0-100 kmph in less than a second: Is this the quickest EV in the world

Which is the quickest electric car in the world? Hint: It's not German. In fact, no established EV maker can match its speed. Not even the hypercar makers like Bugatti and Ferrari. It is developed and built by a group of students from Switzerland. They tested its acceleration on a racing track and returned with a staggering time of just 0.956 seconds to sprint from zero to 100 kmph speed. Guinness Book of World Records have also recognised the racing car prototype as the quickest electric vehicle.

The record was set in Dubendorf, a suburb in Zurich, Switzerland, this month. The group of students from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences developed the electric racing car prototype called Mythen at a tiny workshop. The students are also part of a group called Academic Motorsports Club Zurich.

The Mythen is a small car, almost the size of a go-cart, weighing only 140 kgs. The students used lightweight carbon and aluminium honeycomb structure to develop the Mythen. They also developed a four-wheel hub electric motor which is capable of churning out 326 of maximum power. It took around 30 students and 12 months to develop the car from scratch. From printed circuit boards to chassis and battery, every component of the EV were developed by the students at a workshop in Dubendorf.

There was no fancy race tracks or abandoned runways for the test run. The Mythen was put to test at the Switzerland Innovation Park, which is right next to workshop where it was born. It shot off like a bullet on its way to become the quickest electric car in the world. The Mythen hit the 100 kmph mark within 12.3 metres from the start line, clocking less than a second.

The person behind the wheel of the Mythen was Kate Maggetti, a friend of the students who developed the car. She was selected due to her light body weight to maximise the potential of the car. "Now, Guinness World Records has confirmed that Mythen broke the previous world acceleration record for electric vehicles. This beats the previous world record of 1.461 seconds, set in September 2022 by a team from the University of Stuttgart by more than a third," ETHZ said.

For the record, the Mythen is quicker than the Formula E electric racing cars which usually clock the same sprint in 2.8 seconds. It is even quicker than the McMurtry Speirling and Rimac Nevera, some of the quickest production-ready electric cars in the world. The Speirling has clocked the 0-100 kmph sprint in 1.4 seconds while Nevera recently clocked the same sprint 1.81 seconds.

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