EVs are starting to flex their muscle.
A heavily modified version of the Ford F-150 Lightning came out on top at this year’s Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. It wasn’t the only battery-powered vehicle that put on a show, though. Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 Time Attack and the new quad-motor Rivian R1T also showed they could hang.
This year’s champion was the F-150 Lightning SuperTruck which it completed the fastest run of the weekend when it completed the 12.42-mile in just 8:53.553 minutes on Sunday. That time was the best put up by any of the 61 competitors by a wide margin, with the factory beating the second-place entrant from Wolf Racing by more than 10 seconds. The SuperTruck is a one-off demonstrator built specifically for the hill climb and features a tri-motor powertrain that pumps out a hair-raising 1,600 horses along with an aerodynamics package that makes over 6,000 pounds of downforce. It is a true all-electric beast.
The EV was driven by Romain Dumas, who was also behind the wheel of the 1,400-hp Ford SuperVan 4.2 during last year’s installment of the hill climb. The SuperTruck was actually slower than its predecessor, which finished second to another Wolf Racing entrant. Amazingly, the SuperTruck would have almost certainly bested the SuperVan had it not come to a complete stop shortly after leaving the starting line, forcing Dumas to completely restart the vehicle. This is the driver’s fifth win at Pike’s Peak. He also owns the course record, having navigated its 156 turns in under eight seconds in Volkswagen’s I.D. R electric race car in 2018.
Ford and Wolf Racing were joined on the podium along with Hyundai. The company entered three examples of the Ioniq 5 N hot hatch in this year’s hill climb, two of which were Time Attack variants, while the other was a stock EV tuned for Pike’s Peak, according to Autoblog. The Ioniq 5 N that claimed third was driven by Dani Sordo made it up the hill in 9:30.852 minutes.
A quad-motor example of the refreshed Rivian R1T also finished in the top half of the standings. The truck was driven by Gardner Nichols and crossed the finish line at the 10:53.883-minute mark. It may not have been close to making the podium, but it bested the time put up by a R1T at last year’s hill climb by close to 30 seconds.
