The fastest car in the world is now also the fastest electric vehicle around Germany’s fabled Nürburgring Nordschleife race track.
German race car driver Moritz Kranz managed to take the Yangwang U9 Xtreme around the track in a time of 6:59.157 minutes, Nürburgring officials announced Oct. 21.
The achievement was actually done on Aug. 22 but wasn’t officially announced until now.
That makes it the first production EV to lap the track in a time of less than seven minutes, and it’s more than five seconds quicker than the previous Nürburgring EV record holder, Xiaomi SU7 Ultra.
“The Nürburgring Nordschleife is the most demanding track, and our lap time is a testament to the development skills of BYD and Yangwang,” Kranz said in a news release. “Without their intense work to balance a high-powered EV platform with the difficult demands of the chassis set-up, this great lap time would not have been possible.”
Kranz has driven nearly 10,000 laps at the Nordschleife circuit during a GT racing career.
Back in September, the Yangwang U9 Xtreme became the fastest production car in the world when driver Marc Basseng piloted it to a top top speed of 308.4 mph (496.2 km/h) at the ATP Automotive Testing Papenburg test track in Germany.
“We are dedicated to pushing the limits of what can be achieved through technology, and the Nürburgring is such a legendary challenge for cars and drivers that it is only natural for our engineers to pursue their dreams there,” said BYD executive vice president Stella Li, in a news release.
“The limited-edition U9 Xtreme has proven that it is not only the world’s fastest car in a straight line, but also a vehicle with the performance and dynamic qualities necessary to break lap records on a circuit with a wide variety of corners.”
Yangwang is a luxury brand of BYD, the largest EV maker in the world.
The U9 Xtreme is a high-performance version of the Yangwang U9. The U9 Xtreme has four ultra-high-speed electric motors and more than 3,000 PS (2,956 hp).
Yangwang intends to produce only 30 units of this car. The car is not available in Canada.
You can watch the record Nürburgring run on YouTube.
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