Only last month, we brought you news of the Yangwang U9 Track Edition and its impressive feat of hitting 294mph to become the world’s fastest EV. Well, just a few weeks later, it has a new name – the Yangwang U9 Xtreme – and it’s gone even faster: 308mph.
Yep, we now live in a world where the fastest road car ever – and only the second one to ever hit the mythical 300mph mark – is an EV from a brand that has existed for less than three years.
The U9 Xtreme has been back out at the enormous Papenburg test track in Germany – fast becoming a favourite location for doing silly speeds in production cars, since VW isn’t just going to offer up its Ehra-Lessien facility to anyone – in the hands of racing driver Marc Bessang, and blasted through the mythical 300mph mark to eclipse even the 304mph set by the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport back in 2019.
It’s done this primarily with an absolutely staggering amount of power – over 2969bhp, produced by four electric motors each spinning at up to 30,000rpm. Also helping it out were semi-slick tyres and a reworked version of Yangwang’s fancy DiSus-X suspension, which allows the standard U9 to perform its party trick of on-the-spot bunny hops.
Yangwang U9 Extreme – rear
Now, the U9 Xtreme probably won’t be appearing in the Guinness Book of World Records anytime soon, because the 308mph figure was only achieved in one direction, and wasn’t the two-way average most ‘official’ records require. But the U9 Xtreme is going on sale in China, albeit in an extremely limited run of 30 units.
That means you probably won’t see one on the road in Europe, but it might not be too long before you start seeing some Yangwangs. The brand is a luxury division of BYD, one of the most successful of the current wave of Chinese companies entering the European market, and sales of both the ‘standard’ 1287bhp U9 and the tank-turning U8 SUV are being considered.
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