SAE Congress '08: Watch out, Mexico, the military's got the HY-DRA

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There are a lot of booths here at the SAE World Congress that's going on in Detroit this week that promote one county or another. Poland's got one. There's a French diesel consortium something or other (will be looking into that tomorrow). And then there's the Mexico booth. This booth happens to be near where a mean-looking G.I. Joe toy vehicle called the HY-DRA is parked on the Cobo Hall floor. Not quite sure if anyone over in the Mexico booth is worried at all.

In any case, the vehicle in the foreground and on display in the gallery below is technically called the Hybrid-Defense Recon Assault. The military ride - built in collaboration with Bluwav, Raytheon, Tuscon Embedded Systems and A123 Systems - uses a 5.1 kWh, 316V lithium-ion battery and four 46 kW hub motors that generate 250 hp. Those numbers are enough to move the beast from 0-60 in six seconds and offer an "All Electric (Stealth) Attack Mode" of 75 mph. The HY-DRA has an all-electric range of just 15.5 miles (25 km) and gets 35 mpg when used in series hybrid mode. Watch out.

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