventually it just became clear that it may be easier to
start with a complete car. That original
prototype shell still greets visitors to Genovation's shop. Andrew and company
went on to purchase a used C6 Z06—already modified with a supercharger and
putting out around 600hp to the rear wheels.

After the engine and blower were
removed, they were replaced with a developmental dual motor setup with battery
packs. Basically, there are two motors operating on a single shaft. In case you
were wondering, they considered adding two more
motors to power the front wheels and make it AWD but the weight and added
complexity just wasn't worth it. More on that in a bit.

It's been widely reported that the
record-setting car kept its manual transmission in lieu of some sort of fancy
single gear setup. You're damn right it
did. The car initially had a clutch from the mighty ZR1, but has since been
upgraded to a Monster clutch, rated up to 1200 HP to deal with the instant power
and torque of the electric motors.

The GXE's software was calibrated to
help manage the torque delivery and optimize speed and traction using the
manual tranny—the car even has a shift light intended to help optimize shift
points based on state of charge and battery pack voltage. Aside from the
uprated tranny, the differential, half
shafts and drive shafts are all beefed up to manage the instant torque. On
the outside, the current car has a ZR1 hood so you can see the components up
front, complete with some cheesy neon accents to make it look a bit fancier.

While quite a bit of work was done at
the Genovation shop, this wasn't a solo project. Some of the work was done at Tony's Corvette Shop in nearby
Gaithersburg, MD which is one of the premiere Corvette-focused shops in the
country along with some additional "technology assistance" from Stafl Systems and EVDrive.

The car was recently dyno'd at 700 HP
and 650 ft./lbs of torque and has an estimated 150
mile range.

Genovation first got nationwide
attention when they set the top speed world record for a road-legal
all-electric car, reaching 186.8 mph in the GXE. Rewind back to the winter of 2015 and Andrew
was looking for a place to test the nearly complete prototype. Some
options cropped up, including a stretch of Nevada highway, but it was narrow
for his liking.

Enter Johnny Bohmer, owner of one of the
current fastest street legal cars, the 1800 HP, 283 mph Ford GT nicknamed "BADD GT." Johnny
not only suggested using Kennedy Space Center's 3.2 mile runway—which is 300
feet wide and only changes elevation .25 inches over the course of the run—but
also drove the GXE and had input on the
GXE's record runs.

For example, during the first round of testing
they used stock wing mirrors, but Johnny noted that over 200 those would cause considerable drag. So Andrew and the team
switched to a more aerodynamic setup that you see on the car now. Other than
that, the body remains largely stock, only sporting some "helicopter
tape" over the seams, indicator lights, etc. Anywhere with a rough
edge.

Inside, the interior is pretty much
stock, save for a custom roll cage, required by Space
Florida and the International Mile
Racing Association for cars that surpass 200 mph.

Once the 2015 run was complete, and the
record broken, the car still
indicated a range of 100 miles. And while a gas powered car would be
incredibly hot after a run like that, the battery and motor area under the hood
was just barely warm to the touch.

Andrew and company just
took the car back to Florida
in February, again with Johnny at the wheel, and hit
a top speed of 209 mph and 190.48 mph in the standing mile. There were
over twenty other very fast cars at the runway as part of a Festivals of Speed
event but the GXE was the fastest street legal car there, only beaten by
three Lamborghini race cars.

Perhaps our dystopian all-electric
future won't be so terrible after all.

The current GXE is in a constant state of flux, having been
built, torn down, and rebuilt numerous times during the prototype phase. But as
you heard here back in October, it is just version 1.0 and is still acting as a
test bed for its follow-up: the $750,000 C7 Grand Sport Corvette-based
GXE.

Genovation is testing a brand new set
of Carbon Revolution
wheels from Australia, which drops 10
pounds per wheel of unsprung weight and rotating mass.
These weight savings have already helped them reach the targeted 150 miles-per-charge
on the C6 prototype.

Genovation seems to be a believer in
the "crucible of motorsport" where cars are not driven gently. They plan a bevy
of tests for the C6 GXE mule to ensure the viability of future tech to help
make the new car better. Andrew hopes to have it at Laguna Seca and VIR this
summer and naturally he would love to get it over to Europe to visit the
Nurburgring. He told me that the battery pack is being engineered to
endure at least one lap of the famed track on a single charge.

Part of that track-tested tech will be
the de-rigueur set of carbon-ceramic brakes, something you would expect on a
car that costs three quarters of a million dollars. Andrew also said that they
are working on a regenerative brake handle which basically functions like a "drift
mode" and will charge the battery while doing sweet drifts. Off road use
only, of course. This will be tested with the current GXE on track soon. Sign
me up.

And even though the GXE doesn't quite
get as hot as a gas powered car, they will also test a trick "cooling
loop". The concept is, you finish your laps and plug the car into a
stand-alone system that will basically suck out all the warm coolant from the
system while it's charging, cool it, and replace.

Andrew confirmed what we have heard
before—that the new car will require a two-year prototype phase, already
underway, followed by a one-year calibration and build phase. Naturally, potential
customers will be able to be incredibly involved, choosing colors, wheels,
interior, etc. And once one exterior paint and interior color combination
goes out the door, that's it. Each car will be unique. Andrew would
like to be the "Singer" of custom electric supercars with a target of
four per month in their Maryland shop. A lofty goal indeed.

And yes, deposits are still a hefty $250,000.
I asked him to defend their rationale for the $750,000 price tag and he said it
all comes down to the relative uniqueness of a GXE. Andrew told me that the
price is based on the cost of the cutting edge GXE technology, much of which
was derived from F1 and Le Mans racing, as well as the significance of the
records the GXE has broken combined with the exclusivity factor.

With only 75
GXEs being built, and with each car having a bespoke personalized
interior/exterior color combination, using only high quality materials and the
Carbon Revolution wheels; it will hopefully be a special car indeed.

He said that it should compare to
something like a Bugatti Veyron, one of the fastest gasoline-powered car in the
world, and significantly more expensive. The GXE—being the fastest street
legal electric car and the first to exceed 200 mph—features
technology no other street car for sale currently has, and therefore Andrew
believes it should draw a premium. It's definitely a bold claim.

The price is intended to help fund the
development and production of future vehicles, including future GXE variants and
other Genovation projects including the aforementioned AWD supercar. Built from
the ground up using carbon fiber, Andrew envisions a future where Genovation
can produce their own bespoke supercar using technology from the GXE.

That was
about all I could get about that particular project; obviously they have a lot
riding on the upcoming sale of GXEs to the public.

Genovation currently employs just three
full time staff members with as many as a dozen others around the country working on
various projects. Take a minute to realize just what Genovation is up
against. Three full-time staff. Three. Luckily, Andrew said he
has received great help from nearby University of Maryland, with engineering students
spending time in their shop learning about the future of automotive technology.
Genovation is sponsoring research over at College Park in return.

As a Maryland native, and someone who
loves to root for the little guy, I hope they succeed. However, while it's
pretty impressive that they have a working 209 mph all-electric, manual gearbox prototype,
they have a gargantuan task ahead of them. With such a small staff, they are
going to have to put on one hell of a sales pitch to get three quarters of a
million bucks from potential GXE buyers.

Regardless, I won't say no to seat time when the next generation GXE is ready.

William Byrd is the editor of Right Foot Down. Follow him on Twitter.