The YANGWANG U9 Xtreme is already the fastest car on the planet – and now the performance flagship of BYD’s luxury sub-brand has set another benchmark. Just one month after posting a world-record high speed of 496.22km/h at ATP Papenburg, BYD announced that the YANGWANG U9 Xtreme has achieved a new lap record for Electric Super Sports Cars around the Nürburgring, the ‘Green Hell’ of motorsport.
YANGWANG’s engineering team has been conducting long-term testing at the 20.832km Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit since July 2024 – and the extensive on-track data gleaned from this process had been fed into the development of the U9 Xtreme. YANGWANG can now confirm that on 22 August 2025, the U9X lapped the Nürburgring in 6m59.157sec – slicing more than five seconds off the previous record time in the Electric Super Sports Cars class and becoming the first such vehicle to dip under the seven-minute barrier.
BYD Executive Vice President Stella Li said: “We are dedicated to pushing the limits of what can be achieved through technology, and the Nürburgring is such a legendary challenge for cars and drivers that it is only natural for our engineers to pursue their dreams there. I congratulate the entire team on this phenomenal achievement. The limited-edition U9 Xtreme has proven that it is not only the world’s fastest car in a straight line, but also a vehicle with the performance and dynamic qualities necessary to break lap records on a circuit with a wide variety of corners.”
The driver for the record lap was Moritz Kranz, an experienced German racer who has notched up almost 10,000 laps of the ultra-challenging Nordschleife circuit during a career in GT competition. He said: “The Nürburgring Nordschleife is the most demanding track, and our lap time is a testament to the development skills of BYD and YANGWANG. Without their intense work to balance a high-powered EV platform with the difficult demands of the chassis set-up, this great lap time would not have been possible.”
The U9 Xtreme is built on the world’s first mass-produced all-domain 1200V ultra-high-voltage platform and equipped with four high-performance motors, each capable of 30,000rpm. The car delivers a total output of over 3,000PS, delivering a power-to-weight ratio of 1,217PS per tonne that sets new global benchmarks for performance.
Based on the same e⁴ Platform and DiSus-X intelligent body-control system as the current YANGWANG U9, the U9 Xtreme innovatively brings “body-attitude control” technology to track applications – balancing both top-speed and lap-time performance in a single vehicle.
To conquer the Nürburgring’s classic 20.832km circuit – known for its steep elevation changes and demanding corners – the U9 Xtreme features a completely redesigned cooling system, a new titanium-alloy carbon-ceramic braking system, and GitiSport e·GTR² PRO semi-slick tires, jointly developed with Giti. These upgrades enable the car to excel in not only the 496.22km/h top-speed challenge but also the Nürburgring’s “Green Hell” lap-time record attempt.
The U9 Xtreme is now being made available to customers, with a limited series production run of no more than 30 units. Its name is derived from the English word ‘Extreme’, meaning ‘limit’ and ‘ultimate’, with added emphasis on the ‘X’, which represents the unknown. These qualities fit perfectly with YANGWANG’s ethos of taking joy and delight from the act of exploration and the innovations that come through that process.
