If you’re a gearhead your idea of a fun video is watching a properly driven Ferrari, Lamborghini or Porsche blast off the line at a racetrack while onlookers calculate 0 to 60 mph acceleration times. The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse, for example, with over 1,000 horsepower on tap has been clocked doing 0-60 mph in just 2.4 seconds. Ferrari’s fastest, the La Ferrari reports in at 2.6 seconds for the 0 to 60 run and the recently upgraded Tesla Model S EV, operating in what the company calls “Ludicrous Mode” (their term) can make the 0-60 mph dash in 2.8 seconds
These sprints seem pretty fast until you consider that a group of students from the University of Stuttgart, who call themselves the “GreenTeam Formula Students” created a single seat electric vehicle that demonstrated it can reach 62mph (100kph) from a standstill in only 1.779 seconds when driver Priska Schmid, a student at the university, accomplished the feat during tests at the Jade Weser Airport in northwest Germany. And that qualifies them for Guinness World Book of Records recognition.
The car’s actual power output is only 134bhp, much less output than the bespoke vehicles I mentioned in the first paragraph. But it has three major advantages going for it: First it is very light, weighing just 160kg including its 6.62kWh battery, which gives it a power to weight ratio of 1.6 kg / kW which is in Formula 1 race car territory (the aforementioned Bugatti Veyron Super Sport offers 2.08 kg / kW). Second, as an EV it can access all if its power almost immediately, while conventionally-powered vehicles generally have to reach high revs before obtaining peak power and finally the four electric motors on the University of Stuttgart's E0711-6 electric car produce a locomotive-like 1200 Nm of torque with four wheel drive traction and very sticky racing-type tires.
The student’s effort bested that of a group of Swiss engineers which set the previous world record last year in an electric vehicle called Grimsel, which achieved acceleration from a standing start to 62 mph in 1.785 seconds.
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