Chinese carmaker Yangwang has claimed that its U9 Xtreme electric car has set a new record on a road in Germany, hitting 293 mph.
This is the highest speed ever recorded by a production electric car.
But they didn’t stop there. The same car and the same driver, Mark Basseng, set a new record at the Papenburg track, hitting 308.4 mph. Yangwang’s U9 Xtreme broke the previous record of 304.5 mph set by the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport in 2019.
The information was obtained from YouTube and you can find more details on their website.
The U9 car that set the record was renamed from “Track Edition” to “Extreme” last month. Yangwang is a subsidiary of Chinese carmaker BYD.
They have said that only 30 of the U9 Xtreme models will be built. However, they have not yet announced the price or which countries it will be sold in.
Since tariffs are likely to be imposed on any electric car made in China, it may not be available in the US anytime soon. It may even be more expensive in its own country.
Among other previously reported information, this U9 car uses a 1200-volt powertrain, which is more powerful than the 800-volt one in the regular U9. The electric motors in the car’s four wheels can produce about 3,000 horsepower together.
In the video, Basseng slows down before turning the last bend on the 2.5-mile-long Papenburg road, despite having enough space. He starts slowing down at 490 km/h.
It looks like the car’s speed has been limited for some technical reason. Perhaps to prevent the battery from overheating or because of the tires, which cannot withstand the high pressure of spinning so fast.
On the other hand, it could be that BYD is trying to set another record. They plan to use the Yangwang car to reach speeds of over 500 kilometers per hour.
Yangwang’s speed record only applies to cars driving in one direction, while previously the average speed of cars driving in both directions was calculated.
However, ultimate speed records are not usually for production cars. Guinness World Records announced in 2022 that they were suspending the title of “fastest production car” for the time being.
Because they previously awarded records for both one-way and two-way cars, in some cases even modified cars were given the title.
But the question that the U9 Xtreme car raises is: in this era of electric cars, can a gasoline-powered car go faster than that?
