An electric racing car, built by a team of Swiss student engineers, has broken the world record for acceleration by a battery-powered vehicle. The car, called Grimsel, reached 100km per hour in 1.513 seconds, on a runway at D"ubendorf Air Base in Switzerland on Wednesday.
The record was previously set in July 2015 by the Green Team Formula race car, developed at the University of Stuttgart, which reached 100kmph in 1.779 seconds.
As yet, no petrol-powered production car comes close to this acceleration speed. The Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid, commonly regarded as the world's fastest-accelerating production car, can reach 100kmph in 2.2 seconds.
Grimsel was developed by the Formula Student team of the Academic Motorsports Club Zurich. The team of 30 students at ETH Zurich and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Lucerne developed and built the car in less than a year.
As result of a widespread use of carbon fibre, the vehicle is super-light, weighing in at 168kg.
According to a statement from ETH Zurich, Grimsel's success is also due to a "sophisticated traction control system [which] regulates the performance of each wheel individually, allowing the car's acceleration to be increased even further".
It is almost entirely custom-built, with the exception of its tyres, battery cells, and motor control units, and had covered only 30m of runway by the time it reached 100kmph.
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