A team of Swiss students has broken the world record for the fastest-accelerating electric car, breaking the 1-second barrier for this record.
The students from the Academic Motorsports Association of Zurich(AMZ), achieved the feat on September 1, 2023, in Dübendorf, Zurich, Switzerland. The AMZ team is a student team from ETH Zurich and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
Their car, named Mythen, accelerated from 0 to 62 miles per hour (0-100 km/h) in 0.956 seconds. This beats the previous record of 1.461 seconds, set by a team from the University of Stuttgart in 2022.
The Mythen is a hand-built electric car. It has four electric motors that produce a total of 1,360 horsepower. The car’s battery pack can store up to 50 kilowatt-hours of energy.
How did they do it?
Traction was the key to achieving this record. The AMZ team didn’t add thousands of horsepower to their car; instead, they focused on improving traction. To guarantee robust traction from the get-go, the AMZ team engineered a unique vacuum fan system that securely anchors the vehicle to the ground through suction.
A breakthrough in electric car technology
It shows that electric cars can be just as fast as gasoline-powered cars, even at the high end of the performance spectrum. This could help to accelerate the adoption of electric cars and make them a more viable alternative to gasoline-powered cars.
