A prototype electric car built by a team of students at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences has broken the world acceleration record.
This week the team announced that their “mythen” car had accelerated from 0 to 100 km/h in 0.956 seconds in a space of 12.3 metres at a military airfield in Dübendorf near Zurich.
The car was designed outside of course time by students coming together under the umbrella of the Academic Motorsport Association Zurich (AMZ).
0.956 seconds comfortably beats the previous world record of 1.461 seconds set by a team from the University of Stuttgart, ETH Zurich announced.
The vehicle, which took almost a year to develop, weighs just 140 kilograms and has a power output of 326 hp. All of the car’s components, from the printed circuit boards to the chassis and the battery, were developed by the students. To keep the weight down the car is made from lightweight carbon and aluminium honeycomb. To keep the vehicle on the ground the team developed a suction system to hold it on the track. The vehicle has four wheel-hub motors that the students developed and a special powertrain to give the vehicle its impressive maximum power output of 240 kilowatts, or 326 horse power.
According to driver Kate Magetti, the vehicle has an acceleration kick that feels like a rollercoaster.
More on this:
ETH press release (in English)
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