Ford Performance has created a beast of an electric vehicle to add to its growing garage of incredibly powerful experimental electrics, which includes previous monsters such as the Mustang Lithium show car and the Mustang Cobra Jet 1400 drag car. This car is even more impressive than those, however, as Ford is clearly on a mission to obliterate preconceptions of what electric vehicles are and what they’re capable of.
The Mustang Mach-E 1400, as it is called, is a one-off prototype aimed at (in Ford’s words):
…bridging the gap between what an electric vehicle can do and what customers tend to believe it can do.
The race car was a collaborative project with pro-drifter Vaughn Gittin Jr’s company, RTR Vehicles. It’s a technology demonstrator that boasts seven motors around its axles and 1,400 horsepower. In four-wheel-drive mode, a 56.8-kWh ‘ultra-high-performance lithium nickel manganese cobalt battery’ provides the massive amount of power to three engines attached to the front wheels and four to the rear. However, the powertrain set-up allows for either back- or front-wheel-drive layouts as well, so the car can be optimized for drag racing, circuit racing, Gymkhana, or drifting. Oh, and it has a hydraulic handbrake too.
Vaughn Gittin Jr, RTR Vehicles founder, and pro drifter said:
It’s my first real test of electrification, and it has completely changed my perspective. The experience behind the wheel is life-changing. The way these electric motors put power out makes a brain like mine go wild. I’ll never forget the first time I felt full power. It was me and the technical director at RTR, and I looked at him and just floored it. All four tires spun two times, and then it just hooked up and launched like a magnetic rollercoaster. It scared me. I came to an abrupt stop because I was like holy sh…
Getting behind the wheel of this car has completely changed my perspective on what power and torque can be. This experience is like nothing you’ve ever imagined, except for maybe a magnetic roller coaster.
The team started with a white Mustang Mach-E body, which they put in 10,000 hours of work to transformed it into the Mustang Mach-E 1400. They didn’t work within the constraints of racing series regulations; instead, they let performance guide the design. They also explored using new materials, such as organic composite fibers. The bonnet is made with this lightweight organic-composite, while the rest of the body is carbon fiber.
Ford plans to show-off the Mustang Mach-E 1400 with a public driving debut at an upcoming Nascar event.
