In the spirit of the Every Man Challenge, Kyle Seggelin turned his 1986 Toyota 4Runner (formerly Bailey Cole Racing’s) into the first electric vehicle to take on the EV class at King of the Hammers. Powered by the electric motor from a Nissan Leaf, and his sister as co-driver, they drove into the KOH history books and won the EV Class! Coming across the finish line silently, the duo won the hearts and respect of every person watching - showing the spirit of ingenuity, hard work, and passion for racing.

Emme Hall tech contributor

EV Toyota 4Runner to finish the King of the Hammers

In the spirit of the Every Man Challenge, Kyle Seggelin turned his 1986 Toyota 4Runner (formerly Bailey Cole Racing’s) into the first electric vehicle to take on the EV class at King of the Hammers. Powered by the electric motor from a Nissan Leaf, and his sister as co-driver, they drove into the KOH history books and won the EV Class! Coming across the finish line silently, the duo won the hearts and respect of every person watching - showing the spirit of ingenuity, hard work, and passion for racing.

Emme Hall Tech Contributor

King of the Hammers is rightly considered the toughest one-day off-road race in the world. In my opinion, the King of the Hammers is also an important test field for the development of new technologies dedicated to the off-road vheicles. One of my favorite things when I'm in Hammertown is to walk around the teams' pits to discover the new race cars and technologies adopted.

2021 is a year destined to enter the history of the King of the Hammers and of the off-road world in general for an important reason: the first fully electric vehicle took part and ended the 4WP Every Man Challenge.

To achieve this important milestone it was not a professional team or a large company engaged in the world of off-road or electric vehicles, but it was a group of friends with the vision that electric 4x4s are the future of this sport.

Toyota 4Runner with Nissan Leaf electric powertrain finishes 4WP Every Man Challenge at 2021 King of the Hammers

The vision of Kyle Seggelin and his team was very simple in its innovation and at the same time challenging to carry out. Kyle decided to turn Bailey Cole's Toyota 4Runner into a fully electric vehicle and take it to the King of the Hammers competing in the Every Man Challenge in the new Electric Vehicle class.

After removing the gas engine from the 1986 4Runner, the electric motor and batteries from a Nissan Leaf were inserted.

Seggelin's 4Runner uses the 80 kilowatt engine from the first generation Nissan Leaf, which produces 107 horsepower and 187 lbf/ft of torque. That's not much power considering the team added 1,000 pounds to the vehicle. Since the Leaf's engine has an output shaft, it was easy to pair it with the 4Runner's five-speed manual transmission.

The team organized itself with two sets of batteries to power the 4Runner's electric motor in the race. One comes from a second-generation Leaf that can store 40 kilowatt hours of energy and the second 62 kWh battery pack is from a Leaf Plus. The team expects to get one mile for every kilowatt hour, but didn't have time for testing. therefore it is only a plausible hypothesis.

Kyle Seggelin's racing plan was to start with the smaller batteries, which should easily lead him to the first pit at mile 17.5. At that point, the team replaced the batteries with larger ones to get to mile 55. While Seggelin and his co-driver (his sister Dahlia) were in the race, the team recharged the smaller batteries to allow Kyle to get to the finish.

The 4Runner is rolling on Raceline wheels and 35-inch Falken tires. Pro Eagle supplied the team with some jacks and Bend-Tech gave the team tube bending software. The long-travel suspension uses King shocks and it's got ARB lockers front and rear.

Seggelin isn't some kind of EV expert, by the way, he just thinks electrification is the next wave in racing and he wants to be ahead of the curve. He's using this project as a self-education opportunity.

"I'm tech for sure, but my weakest thing is wiring," Seggelin told me. "I don't really understand electricity very well."

When asked what he thinks the failure point might be, Seggelin told me he's worried about the multiple connections.

"The vehicle control unit needs to monitor voltage from each of the 192 cells," Seggelin said. "If it sees a cell going too high or too low it will shut the car down. But even if the cells are OK, if a connection breaks, it will stop the car. So there are 192 connections, never mind the myriad other connections that were all made by a wiring expert." (That last part was written in a sarcasm font, obviously - interviewer Emme Hall said).

Mission accomplished! Kyle Seggelin and his electric 4Runner won the 4WP Every Man Challenge in the EV Class

With a time of 7 hours and 42 minutes (7: 42: 09.021) Kyle Seggelin managed to be the first to race and finish the EMC King of the Hammers in a fully electric vehicle.

The merit is not only of Seggelin but also of the whole team who spent countless hours in the garage to realize this crazy idea. The team has been working overtime since October to prepare the 4Runner for this race, so big props to Will Barrameda, Charlie Pangelinan, Jeff Webb, Jaymes Massa, Mike Torrano, Rick Slagle, Danny Tran, Rob Gurski and Diego Ortiz.

Kyle Seggelin quotes from the EMC podium

What were biggest surprises today?

“The biggest surprise was the battery worked exactly the way we hoped it would and the car kept moving. We had some trouble, but we moved all the way to the finish line with minimal issues. I was very surprised. I thought it'd be way worse than that.”

What inspired you to enter KOH in an electric vehicle?

“Me and my friends have been talking about it for a long time. And then the fact that King of the Hammers put on an electric class is what really prompted us to do it.”

What was harder: prepping the car or finishing the race?

“Prepping the car for sure! Because we did a pretty good job, so we had an easy race day. I would say prepping the car, we put the effort in up front so we had a good day today.”

How many hours did you put into prepping the car?

“Four months straight, every day off, and every day after work... except Thanksgiving.”

What encouragement would you give to future people who want to enter electric cars?

“Go for it! Search the internet, get in touch with me, get in touch with anybody else. People in electric car forums (or whatever) are awesome folks and just do it. It's not as hard as you think. It's nuts and bolts make it happen.”

What do you do with Tesla?

“I'm in the manufacturing side of things. They're good cars.”