A students’ motorsport club, Academic Motorsports club Zurich (AMZ), set a new Guinness world record yesterday. The old record for an electric car going from zero to sixty miles per hour was 1.779 seconds by a German team in July of last year. AMZ pretty much destroyed that record by reaching the requisite 60/MPH in 1.513 seconds.
Their car, “Grimsel” had to reach 60 mph in 100 feet for the record attempt, and it crushed it. AMZ is made up of Swiss university students from ETH Zürich and Hochschule Luzern. As such, Grimsel was built in 2014 for the Formula Student Electric racing competition, which attracts student teams from around the world.
The car itself is a masterpiece, with carbon fiber wheels and big, meaty wings that would make an airplane jealous. Four wheel hub motors designed by the team give the featherweight 370-lb car over 200 horsepower and over 1,250 lb-ft of torque, per a team press release. The electric motors are efficient, too, regenerating as much as 30% of their spent energy back into the battery under braking.
The AMZ video is worth watching because it’s artfully shot and the first part of it is actually very funny.