√Video: World’s fastest-accelerating electric ‘car’ record set by German students

A team of German university students have designed and built the fastest-accelerating electric ‘car’ in the world, capable of reaching 100km/h from a standstill in a claimed 1.416 seconds.

The Guinness World Record for the fastest-accelerating electric ‘car’ – a four-wheeled vehicle not much bigger than a go-kart – has been set by a team of 20 German university students.

In a video uploaded to YouTube, University of Stuttgart student Diogo Silva demonstrated the electric car’s ability to accelerate from 0 to 100km/h in 1.416 seconds – just 0.097 of a second faster than the previous record set in 2016.

The electric car – named E0711-11 EVO – was designed and constructed by 20 students from the University of Stuttgart’s ‘GreenTeam’ to comply with ‘Formula Student’ regulations.

Formula Student is a series of competitions run across the world, with teams of university students designing and producing the fastest vehicles within a specific set of rules.

Teams are scored across a variety of categories, from how their cars perform in acceleration tests to endurance runs against the clock on tight and twisty circuits.

While Formula Student cars are slightly bigger than a go-kart, they feature Formula One-inspired wings for downforce and a monocoque chassis to become as light and strong as possible.

According to GreenTeam, its all-wheel drive electric car produces up to 180kW but weighs less than 145kg excluding the driver – delivering a power-to-weight ratio of more than 1240kW per tonne.

To put this in perspective, a Formula One car’s power-to-weight ratio is approximately 1040kW per tonne.

In a number of Australian states, provisional licence drivers are limited to driving cars with no more than 130kW per tonne.

GreenTeam claims the driver of its electric car is subjected to g-forces of up to 2.5G, or an average of 2G across the brief 0-100km/h run – slightly less than the 3G astronauts experience on take-off.

The E0711-11 EVO features an advanced torque-vectoring system (demonstrated in the video between 0:57 and 1:02) which allows the front and rear axles to rotate independently.

In this case, the driver performs a front-wheel and then a rear-wheel burnout to warm up the car’s tyres for optimal grip.

According to the team’s LinkedIn page, the E0711-11 EVO is also equipped with a Lidar system, allowing the electric car to operate autonomously by detecting cones which are used to create a circuit.

Croatian electric-car maker Rimac still holds the record for the world’s fastest-accelerating production car, with its Nevera electric hypercar capable of achieving 100km/h from a standstill in 2.1 seconds.

As reported last month, Rimac’s chief engineer – Matija Renić – believes production car 0 to 100km/h times of less than one second could be achievable in the future, although the theory is yet to be put into practice.

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