The Real Car of Tomorrow

I have a T-shirt that I got at the American LeMans Series race at Mid-Ohio a couple of years ago that has examples of the four classes of cars in the series on the back, with "The Real Cars of Tomorrow" on the front. It was a dig at NASCAR and it's vintage 1950s "Car of Tomorrow" package. It was true then and it's even more true today:

A racing team competing in the American Le Mans Series endurance-racing program plans to unveil a hybrid car today.

The car, a prototype called the Corsa Zytek Hybrid, is the result of a partnership between the Salt Lake City-based race team Corsa Motorsports and Zytek Group Ltd., a U.K. automotive engineering and electronics company with offices in Novi, Mich. It competes in a series of races in North America and Europe that range in length from just under three hours to 24 hours.

The main sticking point in development right now is, of course, the reliability of the batteries, particularly over the course of an endurance race like the 10-hour Petit Le Mans, where the car will debut in a few weeks. Of course, it's precisely this kind of development of emerging technologies that top level motor racing is supposed to be about.