The Grimsel electric race car built by Swiss student engineers has broken the world record for acceleration by battery-powered vehicles.
The Grimsel car took only 1.513 seconds to reach 100kph (62mph) – slashing about a quarter of a second off the previous record time.
It reached the speed after covering less than 30 m of track at the Dübendorf air base near Zurich. The previous world record stood at 1.779 seconds and was set last year by a team at the University of Stuttgart.
The record-breaking Formula Student electric car was developed and built in less than a year by a team of 30 students at ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
Grimsel is AMZ’s fifth electric vehicle and sets new standards in lightweight construction and electric drive technology. Thanks to the use of carbon-fibre materials, Grimsel weighs just 168 kg. The four-wheel drive electric racing car has four specially developed wheel hub motors that are capable of generating 200 hp and 1700 Nm of torque.
A sophisticated traction control system regulates the performance of each wheel individually, allowing the car’s acceleration to be increased even further. No large-scale production car – even one with a combustion engine – can reach an acceleration comparable to the Grimsel.
[source and photos: ETH Zurich / Alessandro Della Bella]
