Future of 1/8 E Buggy?
 

Hi.

What do you think and see as the future of 1/8th electric buggy?

Will the class grow or will nitro always be the class with the most drivers? Even if they keep putting regulations on nitro fuel.

What kind of technical improvements could be done to the class if you could wish?

Anyone that has both nitro and electric car that prefers the electric one?

Would love to see a discussion and hear you thoughts.

Here in Idaho ebuggy has been the biggest class overall for years. We can have up to 20 ebuggy entries while nitro is dwindling. Our last race had like 3 entries for nitro buggy.

Personally as a former nitro buggy racer, (long before ebuggies were a thing) I can't stand nitro. I want to just charge my packs, run my 7 - 10 minute mains and go home lol.

I don’t know that there could be any significant “technical” improvements that can be made to the cars - heck, all of the major brands are pretty much using the same parts between their Nitro/Electric counterparts now, save for the parts unique to each powertrain. I suppose that advancements will continue to be made in terms of motor efficiency and battery output on the electric side.

Keep in mind that 1/8th Nitro has a World Championship title, the electric classes don’t. There’s a certain allure for up and coming drivers when you know that there’s a significant goal/dream to shoot for.

That being said, electric has its conveniences. As mentioned above, it all depends on where you race. I think that E-buggy/Truggy will always have its loyal following, and it seems to me like a lot of people run both anyway. It’s certainly economically feasible, given the parts share.

Here in central Texas, eBuggy is far more popular for regular club racing, 37 electric buggy to 20 nitro buggy for a recent series race, nitro is hit and miss for regular club races and sometimes they don't even have enough entries to make a nitro class at all.

The bigger issue I see is that nitro isn't sustainable because they need an extra pit man which limits the number of classes people can run. I often help a friend to be his pit man, and that usually means I can only run 1 electric class instead of 2 classes just so I can pit for him... that hurts turnout for the program because that's fewer entries. Something needs to be figured out on how to reduce the number of pit men necessary to free up drivers to increase turnout. The way I see it, nitro is killing club level RC, doh!

Now the big races are a completely different story... when there's at least 10+ heats, then there's no problem getting enough folks to pit the nitros.

When are electronic fuel injection and onboard starters coming to nitro engines? That would go a long ways to helping things.

Nitro is the glory!

Do you guys think that better Lipos and cooling in the future could lead to longer mains?

The future of 1/8 E Buggy is quite promising. It is inevitable 1/8 E bug will displace its nitro counterpart at the world championship level. Once that action is finalized, E bug will become the type-of-choice for most competitors in the 1/8 buggy class.

Factors external of the sport are driving a move away from IC to EV. This is occurring rapidly in 1:1 and the trickle down to RC is assured. Reluctantly, I come to this assessment as I have raced 1/8 nitro bug in the past. So, yeah, 1/8 E bug has a solid future in front of it.

'AC'

lol, but ebuggy pays the bills

At our track there was one nitro last month and none this month. I have heard that there are fuel restrictions coming in Europe. Like other classes, it seems to vary from track to track. I doubt it will disappear though.

https://www.rctech.net/forum/chat-lo...onroad-v2.html

https://www.rctech.net/forum/racing-...dying-off.html

https://www.rctech.net/forum/racing-...out-class.html

https://www.rctech.net/forum/racing-...ox-racing.html

https://www.rctech.net/forum/chat-lo...oad-2020s.html

Depending on your area I have seen a rise in Ebuggy & Etruggy classes here in Wisconsin and even when I lived back in Ohio, the electric classes were bigger.
Back in June our track in Wisconsin held Nats Warm-up race and there was more Ebuggies than Nitro. Our club races we typically have over 150 entries and last race 73 of them were Ebuggy.

So alot depends on your area and tracks around you.

Not sure what else could change on these almost every brand is pushing what you can currently do with them and now most are able to switch between Elec & Nitro with their brand conversion parts.

Actually, this part is relatively easy to solve. You know that ramp pit lane thingy that they use for pits? Make it higher so that it comes up to the driver's stand, and let the driver perform the pit stop themself.:ha:

Couple this to the guy who suggested EFI and onboard starter and I think it might make nitro a whole lot more easier....

Might be a saftey issue there. Some of these track have very high drivers stands.

I have seen very high drivers stand, most of them do not need to be that high. this is a very interesting thread. keep productive comments coming . keep going guys.
I run both, prefer Nitro, but for convenience e-buggy by far. Cost to operate this class of vehicles must also be considered as well.

YES
 

of course eventually the batteries are going to stop evolving but right now they just keep getting better and better

Have they really changed much in the the past 10 years? I know the 10 years before that was when the big move from brushed/nimh to lipo/brushless was.

EBuggy is on my list for next year to try. Right now it’s outside my range of travel

I think it comes down to ebuggy simply being easier/less of a hassle. many people today do not want to deal with tuning the engine everytime u take it out or the maintenance that comes with having an engine. batteries are now to a point and have been for some time that u can have a decent length heat. the performance has also caught up to nitro so that isnt an issue either. the only thing I think that keeps nitro in the game is the ability to have these longer heats. the sound/smell is also a thing even if it may sound trivial.
the engine tuning does also put another variable into the mix too. u can have 2 of the exact same engine yet if one is not tuned properly it will not perform as good. this is not so much a concern with electric motors.

I kind of agree that nitro is killing club racing. As whole it's extremely frustrating. When you have so many people helping pit it leaves almost nobody for marshalling which leads to frustration all around.

I came back into the hobby only afew months ago, I was a 1/10 onroad nitro racer ~12yrs ago.

When researching where the industry was, and what was new - honestly not much had changed/evolved in the nitro world, however the electric world was totally new.

As such I bought into 1/8 E-Buggy, and I can only see the class moving forward and evolving as the tech does.

I started racing 8th scale e-buggy this summer. The fact that it was electric was a major deciding point.

Many years ago, I raced nitro TC. While the longer mains made things interesting, I just hated all the maintenance and cleaning required after each race day. Plus the constant fiddling with the engine tuning, I just decided that nitro wasn’t for me.

I wouldn’t have started racing 8th scale if it was nitro only. I don’t have to take half the car appart just for cleaning, just blowing the dust off and cleaning with a paintbrush. I can concentrate on chassis setup and hitting the track to improve my driving. Runtimes are decent at 10 minutes with a 5200 mAh battery, and with today’s chargers capable of charging rates up to 40 amps, with 2 battery packs you can pretty much just change battery and go back on the track non stop. From my point of view, e-buggy is the way of the future.

Martin Paradis

evolution on the cars, go to shorty only, different (better) layouts are possible, run something better then a open center diff.

In my region ebuggy is king. Nitro buggy is very sporadic and like a guy said above at the club level it's a bit frustrating. 5 show up and that's 10 people dedicated to each heat/main limiting marshalling. Totally agree with that. Etruggy is pretty popular too but it does seem like it's lighter this year. Could be the cost. I do prefer the ease of charging my packs and rolling. Plus the turnouts are bigger. I'd rather run with 30 competitive ebuggys finish 10th or 11th vs 6 nitro and say I made the A main.

I'm the same way... on my race log I feel that the weighted score is more important than my finish position. It's more gratifying in seeing results of how many more people I can beat... so if you raced with 30 people and finished 10th then that would give a ranking of 30 - 10 + 1 = 21 but if you won the nitro main that might've only had 15 or so entries would be 15 - 1 + 1 = 15 which wouldn't be as rewarding based on my personal calculation for how I measure my gratification, ha!

for consideration:
Nitro:
Competion engine = $550+ including pipes and manifold, glow plug and associated parts. ie.. springs, gasket etc.. good for about 3 to 4 gallons of nitro 20% less life with 30%
extra servo = $150
Electric:
motor and esc = $350, $150 battery good for ?????? long while.
less maintenance = priceless

When nitro takes over around at the local club season it does seems to detract a lot of electric only enthusiasts.

I do have a nitro 1:8 buggy but rarely run it.

Battery technology will get better and longer runs will be possible. Even now we could probably run 15 or 20 minute mains. What will need to change is the electronics. A more efficient system will have to be run to combat heat issues. Higher voltage and lower kv motor.

When i ran 6S setup's i wasn't blown away by how cool things ran. we need a different design motor all together imo

From the sidelines
 

As someone who doesn't race 1/8 scale but I do bash the local track weekly. I see lots of people come and go at the track and what I've found is nitro is really good for the diehard dedicated racers. These are the guys that have skill good enough to finish a 10min heat without a marshall and have the technical ability to maintain and tune a internal combustion engine. The novice drivers really shouldn't start with a nitro buggy. I see it all the time people come to the track with thier brand x nitro rtr and they have zero laps in before problems start. I love the sound and smell of the nitro powered vehicles but I'll leave it to the pro's.

Since battery technology has been brought up often, the adoption of 3.8V cells as the standard will be a nice little bump in performance, but it may take a while, given that there are still a lot of 3.7 cell-based batteries on the market.

I guess once LiHV’s eventually take over and Standard LiPO product offerings get replaced, sanctioning bodies can update their rules to adopt their use fully charged. I’d hate for a bunch of people to feel like they have to buy all new batteries just to feel competitive.

So there actually isn't any difference between a lipo and a lihv. It's just marketing. Any high quality lipo can be overcharged to 4.35v per cell. It's been this way since lihv hit the market 6 or so years ago.

I was referring to something other than is currently available. 6s run cooler than 4s but not enough to do a 30-45 minute main. I’m thinking 8-12s with 500-900kv motor.
But ROAR and IFMAR would obviously have to change their rules.

As a 6s basher, I don't get this. I run 15-20 minutes a charge, with 3.8MT tires bashing, and closer to 30 minutes if I use truggy tires and dial the speed down to 4s track speeds for a track bash. I don't run a cooling fan or anything specials like that. Heat is a non-issue. This is with a "RTR" grade 4074 2050kv Arrma motor and a Castle MMX ESC. On track days, I run three Lipos, running one, charging one, resting one. Even starting a fresh battery with a hot car, I still don't overheat anything.

The only heat issue I have is with my 1/8 truggy, on 95f degree days, when I try to run WFO for a full battery in a grassy field with giant 3.8MT tires... That will send my MMX into thermal limp mode, but that is also using a LOT more power than a track truggy (or buggy) with track tires tuned to track speeds.

The motor will do the same amount of ‘power’ drawn (electromotive force) as voltage increases however current decreases. So at a lower voltage the current is higher thus higher potential for heat.

So it is better to keep your motor at a higher voltage (throttle curve helps with heat with trade offs) and good brakes. To me running a motor at 50% may over heat it, if one finds them selves at or near that range all the time.. the heat may come from that.

Thanks for lot of great input.

I feel a lot of americans have had a say But how is it looking in Europe? As the nitro % is also going down.

You can't compare bashing to racing. The throttle in bashing is too inconsistent allowing the motor plenty of opportunity to rest.

I actually ran my 6s Notorious on track once with a 70% throttle cap and even when it was 80F the motor was coming off the track at around 250F. (much hotter than my Teknos)

yes and no.
if you look at the power curve of lithium batts (from what i know...which isnt much)
a battery gets charged to its full power and immediately drops a bit to a certain voltage for say 70 percent of its life and then will taper off from there which is the fade you feel at the end of a main (or heat soak)
so if you have a 3.8 based cell it should in theory hold that 4.2v for longer then a 3.7 based cell would because its already at that level in which the initial drop would send it to.
so a lihv battery will spend a majority of your race at a higher voltage then a standard lipo
does that make any sense lol?

Not not really heh. You have to not think about them in terms of different cells because they're not. Again you can charge any high quality lipo to 4.35v. That's the only difference.

so then i guess i fell for the marketing
i was led to believe that a "hv" cell stayed at a higher voltage for longer.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rct...9d1230880e.jpg

i was referring to something like this.
charging both packs (here to 25v) would lead to a higher voltage throughout the curve....but essentially if they are the same cells then this doesnt make any sense.
either way...i dont see a difference personally in the smc 6000 lcg pack i was running and the new lcg lihv pack i run from them lol

8-12s would be a whole different ballpark for sure.