A Swiss racing team has shattered the zero to 100 km/h speed record in an electric vehicle. She shaved more than four tenths off the effort of the previous record holder to bring the time down to less than a second.
The Academic Motorsports Club Zurich (AMZ) made up of students took around a year to develop a car capable ofaccelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in just nine tenths of a second, or 0.956 seconds to be precisebeating the previous world record of 1.461 seconds set in September 2022 by a team from the University of Stuttgart.
For this, the team developed a small kart called Mythen WR that only needs 240 kW (326 horsepower) through its four motors. It is a modified version of the team’s 2019 Formula Student car, the European equivalent of Formula SAE. Already built as a stripped-down, ultra-lightweight open-wheel racing vehicle, it was the ideal candidate for a lightweighting program aimed at breaking the electric vehicle acceleration record.
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This electric vehicle becomes the fastest in the world
Each component of the electric car was developed by the students from printed circuit boards (PCBs) and optimized for speed. For example, with a lightweight carbon and aluminum honeycomb, the hand-built electric car weighs only around 140 kilos.
“Power isn’t the only thing that matters when it comes to setting an acceleration record, efficiently transferring that power to the ground is also essential “, said Dario Messerli, head of aerodynamics at AMZ. The single-seater vehicle is not equipped with Formula 1-style front or rear wings. Instead, the team has “ developed a kind of vacuum cleaner that keeps the vehicle on the ground by suction “.
The driver of the vehicle is Kate Maggetti, a friend of the students involved in the project, who was chosen “because of her light weight” and her “willingness to take on the challenge”, Yann Bernard, manager, told AFP. engines at AMZ. To put this record in perspective, know that that’s over a second faster than the Tesla Model S Plaid (around 2.5 seconds) and almost a full second faster than the Rimac Nevera hypercar (1, 81 seconds).
