Remember back in 1925 when I took you to see the amazing 9-liter inline-six Renault 40CV Records? It was a blue marvel, impossibly long of hood and so impossibly fast, making over 120 mph. As I recall, you were overcome with the magic of it all and we almost kissed at the boathouse. After that, in 1934, we went to see the Nervasport des Records, another long blue wonder! Then, in 1954, we decided to go see Renault’s new land speed record car, the Étoile Filante – shooting star – a wildly sleek and streamlined turbine-powered machine that hit over 190 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats, and once again we almost kissed at the boathouse, but were too confused about what a boathouse was doing on the salt flats.
Anyway, Renault has taken inspiration from all three of these cars to build the Renault Filante Record 2025, which they refer to as a “car and laboratory for electric efficiency on wheels” and, according to them, will be setting some sort of record before the first half of 2025 is over.
The Renault Filante Record 2025 is, like its predecessors, a strikingly-long and unashamedly blue machine, its looks defined by harsh aerodynamic truths and more than a little bit of drama. It’s been compared to the Batmobile multiple times in the press, a sort of voiture de chauve-souris if Batman, or Homme Chauve-Souris was based out of Lyon and kicked the crap out of company managers who tried to get their employees to work over 30 hours a week.
But it’s not for bat-people, it’s for setting mothergripping records, and the sorts of records Renault is targeting aren’t necessarily speed records, though I suspect those are on the table, too. They are targeting “setting out to establish a new record for efficiency” though no specifics were stated, though range record is also implied as a target.
Every bit of the car’s design is focused on maximizing efficiency: the body is made of materials like carbon fiber and the chassis uses aluminum, carbon, and steel in optimized ways to reduce cross-sectional size and limit weight. There’s even an aluminum alloy optimized for 3D printing called Scalmalloy used in the car. The whole thing only weighs about 2,200 pounds as a result.
Of those 2,200 pounds, about 1,300 pounds are in the 87 kWh battery pack, which is the same size as the one in the Renault Scenic electric SUV. The battery pack uses cell-to-pack construction that just shoves the cells right into the pack rather than discreet modules, which saves weight, but would make servicing a nightmare. Luckily, this is just a one-off, and no one gives a merde about servicing.
The interior is a one-person cockpit with a canvas, beach-chair-style chair (to be fair, this isn’t really all that shocking on a French car), and the braking and steering systems are completely drive-by-wire, controlled by a novel handlebar steering/throttle/brake setup that rises along with the transparent bubble canopy.
The tires are also specially designed for the vehicle and sourced from Michelin. They’re fairly tall (20 inches) and narrow, with special architecture to flatten the contact patch, and special materials to better dissipate energy, resulting in a tire that offers 40% less rolling resistance than a conventional design.
I like the idea of a supercar with a focus based on something other than just outright speed; the Volkswagen XL1 comes to mind as a (limited) production example of this idea, specifically combustion-engine efficiency in that car’s case.
I’m curious to see what sorts of records this thing may end up setting; its definitely a striking-looking machine, and seems quite capable. The bar is pretty high for records like range, though. In 2023, a team from the Technical University of Munich set a record of nearly 1,600 miles on one charge, and that was with a pretty tiny 15.5 kWh battery pack.
Can this Renault beat that? I guess we’ll see. If not, I guess they can always sell it to French Batman.
35 hours work week Torch, don’t make us look lazier than we are, there’s no need for hyperbole with is Frenchies 🙂
Blue Brie Marvel…eating?
https://pin.it/12fDW06p7
“If not, I guess they can always sell it to French Batman.”
Do you mean Le Homme Chauve-souris?
As for “the amazing 9-liter inline-six Renault 40CV Records”, pffft, only 9 liters?? How about the Fiat S76, also known as the Beast of Turin, from 1910? That thing had a 28.4 liter inline 4 engine, absolutely bonkers!! https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Fiat_S76_Record.jpg
Looks great in color:
https://static1.hotcarsimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/c7acad05-676f-4020-8af6-fc65166118d5_rw_1200-1.jpg
To be sure, in that era (the 1910s and 20s) it was a thing to put aeroplane engines of astonishingly large displacement in cars for racing and land speed records, such as the Fiat Mefistofele of 1923 which used an inline 6 Fiat aeroplane engine of 21.7 liters, but the Fiat S76 used an engine specifically made for it so it wasn’t a case of just plunking any old aeroplane engine into a car.
Yeah, leave it to both the French and the Italians to produce some mighty appealing designs in cars built for speed records…
I’m going to be very picky here but Mephistopheles was built in England, by an Englishman (even using bits supplied by the London Bus company to lengthen the chassis) so the Italian spelling is incorrect and has only been used by Fiat trying to re-write history. Fiat also stole the car from the owner at the time when they ‘acquired’ it which is why the Beast will never go back to Italy as they would likely do the same thing.
Hmm. While I haven’t done all that much reading about those Fiats I’m given to understand that the Mefistofele/Mephistopheles was actually built in France where the natives bestowed it with its nickname (so pedantically speaking it should be Méphistophélès with the diacritics & all.) Most of what little reading I’d done used the Italian spelling so that’s what I went with. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Fiat_Mefistofele_logo1.jpg/1280px-Fiat_Mefistofele_logo1.jpg
The question then is on what basis what nationality should be accorded to that particular car with its English funding, English driver, Italian mechanicals (London Bus bits notwithstanding, the engine and chassis were indeed Italian), French assembly, etc, etc.
And there’s apparently some controversy over the restoration/reconstruction of the Fiat S76 (the Beast of Turin) where the English restorers borrowed an engine from an Italian museum to use as a reference and kept the original engine while returning a replica engine to the Italian museum.
Pretty funny about the English not wanting to take the S76 back to Italy out of concern about theft given the long and well-documented history of the British stealing anything and everything that’s not nailed down (& even some that actually are.) Like the well-known joke about the Pyramids of Egypt:
“Why are there pyramids in Egypt?”
“Because they’re too big and heavy to move to the British Museum.”
Mephistopheles was built in England but possibly got its nickname in France.
The main chassis and engine were definitely Fiat though.
The more recent articles, with the ‘new’ spelling, are all using Fiat’s re-written history of the car. It was certainly never known as Mefistofele in period.
And the S76 stuff is all rubbish. Fiat sold the engine to the person who now owns it. The rumours about it get worse all the time but none of it is true.
Why do you think we want to keep it here?:-)
I didn’t realize that Brie was targeted by the new tariffs.
The car has already set one record…the first car with the word ‘record’ in its name.
The Opel Rekord would like a word with you
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Rekord
Okay, so can I have the brie? I’m very good at eating brie.
Rain Man: “I’m an excellent brie eater.”
This car is approaching you so fast that all the cheese tastes bleu.
I would commute in that. I wouldn’t buy it, I’m far to cheap for that. But I would commute in it. While wearing a bat helmet.
It’s pronounced “Fee-lohn-t”, will 100% go down in history as the “Fuh-lahn-tay”.
Fe-lon-e. Got it!
Sounds like a Crime against spelling.
Something to that effect, yeah.
Re 1. Nah. Land speed record cars need to run on salt flats where traction is an issue, so they’re intentionally heavy. I know it’s true because I read it on The Autopian.
The worst thing about owning a Peugeot was having to learn how to spell it.
Not far from the car I wanted to build. It’s longer and looks narrower, missing the tandem second seat and the sliding canopy, and mine certainly wasn’t going to have any DBW bullshit, but this is the kind of thing I want to buy.
An EV of this sort at a reasonable price would get me interested in a new car. There is currently nothing on the market for me.
I hope they add this beauty to Gran Turismo 7 so I can “drive” it.
Il est difficile de construire une voiture sans 246 fromages.
*365, one for each day of the year
Oui oui, c’est la vie. Baguette.
Vite Rouge-gorge, a là Batmobile!
It’s an interesting exercise just as most of these are. But I often wonder that if it can’t pass a crash test and it can’t hold at least two people, and therefore has no real-world marketability, what exactly is the point?
I know that they can learn a lot from these test vehicles, and new ideas come out of them but can any of this be put to use in a real product realistically? Is anything really new being tested here? We already know that building light weight and aerodynamically improves efficiency. Maybe I’m missing the connection, I certainly admit this is probable.
It’s a concept car, they’re not supposed to make sense, they’re supposed to be rolling PR.
Looks like a batmobile
“Does it come in black?”
Doubt it Bruce. You are going to just have to have Albert wrap it.
I’m happy now, that’s all
“In 2023, a team from the Technical University of Munich set a record of nearly 1,600 miles on one charge, and that was with a pretty tiny 15.5 kWh battery pack.”
(quickly google-translates Toecutter in German)
Aha! Zehenschneider!
I did not design or build that vehicle, but I did design and build a vehicle of similar efficiency that I used on the road in traffic for many tens of thousands of miles. An earlier iteration with a 1.5 kWh pack could get 150-200 miles range at 30-35 mph cruising speeds on real world roads with light pedaling effort.
I feel like many berets were worn and many skinny cigarettes were smoked while the designers did their thing here.
And their names were Du Quois, Chevalier, Montage, Detente, Avant-Garde, Deja Vu, Latrine…
and Chocolate Mousse.
So, that’s why it’s an EV! Chocolate Mouse drank all the gasoline.
Bouquet is an actual French surname, which will amuse Brits of a certain age.
And they knew a little German, too.
I love how bonkers French cars can be.
Doug is right, we need EVs to be fucking bonkers because they are just fucking wheeled apliances. They need to ignite passion…somehow. This is a good start.
Every single day I’m absolutely amazed to see all these Teslas leaving stoplights at normal rates, or turning left across traffic with zero drama.
Thus proving your point. If I had a Tesla, where fueling it occurred at home for ~1/3 of the cost of gasoline per mile, and I knew I’d never run out of range in my daily commute?
Yeah, I’d be the fastest mofo on the road. New tires every 3 months.
Yet every single one I see is driving like a first-gen Prius.
If we’re going to have appliances, they need to be appliances: minimize operating cost via drag reduction, damned be the aesthetics. They need to be repairable with inexpensive, readily-available tools/parts and no proprietary BS. Yet no one makes an appliance EV with a sub-0.15 Cd value and is open source.
What we have as modern EVs are bloated things designed to drain your wallet and allow spoiled, indebted consumerist suburbanites to keep up with the Joneses.
EVs can be so much more than what they currently are, and it’s a crying shame no one in the Western auto industry wants them to see their potential. We have to look toward ‘communist” China for creativity in this sector…
You’re not wrong here, that’s a good perspective.
My only counter would be that operating costs be damned, EV insurance and depreciation kill almost all notion of frugality in the long run. I’ll put my 10yo Odyssey up against any EV for total cost of ownership.
Once they solve the battery and actuarial problems, the sky will be the limit.
Eh I dunno. My ID4 is pretty boring and definitely more appliance than car. But at the end of the day I don’t need excitement when I pick my kids up from school or swing by Costco. My dirtbikes are for that kind of thing. I drive it nice and sensibly because what’s the point in hooning it? If I really wanted a car to have fun in there are plenty of used Cameros, BMWs and the like in my area that aren’t expensive.