A Profile of the Aspark Owl for Students in Automotive Training

The Osaka-based Japanese engineering company, Aspark, has recently shown its new hypercar, the Owl, at international car shows. What makes something a hypercar can change as technologies change, but the performance specs of the Aspark Owl definitely bump it up beyond super-status to hyper-status.
Aspark announced that they would manufacture only 50 units of the Owl and they already have pre-orders for 15. The hypercar will be made in Italty at MAT (Manufacttura Automobili Torino) and should be on the road by mid-2020. MAT has manufactured many impressive cars including the Modulo, a mid-engined supercar from Ferrari.
Development of the Owl started in 2014 and there was an initial release of a model in 2017. Since then Aspark has been working hard to make this new release the fastest electric vehicle in the world. Let’s see how they’re doing.

Specs and Performance for Those in Mechanic Training Schools

The Owl’s specs are pretty impressive. This electric vehicle has a maximum 2,012 hp. Of course this figure might lower depending on the battery charge, but the minimum guarantee is 1,150 hp. The Owl does 0-60 mph in 1.69 seconds and has a four-motor set up with a 64kWh lithium-ion battery pack. Aspark is hoping that will be enough to help it break the record for fastest electric vehicle at the famed Nürburgring race track in Germany.

With 1,475 lb-ft of torque, torque vectoring, and an approximate dry weight of 1,500 kg, the handling is smooth. The Owl has double-wishbone suspensions at each corner and hydraulic dampers with three modes that provide a range for ground clearance between 80 mm and 160 mm. You might not want to slow down but when you do, there are carbon-ceramic brake discs with 10-piston callipers in front and 4-piston stoppers at the back. All this plus a drivetrain we will talk about next.

A Look at the Drivetrain

As you know from your automotive training a vehicle’s drivetrain is the group of components that transfer power from the transmission to the driving wheels. This includes the driveshaft, CV joints, the differential, the axle shafts and the U-joints.
The Aspark Owl’s drivetrain powers that impressive 0-60 mph and gets the hypercar to its maximum speed clocked at 248 mph. This drivetrain is in a single-piece carbon monocque chassis, which is part of the reason the car is so light. A monocque construction requires less material to provide more strength to the car, but it takes longer to develop these designs because they are more complex and must be tested more rigorously than body-on-frame constructions.

The Owl Interior and Exterior

Some describe this car as a combination of a VW-powered fibreglass Porsche 917 kit car and a squished Lamborghini. The CEO of Aspark, Masanori Yoshia, on the other hand, says the shape of the car reflects his ideal, but it is also based on aerodynamic principles. Either way this car is an interesting study for anyone in automotive mechanics school interested in electric hypercars.
You can judge for yourself what you think about the Owl in this video of it from the 2019 Dubai Motor Show:

As for the interior, Aspark hasn’t confirmed much, but most car enthusiasts are guessing that it will be minimalistic. So far all that is known about the interior is that there will be screens for the rear view mirrors and the interior is where you will find the only storage space for the vehicle: the glove box.
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