Video: Rhys Millen's 1,368bhp electric car conquers Pikes Peak

Last weekend saw the 93rd running of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, in which foolhardy chaps tackle a 12.4-mile, winding track to the top of a mountain, hopefully without plummeting off the side.
 
This year’s fastest run was clocked by Rhys Millen in his eO PP03, the drifter’s 1368bhp, all-electric prototype clocking a time of 9m07s at an average speed of 79mph.
 
That’s right, the fastest car at this year’s Pikes Peak was powered by batteries. Welcome to the future, y’all.
 
The Latvian-built PP03 uses a 50kWh lithium-ion battery (around double the capacity of that found in, say, the Nissan Leaf) feeding no fewer than SIX electric motors – three on each axle – with a combined 1368bhp (which, as all potential Bond villains will know, is one frickin’ megawatt) and no less than 1,593lb ft of torque.
 
Please leave your ‘jumped-up milkfloat’ quips at the door.
 
Now we have a video of the entirety of Millen’s record-breaking, and it makes for oddly hypnotic, weirdly muted viewing. There’s a strange sort of purity in watching the four-wheel drive racer carve up Pikes in near-silence, the traditional scream of engine replaced by… well, nothing very much at all, really.
 
Of course, Millen’s time is still nearly a minute shy of Sebastien Loeb’s outright PP record, the French rallyist recording a deranged 8m13.8s in 2013 in his 875bhp Peugeot 208 T16.
 
Watch that run here, and tell us: how long do you reckon it’ll be before an EV beats Seb’s time?