Ohio State’s Venturi Buckeye Bullet 2 set a new land speed record Wednesday at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Toole County, Utah.
“The Buckeye Bullet just reset its own record for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles with a two-way average of 299.91 mph,” said Giorgio Rizzoni in an e-mail. “This speed was reached with the inverter torque setting at 70 percent.”
The Buckeye Bullet 2 was built by a team of about 12 students for the Center for Automotive Research.
“These students have a degree of maturity, resilience and persistence that is uncommon in such a young group,” Rizzoni said. “And that is an addition to their technical prowess.”
The project is sponsored by companies including Ford and Ballard Power Systems. It is a green vehicle, combining hydrogen and oxygen to create water, which then creates electricity to power the car, and it has zero carbon emissions.
The original Buckeye Bullet, also a hydrogen fuel cell car, broke national and international land speed records in 2004.
“We want to be the first land speed racer to eclipse 300 mph internationally in the fuel and hydrogen category,” said Ed Hillstrom, a mechanical engineering graduate student who helps with the projects’ mechanical design, in a previous interview.
For more information, visit www.buckeyebullet.com.
