At this stage in the game, anyone who still has doubts about China’s amazing electric car game has either never driven one or has their head wilfully in the sand. They’re affordable, fun, efficient, and they’ve now conquered an arena historically dominated by exotic European cars: raw speed.
The fastest production car in the world is now BYD’s Yangwang U9 Xtreme hypercar, hitting 308.34 mph (496.22 km/h) on the high-speed oval at Germany’s ATP Automotive Testing Papenburg.
It knocks the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+ off its mantle, a car that went 304.77 mph around VW’s Ehra-Lessien in 2019. The U9 Xtreme made headlines just a few weeks ago for breaking the production EV speed record with a 293.54-mph run, but it’s now taken the overall title as well.
It does all this with four electric motors that combine to make a categorically batshit 2,978 horsepower (the regular U9 makes do with just 1,288 hp). According to Top Gear, each motor can spin up to 30,000 rpm and uses the world’s thinnest super-silicon steel, measuring just 0.1 mm.
The 5,467-pound Xtreme runs smaller 20-inch wheels versus the regular U9’s 21s and gets a square setup with 325-mm wide tires all around.
While the regular U9 uses an 800-volt architecture, the Xtreme uses a 1,200-volt platform, the first ever production car to do so. This theoretically allows for quicker charging but, more importantly, means less heat when generating big power. Kind of key when you’re, you know, cranking it up to 308 mph. For comparison, the Bugatti-adjacent electric Rimac Nevera R topped out at 268.2 mph.
As if it wasn’t already blatantly clear what exactly this car was made to gun for, BYD (Yangwang is the luxury arm, like Lexus is to Toyota) is only building 30 U9 Xtremes, the exact same number of Chiron SS 300+’s Bugatti built back in the day. And to make sure we don’t have another SSC Tuatara situation, here’s the onboard footage receipt, starring German racing driver Marc Basseng.
What does this prove? Not much, obviously. Top speed is merely a bragging right, albeit an impressive one. What might be more impressive is the cost. A Bugatti Chiron SS costs something shy of $4 million. The regular U9 is about $270,000. Even if the Xtreme version were to be 2x the cost of the base model, that’s still an eighth of the cost of the Bugatti.
It also looked like the car had a little more speed in it, meaning the vehicle was awfully close (at 492.22 kph) to crossing the 500 kph barrier. There are not many places to attempt this kind of speed, and I’d be curious to see what it could do at Ehra-Lessien, where Bugatti tests. That facility has a straight that’s nearly twice as long as ATP’s.
Top screengrab: BYD Europe
All of these cars are capable of over 300, the limiting factors tend to be the tires and finding a good road. I do wonder what tires they run for this?
That’s genuinely insane how effortless that looked. Terrifying
Piech must be turning in his grave.
Ok everyone… see you in 25 years when I try to import a used one
On a more serious note; don’t let Torch near the batteries with a chainsaw.
I hear these are available used with zero miles on them for a substantial discount.
So they just couldn’t get another 22 hp out of it to reach 3000? Tsk tsk
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What’s the depreciation curve of the typical Chinese electric car? Is it as bad over there as it is here or do the relatively low prices when new, minimize the depreciation?
Bad. Very bad. Chinese EVs have next to no resale value.
I wonder if like Hellcats there are now folks griping about the “upcoming third/fourth owner” getting this off the equivalent of a Chinese buy here pay here lot?
Yup. They’re selling a lot here, from the cheapest to the most expensive ones, they are offered in the used market for pennies.
The Chinese are making good-ish cars, but they are making zero parts for them. Second hand buyers know this, hence the devaluation.
Any info on what tires they are using (aside from the size) and who made them? I thought tire construction was one of the major limitiing factors for “production” car top speed.
Came here to ask the same question.
This is getting kind of absurd because holy shit, that’s fast.
Will wind resistance keep humanity from producing a 400 mph, retail car?
Jet and rocket cars have made it well past 500mph, so someone just needs to put one into “production” and they should be able to break 400.
I see a lot of people sleeping on the Chinese. Theyre working with 20 year old intel. Once the US realizes the Chinese are “catching up” they’ll be far ahead, which is probably the case already.
It’s worse than that. With our former allies and trading partners pissed at us, (and country dismantling internal changes) we will be increasingly isolated with falling economic output and long term innovation, and China will be headed in the other direction. A recent Chinese think tank report gives the US under 30 years before our (recent) policies trajectory removes us from superpower and economic power status. The Chinese didn’t even have to fire a shot. They just get to sit back and watch Trump, the rich and all the other goons destroy the country.
It’s ironic because China has gotten to where it is right now partly because it has had an authoritarian government for a very long time. When your “president” can execute decisions without opposition shit happens. Could be good shit or bad shit but it turns out Xi Jinping has very good strategy/financial advisors and he just gets things done. In some other places like Venezuela, Russia, Nicaragua, etc. it doesn’t work because the people in power are a bunch of imbeciles.
In the US with the country essentially divided in half, nothing happens. It becomes an ungovernable country where any initiative gets shot down. Democracies don’t work great when you have an almost equal ideology split.
We’ve been working with them for decades, teaching them how to do everything. I did for the past 2. Great guys, not super creative sometimes, but once they have the general idea on how to do something they sure optimize like MFs. I think part of that was culture; they seemed afraid to try newer things, but I think ‘new china’ is going to make that go away.
Speaking of which, sure sucks that the orange clown eliminated all the renewable energy research/installation/funding in this country. Sure would be cool to have America on top, instead of letting China just walk away with all the battery, solar, and electrical tech.
But what do I know…
I wish I had your optimism, China walked away with the battery, solar and electrical tech more than a decade ago.
The Mustang GTD has a new competitor in the “crowd-seeking missile” category.