News from Cleveland Plain Dealer:
by John Mangels
How fast did Ohio State University's Buckeye Bullet electric car skim across the flat Utah desert last week? Let's see how it stacks up against a couple of other notable projectiles.
It wasn't quite as fast as a speeding bullet a .38-caliber round would have nicked the OSU speedster by about 5 seconds in a timed mile. But it would have dusted Japan's famous Shinkansen bullet train, which pokes along at 277 mph compared to the Buckeye Bullet's eye-popping 315.
Not bad for a vehicle that runs on glorified flashlight batteries.
The Bullet, designed, built and maintained by OSU engineering students, set national and world land speed records last week on the ancient lake bed called the Bonneville Salt Flats.
On Wednesday, professional driver Roger Schroer cruised at an average of 272 mph, 27 mph faster than the old international electric-vehicle record set in 1999 by a California team called White Lightning.
Friday morning, the pencil-shaped scarlet and gray streamliner rocketed across the salty desert floor at 314.958 mph. That easily broke the national speed mark of 257 mph set by the Bullet itself last year. (The U.S. and international records have different qualifying rules).
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