We Drive Honda's Electric Racing Go-Kart: Build the Damn Thing!

I'd taken an extended break from indoor karting after many years of reasonably consistent running, mostly due to other priorities, obligations, and time-usage choices. Recently, though, my eight-year-old said he wanted to give it a try, so I've again become a semi-regular at the local track. Fortunately, we've so far barely encountered the first two issues mentioned above, and in fairness, only a few cases of the charging issue. But when you're trying to maximize your free time because even your weekend days revolve around at least a loose schedule, it's indeed frustrating to sit in your kart for 15 minutes or more, often after waiting at least as long for your name to be called for your session, and looking at an empty track in front of you but having to wait for workers to tell you the karts are juiced up and ready to go.

So it felt like an appropriate quirk of timing during the recent Memorial Day/Indianapolis 500 Weekend when Honda let me and a few others climb aboard its eGX Racing Kart Concept on a makeshift, cone-defined circuit at Putnam Park Road Course about 40 miles southwest of downtown Indy. I was skeptical about how much fun I'd have despite the fact my indoor karting experiences during the past few months have softened my stance on electric karts from "they suck" to "OK, these can be fun." The distaste wasn't just about charge times; depending upon the way typical electric karts are set up (and it varies between facilities), braking can be a mixed bag of electric-motor friction, actual mechanical brake retardation, and—worst of all—the lap-destroying power-cut if, heaven forbid, you deign to overlap your brake and accelerator inputs.

Almost immediately upon flying around the track in the Honda eGX Racing Kart Concept, my lingering bias against the idea of electric karting was fried like a bug in a zapper. On the combo asphalt/concrete course, the eGX accelerated hard and of course instantly, thanks to the immediate torque shove inherent to electric motors. Its chassis exhibited a relatively neutral, slidable handling balance as well as cornering limits exceeding 1.00 g. In other words, it felt even better than most rental karts, with the relatively quiet, whiny noises from the electric powertrain and its gear set being the immediate and obvious-to-anyone difference compared to a two- or four-stroke gas-powered kart. Braking felt natural, and—hallelujah!—there's no motor "kill" function if you briefly overlap your pedal inputs as you manipulate the chassis' balance. (Another "in fairness"note: Indoor kart tracks tend to implement that kill function for the paying public because simultaneous pedal inputs are hard on the electric motors over time. It's an entirely reasonable solution from a business' perspective and an entirely annoying one from a driver's perspective.)

Honda says the eGX's dual onboard batteries are good for about 30 to 45 minutes of driving, depending upon how hard the kart is driven, but this is where the concept shows one of its appealing aspects: All you need to do to keep the action going is to swap out the batteries in seconds. Simply pop open each battery box located in the "sidepod" region on either side of the seat, pull out the battery from each, and pop in a charged one. (The 50.26-volt, 1.31-kWh batteries feed the electric motor simultaneously, so you'll swap them simultaneously, too.)

If the eGx is used somewhere like an arrive-and-drive karting facility, the track's owners/operators—if Honda ever decides to put this thing into commercial production—will need to have a fair number of spare batteries on standby, as each one takes about 5 hours to recharge once drained fully. According to Honda, though, performance doesn't drop off as the batteries discharge, and the company is rightly more concerned with battery longevity than fast charging in an application like this. The batteries power a single motor mounted behind the rear axle; Honda won't reveal its power specs because this is "just a concept," but the eGX felt plenty fast at about 45 mph, and its actual top speed and acceleration can be tuned easily for different circuit layouts via the single-speed gear-and-sprocket chain-drive hardware.

For example, the motors in the karts Honda put us in spun to about 5,000 rpm to exploit the best of the torque curve, but they can go as high as 9,000 rpm. Just like a conventional kart, altering the gearing is a quick job, too, thanks to a simple sprocket change, be it for either the larger sprocket on the axle or the smaller sprocket on the drive motor, or both.

Some other details: The chassis comes from Italian kartmaker Parolin, and the eGX overall weighs about 230 pounds without batteries, which each add 10 kilograms (about 22 pounds). Call it 275 pounds for a curb weight, which is 50 or more pounds heavier than many dedicated racing karts but in line with or even lighter than typical rental karts. The steering wheel features an AiM-supplied electronic dash system that's popular in karting; it can display lap times, the batteries' state of charge, motor rpm, and any warnings or errors the powertrain encounters, with a diagnostic function.

Honda for now is using the eGX to promote the company's overall and expanding commitment to cleaner technologies, specifically on the motorsports side of its business, from the hybrid powertrains IndyCar wants to introduce to the existing hybrid power units the Honda brand supplies in Formula 1 and the ones Acura runs in IMSA's GTP prototype class. Honda executives aren't ready to commit to putting the concept into production, but one of them told MotorTrend he thinks "there's a real business case" for doing so. From what I experienced, I agree, and you should be thrilled if you ever see a quick, fun, good-handling eGX fleet lined up in the pit lane at your nearest track, be it indoors or out. Hopefully, and as long as its price tag is reasonable (it remains TBD), Honda pulls the trigger here, because it would only up the enjoyment factor while likely eliminating at least a little bit of the annoyance we've all encountered when we're just trying to have a fun, fast time.