Swiss student motorsport club Academic Motorsports club Zurich (or AMZ for short) smashed the Guinness world record for acceleration in an electric car with a 1.513-second zero to 60 mph run today. Holy crapping crap, I’d say the future of motorsport is in pretty awesome hands.
The students had some fun with the video of their record attempt, showing off a number of things you can’t get done in the time this car can reach 60 mph (or 100 kph if you’re Swiss). Their driver can’t even jump out of the car that fast!
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Their car, “Grimsel” had to reach 60 mph in 100 feet for the record attempt, and it crushed it. AMZ is made up of Swiss university students from ETH Zürich and Hochschule Luzern. As such, Grimsel was built in 2014 for the Formula Student Electric racing competition, which attracts student teams from around the world.
The car itself is a masterpiece, with carbon fiber wheels and big, meaty wings that would make an airplane jealous. Four wheel hub motors designed by the team give the featherweight 370-lb car over 200 horsepower and over 1,250 lb-ft of torque, per a team press release. The electric motors are efficient, too, regenerating as much as 30% of their spent energy back into the battery under braking.
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A clever traction control system ensures that all wheels are putting down as much power as they can in trickier road conditions, and torque vectoring helps the car turn on a time by sending more power to the outer wheels in a turn.
The previous 0-60 mph record of 1.779 seconds was set last year by another Formula Student Electric car run by GreenTeam Uni Stuttgart e.V., per Guinness World Records. Record times are an average of the time set by two runs, back-to-back, in each direction. So, not only do you have to break the record once, but you’ve got to confirm it with a second run that’s just as or nearly as fast.
Oh, and we caught that donut in the video, AMZ. This team even has the proper celebrations down pat.
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