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
what does this prove?
That Marc Basseng has the biggest nuts in the solar system, to do 308 in a Chinese EV
Oh, but it should be. Legacy OE’s in Bugatti, and companies like “Yangwang”, need to be just as scrutinized as SSC. If SSC tried to cheat the system, anyone else can do the exact same thing, and polish it up to make it harder to tell if it’s real or not.
SSC did not cheat the system; their speed-measuring equipment was mistakenly set up incorrectly. Jerod Shelby himself acknowledged the problem, the speed run was re-done, and the road-legal production car top speed record was certifiably broken.
From what I remember, everyone else said they cheated, hence why I said it.
I still think anyone else breaking this record should be as scrutinized as SSC was though. It felt like people had a vendetta against them, even though most barely knew they existed.
After SSC announced (not realizing their mistake) that the Tuatara had hit 331 MPH, someone (Jason Fenske from Engineering Explained, as I recall) became skeptical, did some math, showed his work, and released to the internet his findings about the speed run, specifically that the car hadn’t gone that fast. SSC then reviewed the findings, realized their mistake, and then redid the run, achieving a two-way average of 282.9 MPH. Indeed, all records should be scrutinized, but SSC did not cheat.
It wasn’t Jason Fenske who did the math. It was my friends and I. I spent a particularly agonizing night at 1am repeatedly going over it to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake, after having publicly declared the record bogus on my Koenigsegg Registry Facebook page and on Koenigsegg for Life.
The initial math was done by a friend in a chat group I’m in of like-minded enthusiasts. Yes we were centered on K4L and thus “salty Koenigsegg fans” but the math was sound and we spent nearly a week speaking into the wind until one of us got Shmee on the story. I had even sent the story to Torch who unfortunately didn’t get it to press before Shmee. We needed someone with more reach than us to get it out there, and Shmee ended up being the guy. I believe I still have the chat in my phone between Shmee and I about how nervous he was to even make his video, as it was far outside the realm of his usual work.
Anything that came after that, was based on our work. The comparison video that Shmee used was made by a friend of mine in Sweden and was uploaded to my Koenigsegg Registry YouTube page, where it remains to this day. Check the datestamp on it vs. anything that came after that. The brilliant sonic analysis that was done on the video was also done by this same friend.
I was a guest of a prominent Koenigsegg owner for the Nevada Agera RS record, and during this time he and I chatted a lot about the SSC “record” and our work to debunk it. He didn’t initially believe we were onto anything but without getting into it too much I can assure you that SSC fully believed they were going to say it was what it was and have the world believe them. Someone set the error factor into the equipment on purpose, and when they got caught, they spent over a week digging in their heels, insisting the record was valid, even as it all burned down around them.
I’m a guy who almost never deletes chat or text conversations, so I have receipts for all of this. If someone here wants me to pen the full story someday, I’d be glad to do so.
Yeah, I was gonna say I was pretty sure I remembered the immediate aftermath of the speed run being questioned not being anything like the altruistic attempt at setting things straight like SSC is being presented as doing here.
I’ve never seen anything to suggest that it even met those standards, even before the speed measuring equipment “mistake.”
The first question I would have is did BYD go both directions. If not then the record is unofficial.
*nodding approvingly at “categorically batshit”*
I too partake on this madness. I’ve recently changed the hub motor on my e-bike from 250w to 500w, at the same time upgrading the electric system from 36v to 48v. Hit 40kph on flat terrain. Ludicrous speed, I tell you! I AM ONE WITH THE WIND!
No joke though, I bet that felt quite significant.
Oh yes, it went from slug on the street to something like a motorcycle, since both the bike and myself are quite light. I considered a large motor (almost same price) but best not to tempt fate.
I’m looking forward to upgrading my recumbent tadpole trike with full suspension and hydraulic disc brakes with 10 kW peak and RWD, into a quad with AWD and 25 kW.
10kW is already properly nuts. But it’s not enough to troll Hellcats.
It actually looks pretty cool as well.
I saw my first BYD at the Detroit Auto Show in October of 2019. It seemed so innocent then.
And really… do we need cars than can do 300+ mph? If you have to go to a facility like Germany’s ATP Automotive Testing Papenburg, or Ehra-Lessien to fully stretch its legs out, what’s the point?
Maybe take it to the Bonneville Salt Flats or something, but I just don’t think we need something like that on actual roads anywhere on the planet.
I’m also mildly curious what they use for tires on that thing. I’ve read stories about the bespoke Michelin tires on the Bugatti.
Sort of agree, but I’ve never been too worried about cars like this: i.e. hypercars where there’s only 30 in the world and they’ll be spending their lives as garage queens in some billionaire’s lair. They don’t really pose any threat to the general public (well, may the general public of Monaco).
What’s really worrisome is the fact that 1,000 hp cars are now well within reach of middle-classers so long as they don’t have a horrible credit score or common sense. A 9,000 lb Hummer EV should not be able to pull sub-3 0-to-60s. We’re in trouble when the depreciation curve hits those and you can pick one up at the Buy-Here-Pay-Here lots.
Valid points, all.
The Chinese oems especially byd are on track to keep beating records. They seem hell bent on optimizing being completely vertically integrated and eventually as close to world domination as any automaker has been. I also have to believe the company that had to come up with a backronym years earlier knew exactly what they were doing with yangwang. There seems to be creativity where there wasn’t before along with moving very fast it’s going to be hard for anyone else to keep up.
Where can I get one of the motors for my daughter’s Power Wheel? I maybe sort of kinda melted the circuit board by running 18v through it today.
“Xtreme runs smaller 20-inch wheels versus the regular U9’s 21s”
Speed AND sidewall?! Wow!!
Now the question is can it STOP:
https://www.theautopian.com/how-did-this-600-horsepower-ev-sports-car-end-up-with-smaller-brakes-than-a-honda-cr-v/
Or just use the A81 somewhere between Weinsberger Kreuz and Gerchsheim as anyone does (Porsche and AMG included). You regularly see crashed cars dragged to Raststätte ob der Tauber.
This thing weighs almost 3 tons!
I’m much more interested in the possibility of a sub-1,000 kg electric analogue sports car that can hit 300 km/h, does 0-100 km/h ~3 seconds, gets at least 400 km range @ 120 km/h, and retails under $30k USD, all of which is possible with yesterday’s tech.
With performance numbers and affordability like that, I don’t think people will give a crap if it looks like a space ship, lacks a grille, has normal-sized wheels, and is lucky to get 100 km range in a track setting. The performance results and fun factor would speak for themselves, and you could undercut the sale of cars that cost 10x as much, and use it as a daily to save money over the cost of operating even an entry-level ICE car.
THAT is how you get people into efficient EVs and away from bloated trucks/SUVs. Give them something in exchange for what they’re otherwise giving up.
A temporary issue with a decreasing window of time for complainers to take advantage of. Constant battery innovation is seeing to it energy density per kilogram has already tripled in a very short decade, with the first half of that period only getting mild R&D attention. Right now the excessive weights we’re seeing are a decision, not a necessity. And just because we can, is not a reason anyone should be.
The battery tech of 2 decades ago was good enough for what I describe. We could readily buy batteries with 150 Wh/kg, back then. A focus on aero drag reduction for whatever platform was used would have got us there.
It’s not the batteries that are the bottle neck. It’s the vehicle design. Everything available is needlessly inefficient.
Get a 1st gen insight, join us 😛
I like those. Other cars of similar efficiency are the Saab 96 and Saab Sonnet.
Either of these vehicles as EV conversions with modern batteries can get 200+ miles range without going over stock weight.
My biggest gripe with them is they are FWD.
I have my Triumph GT6, which is similarly efficient, and it’s also RWD. I need to finish it.
And if you’re wondering why I’m the guy who hasn’t done it, I was raised by a working class family and have barely made it into the middle class. I spent my 20s paying off student loans. My resources are limited.
I did make for my own personal use a 1-seater that gets 120 miles per kWh. And a Triumph GT6 EV conversion retaining the manual transmission.
This. ICE is pretty much fully-developed, but BEV is still in its infancy and has a lot of innovation left to go.
It’s only a matter of time.
ICE took over a 120 years to get to where it is now. Looking at how fast electric cars have advanced in a short 10 years I guarantee you it’s not going to take a century for them to gain the upper hand. Anyone who thinks so does not have their eyes open.
Yeah, by 2040 we’ll have 1,000-mile ranges, 10-minute 0-100 charge times, and sub-$40k pricing. Plus a lot of other things we can’t predict yet.
I’m not sure how analog it is, but the JMEV 01 comes pretty close to what you’re looking for, although its closer to 1400kg than 1000
Cut the drag in half with a slightly-smaller and greatly more aerodynamically streamlined design, chop off 20 kWh from the battery mass and use a more power-dense battery to keep output the same, have no proprietary software, replace the touchscreen with actual buttons/switches/knobs, gear it for a 300 km/h top end, and we’re basically there. And with less batteries and less raw materials needed, build cost might come down.
Well, it is $32,000 already. I guess shaving a little off of that wouldn’t be the worst thing though
Agreed. This thing isn’t very impressive anymore. Constraints make things impressible. There aren’t many constraints in an EV top speed run.
Im curious what the range at that speed is. I know the Bugatti’s range is about 50 miles. I think the wheels don’t last more than 100 miles on the Bugatti.
Top speed is interesting and everything, but the record for 200 miles covered in a production car would be much more interesting.
It’s time to start learning Mandarin and metric, Folks.
Why bother? Everybody understands ‘Murican if you scream it slowly enough at them.
Small correction, we all understand English, murican not so much.
HOW ABOUT NOW!!!????
+1 blowhard in a red novelty t-shirt and jorts
+2 for aggressive patriotism.
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?
it’s like the conversation James May had with Bugatti before his run in the Veyron Sport. What tires are these, he wondered, and are they capable of running 258 mph? He was told, well, they were good at 248, on the last organized run they conducted. Past that, they didn’t really know.
That’s genuinely insane how effortless that looked. Terrifying
It is basically a Corvette with electric motors.
If GM had not given up with the EV1, and kept researching and developing, America would have reached this milestone months or years ago.
The truth of any successful giant. They get complacent, and don’t notice their competition sawing the legs off of their throne.
Piech must be turning in his grave.
At 30.000rpm.
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.
Don’t let him near anything with a chainsaw. Including himself.
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?
My guess is the penalties for showboating, speeding, etc are just a bit more draconian in China than here.
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.
There is a business opportunity here to export replacement parts to China… All we have to do is provide parts for the American cars, which are readily available here, and then to reverse engineer the Chinese parts. It’s ironic, but potentially lucrative!
The curve is noticeable. My Chinese EV lost 25% in 1.5 years and 15.000 km.
Luckily I am the one purchasing it 🙂
I have kept a keen eye on the prices (actually a spreadsheet) and it appears to be nearly the same for Tesla, Kia, Hyundai and Renault with the Chinese brands on top (or bottom if you will).
Any car will loose value as soon as you drive it, but EVs are just hit harder since better/cheaper cars are released every 6 months. Not so much for ICE cars.
I am personally not bothered by further depreciation, since I will just keep it10 years and enjoy the daily savings.
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.
LingLong /s
Tires are an area that I’ve seen some major Chinese brands go from “dangerous” to “not bad” in about 5 years. They have been installing and using the same equipment/tech as the rest of the top brands to build the tires, so it explains easily why they’ve been able to move so quickly to catch up.
It’s gotta be Fuckstones right?
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.
At those speeds tires and the road surface are the limiting factor.
The speed record for a conventional train on steel wheels is 574.8 km/h 357.2 mph set in France in 2007
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.
Democracies can’t even work as democracies when the government(and the corporations which have purchased it) classifies all information of importance and controls the press, leaving the public with no means to make an informed decision.
Where the USA finds itself today was the result of deliberate policy decisions spanning decades, and not an accident.
And we let it happen, as it happened slowly and no one raised any dissent, and here we are.
Over the better part of a century, dissenters were spied upon, harassed, infiltrated, fined, denied access to jobs, separated from their families, and sometimes jailed via kangaroo courts or even assassinated.
Orange man isn’t the cause. He’s the result, and it’s not going to end when he’s gone, either.
Dissent against our current dictator is being suppressed, and will be even more so during the next 3+ years.
And the incompetent henchmen can not even figure out which is the correct country to send someone to when they get deported.
It’s the old “frog in a slowly heating up pot of water” story. And really disturbing.
Small correction, it’s not split down the middle. Less than 30% of eligible voters chose the orange clown. It’s more like 30/30/40 with the 40 who didn’t vote.
And that’s IF you believe the last election was legitimate.
That 30/30 is the problem, it’s still half and half. The 40% who didn’t vote are another, separate problem.
Where I’m from there are not just 2 political parties like in the US, but around 5 or 6 always have chances of making it to presidency. The government ends up split in 5 or so equal parts which has the same net result: everyone is trying to pull their own way, nothing gets approved, nothing gets done.
Democracies need at least 2/3rds of the people, therefore the government, to be effective.
Imagine Bukele’s (El Salvador’s president) decision to jail everyone with a tattoo to cut crime under the premise that gangs tattoo their members. It wouldn’t work in the US, or Europe or any properly democratic country. No sane government would approve that because of the many implications (what if I’m a honest citizen with a tattoo from a band I like?). Did it work? Of course it worked, better than anyone expected. Are there plenty of human rights violations and police/army abuse of power as a result? Also yes. But something got done.
If we want to live in democratic countries where things move forward, we need to agree on something at least every now and then. Like it or not.
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.
Biden’s IRA Act was the last chance we had. Trump dismantled it, and our future.
What do you know? More than Trump and the Republicans.
The creativity thing is something I’ve witnessed and just about everyone in any field I’ve talked to who has worked with them or over there has expressed.
I first realized there was a new creative faction about a decade ago when the US banned export certain of xeons skus used in DOE super computers. The Chinese response was build something crazy on mips that beat anything anyone else had. That was a very creative solution that shocked most.
How you handle failure both personality and culturally I believe is a big part of this. The culture now in China seems to be if you fail move on try something else. It doesn’t seem like that is happening in the US too much and academia seems to be a part of that.
An old timer I worked with that worked all over the world consulting and engineering has the view Japan won’t exist in 50 years and the US is going down that road. He has witnessed failure not being an option even when it’s proven and may not even be anyone in that cultures fault. They won’t listen to reason and deny there is anyway there could be a problem because it’s at least in some part Japanese. From my interactions in Japan and with Japanese I think he is right. But they might be changing some too. The Chinese used to be similar in a different way they would simply say it’s fine or ok when it wasn’t. That seems to have changed at least somewhat. He used to be impressed by people coming out of small state schools but not so much anymore.
What’s slightly more scary to me know is all the people who we have trained and are creative and know how to handle failure are taking jobs in China because the funding for their jobs in the US is no more. The dynamics are set to change yet again.
“…has the view Japan won’t exist in 50 years…”
Where will it go? And how will it get there?
It’s gonna take a big wave to wash away all those islands….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa
Once Zuckerberg, Musk and Bezos have sucked all the money out of the US, they will join together and buy Japan outright. They will change its name to something incredibly racist but “worth a giggle”, and spend their time doing things like placing bets on what happens when you deliberately collide two Shinkansen head on at top speed…
it will become Italy, it exists but it will be small time and its people will go back to doing more indigenous stuff
He believed it would be of their own doing. Specifically a culture issue with refusal to admit there is a problem or being able to handle failure. He wasn’t shocked by the events in 2011. He had been with an international team that had warned the Japanese about certain possibilities because the effected units are a US design. They provided a fix. The Japanese response was these are Japanese they don’t have that issue. The reality is they are license built copies problems included. Those issues came into play in 2011. Things like that over and over. His feeling was they won’t survive. He was aware of their population crisis to and he factored that into his opinion.
There is a saying Japan has lived in the year 2000 since the 1970s. If you spend more then a few weeks there you see it. He also felt that would be part of their undoing.
The Japanese government admitting their population crisis and taking steps to address it. Along with various other things happening in the last 5 or 6 years including younger people learning english and other languages. Maybe that changes things I’m not sure it will be enough but heading in the right direction.
“Along with various other things happening in the last 5 or 6 years including younger people learning english and other languages. ”
When I was stationed in Japan in the early 90’s, I taught conversational English classes to teens, 20-somethings and housewives evenings and weekends. They would get their after/post-school tutoring to supplement optional English classes they would take in public school (French was also very popular – but English was #1). They just needed practice as they are reluctant to speak it incorrectly.
It was an extremely common sideline for educated military personnel and spouses.
In 2011 English was made compulsory for Japanese children in public schools in grades 5 and 6 – and since 2020, English is now presented earlier in grades 3 and 4.
For sure, there always seems to be higher English proficiency around US bases. My dad had a project in Okinawa in the late 80s I was a kid and visited him during the summer. It seemed like everyone spoke at least enough English to get by.
I was shocked when I went to mainland Japan in the mid 2000s and it was harder to communicate. A good portion of people that did speak English I engaged with I’m not sure spoke outside of a classroom setting and were shy. We would often had to say I promise your English is better then whatever Japanese we attempt. The last few times I’ve been on the mainland maybe 2017 forward it’s been a lot easier especially with the younger people. Almost like Okinawa.
I’ve been told the popular trio of language for highschool and college kids in east and south east Asia is now English, Korean, and Mandrin. Japanese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Malaysian,s and Indonesians are leaning them at great paces. Where the Chinese aren’t learning as much anymore where they had been learning English and Korean at an astounding rate. It will probably pick up again. Just like what happened in Japan and later Korea. The IELTS is problematic by most accounts and the American version isn’t widely accepted apparently. Just like American school systems going to IB instead of AP and it really bit students but allegedly it was more prestigious. They just forgot to tell American higher education. That’s academia for you.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute publishes an annual “Critical Technology Tracker” report, which last year found China leading in 57 of 64 critical technologies – in terms of quality and and quantity of research and development output. 20 years ago it was virtually the inverse, with the US dominating a majority of the critical technologies.
There are some pretty big blips on the horizon though. One is structural issues in the economy which could see everything topple over – best demonstrated by the current oversupply of cars and highly-aggressive discounting. The other is the country’s rapidly aging population which will act as an ever strengthening headwind to economic growth.
Link here: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/critical-technology-tracker-two-decade-data-shows-rewards-of-long-term-research-investment/
Can’t say im surprised to hear it. All of the “-ests” have been coming out of China now. Recent ones, other than this article include largest wind turbine and highest bridge. Im not hearing any from the USA. We do still have the most mass shootings and the highest percent of our population imprisoned, so theres that. And yes, I did read about the age problem there. The lingering affects of the since cancelled one child policy. By no means am I “rooting for China”, but facts are facts. This crumbling empire, ruled by real life idiocracy, is past its prime.
The Vulcans won’t be coming to Bozeman – They’ll be coming to Wenchang.
The Mustang GTD has a new competitor in the “crowd-seeking missile” category.