New 0-62 MPH World Record Set By Sub-1-Second EV

A new acceleration world record has been set: 0-100 kph (62 mph) in just 0.956 seconds over a distance of just 12.3 meters, or a smidge over 40 feet. The feat was achieved by students from ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Switzerland, who are also members of the Academic Motorsports Club Zurich (AMZ). Making the achievement all the more remarkable is that this group only began working on the project in September 2022.

Their electric vehicle was dubbed Mythen, and you can watch the car set its record at the Switzerland Innovation Park in Duebendorf in the video below. Kate Maggetti was the student entrusted with the honor of keeping Mythen pointed in the right direction.

AMZ is no stranger to holding EV acceleration records, having set a world-beating time of 1.513 seconds in 2016. This was overturned last year when German students from the University of Stuttgart set a new record of 1.461 seconds (video below), an incremental improvement.

The Swiss students did not want to leave themselves vulnerable to the same sort of risk and hoped to not just beat the record but "really do it in style." With a sub-1-second time, they've cut a third from the previous record, beating it by just over half a second.

This was achieved using a carbon and aluminum honeycomb body structure; all in, Mythen weighs a scant 309 pounds. Other key components include four of the students' self-developed hub motors and "a special powertrain" developing 240 kilowatts, which translates to roughly 322 horsepower. But there are more ingredients in this recipe to success.

Even on this small scale, aerodynamics can play a big role, with one student noting that ground effect practically doubles the weight of the car, allowing the team to put more power down without wheelspin. How can the team generate ground effect without the car moving? Without airflow, there's no such thing as downforce, so the team created some, developing a "kind of vacuum cleaner" to suck the car into the ground. The Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 (and the Brabham F1 fan car that inspired it) took a similar approach, and the sickeningly quick McMurtry Speirling EV is not much different either.

Clearly, there's something to be said for creating downforce while static if you want insane acceleration, but there are other potential benefits, too.

By using a powered suction system of some sort, a car does not need large wings and splitters to generate downforce, which means that it's easier to prevent an increase in drag. As a result, the car will be slipperier, maximizing potential top speeds and also driving range. Rimac, already the maker of the world's quickest production car with its all-electric Nevera hypercar, has predicted that sub-one-second 0-60 sprints will become possible in tomorrow's hypercars.

With innovative downforce solutions, astonishingly low weight, and highly power-dense motors, there are plenty of possibilities for the EVs of tomorrow to amaze us in new ways.