University students broke acceleration record with car faster than hypercars

Students from ETH Zurich and Lucerne University set a new world record for acceleration with a hand-built car.

The mind-bending rapid acceleration was achieved by members of the Academic Motorsports Club Zurich (AMZ) who created an electric vehicle named Mythen.

The team of students spent every spare moment working on the Mythen – despite being hit with various setbacks – and their hard work all paid off.

In September last year, the team set a Guinness World Record for ‘fastest 0-100 km/h acceleration by an electric car’ beating the one-second barrier for the first time ever.

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The car has incredible acceleration speed

Advances in technology and design have seen modern supercars and F1 vehicles hit new levels of speed.

The MG EXE181 electric hypercar is able to do 0-100km/h (0-62mph) in just 1.9 seconds, while the Rimac Nevera R has a top speed of 412km/h (256mph) and can accelerate from 0-100km/h in 1.81 seconds.

But even those cars can’t quite compete with Mythen which managed to go from 0-100km/h in the ‘blink-and-you’ll-miss-it’ time of just 0.956 seconds over a distance of 12.3 meters.

The impressive record was set at Dübendorf, Zurich, Switzerland, on September 1, 2023 and still stands more than a year on.

“Working on the project in addition to my studies was very intense,” said head of motor at AMZ Yann Bernard.

“But even so, it was a lot of fun working with other students to continually produce new solutions and put into practice what we learned in class. And, of course, it is an absolutely unique experience to be involved in a world record.”

The students created every single element of the car’

Every single part and component of the EV – from the chassis to the battery – was developed by the students and were all fully optimized for their function.

The team used lightweight carbon and aluminum honeycomb to build the body, meaning the super-speedy motor is also super light and weighs just 140kg (309lbs).

Meanwhile, the car’s powertrain gives it an impressive power of 240 kilowatts or around 326 horsepower.

But power isn’t the only important element when it comes to hitting record-setting acceleration speeds – traction also plays an important role.

And to ensure that Mythen had the right type of traction from the second the car roars to life, the team developed a special kind of vacuum cleaner that holds it down to the ground via suction.

Smart stuff.