Meet “Grimsel,” a blazing fast EV which represents the work of students from Swiss universities ETH Zurich and Hochschule Luzern. The very talented people are part of the Academic Motorsports club Zurich (AMZ) and developed the electric vehicle in 2014 for the “Formula Student” engineering competition.

If you think Tesla’s Ludicrous mode is fast, Grimsel is considerably quicker as the electric vehicle completed the 0-60 mph (0-96 kph) task in as little as 1.513 seconds during a record-breaking attempt on a runway located at the Dübendorf Air Base in Switzerland. We checked the Guinness World Records and found out the previous record was set last July by another Formula Student EV with a time of 1.779 seconds by GreenTeam Uni Stuttgart e.V. at Jade Weser Airport, Wilhelmshaven, Germany.

The new record-holder is a marvelous piece of engineering, featuring four wheel hub motors developed in-house which provide the electric vehicle with a combined output of 200 horsepower and more than 1,250 pound-feet (1,700 newton-meters) of torque. Grimsel makes extensive use of carbon fiber which has enabled a very low weight of just 370 pounds (168 kilograms), giving the EV an astounding power-to-weight ratio of 1,190 hp and 7,400 lb-ft (10,000 Nm) per ton.

To channel all that electric punch to the road in the most efficient way possible, the students have created a very clever AWD system with each wheel of the car being managed individually by a traction control system. The amount of power transferred to the wheels is adjusted several times per second depending on the road conditions while torque vectoring sends more power to the outer wheel in a turn to make Grimsel more agile in the corners.

The electric motors are not only powerful, but also smart enough to recuperate the energy into the battery while the EV is braking, thus being able to regenerate as much as 30 percent of the overall consumed juice.

Rocketing from a standstill to 60 mph (96 kph) in just 1.5 seconds within a distance of 100 feet (30.5 meters) seems almost unbelievable and it will be interesting to see how long the current record will last.

Source: AMZ