BYD's All-Electric Hypercar Hits 308 MPH, Becomes Fastest Car in Production (caranddriver.com)
- Reference: 0179551786
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/09/27/0441242/byds-all-electric-hypercar-hits-308-mph-becomes-fastest-car-in-production
- Source link: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a68005437/yangwang-u9-xtreme-top-speed-record/
[2]Engadget reports that the U9 Xtreme "is packed with four motors that produce just under 3,000 horsepower. The electric hypercar also runs on one of the world's first 1,200V platforms, which offers better performance and efficiency, along with some weight reduction." And [3] Car and Driver adds that "Other changes to achieve the speed include dropping the wheel size from 21 to 20 inches, narrowing the front track, and adding wider, semi-slick track tires at the front of the car."
> One small caveat that doesn't lessen the impressiveness of the feat is that while the U9 Xtreme does classify as a production model, it barely does. That's because BYD is planning to limit production of the top-speed version of the U9 to no more than 30 units.
The car hit its "facemelting" top speed [4]during a livestream at Germany's Automotive Testing Papenburg, [5]reports Engadget .
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [6]hackingbear for sharing the news.
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a68005437/yangwang-u9-xtreme-top-speed-record/
[2] https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/byds-all-electric-hypercar-the-yangwang-u9-extreme-hits-a-record-breaking-308mph-180727354.html
[3] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a68005437/yangwang-u9-xtreme-top-speed-record/
[4] https://youtu.be/SGisz5gLShg
[5] https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/byds-all-electric-hypercar-the-yangwang-u9-extreme-hits-a-record-breaking-308mph-180727354.html
[6] https://www.slashdot.org/~hackingbear
Update of an old joke (Score:2)
"It'll pass anything else on the road - except a charging station".
Re: (Score:3)
Ironically this is the same for all cars in this performance class. A Bugatti Veyron can empty its gas tank in under 10 minutes if you put your foot down.
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Indeed one has to wonder how many seconds such a car can sustain its top speed before the battery is empty. And if there is one thing common among e-vehicles, then it is that they are not the ones you usually see speeding along the German Autobahn at >= 200km/h, probably because outside of record attempts, drivers prefer range over speed.
Going in a straight line (Score:2)
Going in a straight line isn't impressive, let's see some lap times on the nurburgring track
Re:Going in a straight line (Score:4, Interesting)
Going this fast in a street legal car is impressive, period. I prefer handling to speed myself, but that doesn't make this not an achievement. That these cars are so crazy cheap for what they can do is a real paradigm shift. The big down sides to hypercars have always been sales price and maintenance costs, but EVs have far less maintenance. If these unprecedentedly high-speed motors don't explode or something, this is not only the fastest but probably also the lowest TCO hypercar ever.
Re: (Score:2)
> That these cars are so crazy cheap for what they can do is a real paradigm shift.
It is trivially easy to make an electric car very fast in a straight line, you no longer need highly engineered and expensive powertrains. Of course many EVs on the road nowadays do not have handling or brakes to match that speed, never mind also having drivers that are completely out of their league. Once they reach higher penetration levels we'll get a better idea how many find that out the hard way.
Re: (Score:2)
If it was so very trivial, it seems like it would have been done by now. It's not trivial to build a car which is stable at those speeds, no matter what your powertrain looks like. On the other hand, a high voltage motor-per-wheel system with a high motor RPM can react to undesired yaw about as quickly as you can sense it, so the car can pretty much drive itself under human direction. Some of the old coots that can afford these things might pass out from the forces involved, though.
Re: (Score:2)
> If it was so very trivial, it seems like it would have been done by now. It's not trivial to build a car which is stable at those speeds, no matter what your powertrain looks like.
I was not referring to this specific car, rather EVs in general. 500hp used to be a fairly rare number for a car, but a 500hp EV is kind of ordinary these days. As prices decline pretty soon any 16yo with a new license can have one :-) I'm not so worried about the old coots.
Re: Going in a straight line (Score:2)
I think you are misusing the word trivial here. The level of engineering has made these sorts of speeds seem trivial but i assure you they are not.
You seem to be conflating the driver with the vehicle here. Building any car today en masse is no trivial matter. It is incredibly complex and expensive to do. Just because you can buy one at a dealership and press down on the throttle does make its manufacture trivial.
Re: (Score:2)
It would be silly to call this easy. But at the same time, I think there is a point above which people cease to care. People stopped caring about land-speed records about 50 years ago when they became low-flying rockets and the challenge was keeping the wheels on the ground. The market for motorcycles stopped caring about top speed 25 years ago after the Hayabusa came out and broke 200 MPH. Attention shifted in other directions, that were actually useful to people. I don't think anybody wants to go 300
Re: (Score:2)
"The U9 crossed the Nordschleife in 6:59, but the GT3 did it in 6:56"
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LShRb8OUxYI
Re: (Score:2)
Having just watched that clip, the Porsche opened up a substantial lead before they got to the long straight stretch. Then the U9 almost caught it up.
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Another Chinese EV is also the fastest EV around the ring. [1]https://www.topgear.com/car-ne... [topgear.com]
[1] https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/1562bhp-chinese-ev-smashes-its-nurburgring-time-becomes-third-fastest-overall
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it seems the Chinese are now competing against each other instead of the Euro's/US. Who will win, Xiaomi or BYD? EV racing has come a long way since the plaid sputtered out at the track.
Re:Going in a straight line (Score:5, Interesting)
> Going in a straight line isn't impressive, let's see some lap times on the nurburgring track
Firstly the track wasn't straight, which is why they spent so much time driving a 300km/h before setting the straight run record. Secondly the *previous* and far slower version of this car set the Nürburgring lap records for EVs, and was about the same speed as the Ferrari 296 record, but that was the previous car with a far lower top speed and lower power motors, this one hasn't done the lap yet.
If you're trying to diss this car because you think it isn't sporty, you're doing a poor job of it.
Not kph! (Score:2)
I thought it was 308kph at first. 308mph is 496kph. That's almost inconceivably fast for a car. I'm surprised that's even possible! Congrats to them, watching the video, it looks like the car is barely struggling to get to those speeds
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Looked like it could go faster with more room, and enough guts.
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The problem comes down to tires. Michelin won’t say what the top speed of the tires really is. They don’t want to be liable.
Re:Not kph! (Score:5, Informative)
> it looks like the car is barely struggling to get to those speeds
One of the interesting problems with electric cars is how to control the motor speed and what ratio you have between motor rotation and wheel rotations. For a system that can switch the motors at the top speed struggles to control the motor at a slow rotation. It's fundamentally an electrical / rotational problem, with power not actually being a limiting factor. There's been a few interesting ways of solving it, add multiple motors and do torque vectoring (what this car does), adding a gearbox (Porsche's approach), have multiple motors provide power at different levels in a fixed way (e.g. front vs back, I think Tesla played with this on the Roadster)
Every normal passenger electric car I've ever driven has lurched into its top speed with guts to spare. In fact in my own I still have so much acceleration going into the top speed that it overshoots its actual top speed by about 10km/h, unlike gasoline cars which have their top speed defined by when they run out of spare torque (and as such different uphill and downhill top speeds). Electric cars feel like gasoline cars hitting a speed limiter, because in a way they usually are.
Re: (Score:2)
I drove an original Leaf recently and was reminded how far EV drivetrains have come. The connection to the road is so much better than the early ones.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh absolutely. I remember driving a Leaf back in the day and thinking the only benefit was that it was quiet when creeping up the driveway at night and literally everything else was a downside.
Heck back then I would say the Leaf exhibited something that felt a lot like turbo lag (to use a description that may apply to normal cars) as well, except without the performance to go with it. You felt detached from the control of your car. Nowadays I won't go back to regular cars unless I can't avoid it.
Re: (Score:2)
I actually really enjoyed driving a Leaf back in the day. It was hilarious sailing past BMWs and Audis in relatively silence, and their poor engines made strained grinding noises trying to accelerate hard enough to keep up. It was a bit floaty though.
Re: Not kph! (Score:2)
I think around 1990, top sports cars could normally reach 400km/h on the straight during the 24 Hours of Le Mans race with the old race track configuration. This was a normal race pace. Chicanes were added later to slow them down.
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> watching the video, it looks like the car is barely struggling to get to those speeds
I wonder if you watched the same video from YangWang or BYD as the rest of the world did, or did you watched some edited version from someone else.
What's obvious was the car *has a limiter* at 500kph, i.e. the car CAN GO FASTER but did not. Why? The tires are only guaranteed for 500kph.
Yes, they used specially manufactured tires for this record, and because no other tire manufacturer is willing to guarantee their tires up to 500kph, they have to source the tires from the one willing to, and the guarantee
Re: (Score:2)
Apologies to reply to my own post, but just after posting I realized GP meant opposite of what I thought (missed the "barely").
That's what one got from replying when not having enough sleep.
Not the Fastest Car Off-Planet (Score:4, Funny)
> "just hit a top speed of 308.4 mph, making it not only the fastest electric car on the planet, but the fastest car. Period."
On the planet perhaps but if you remove that condition then the fastest electric car would be the [1]Tesla that Elon Musk launched into space [wikipedia.org]. It's now in orbit around the sun and its estimated speed at perihelion is 121,000 km/h.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk's_Tesla_Roadster
Re: (Score:3)
Not only that, that Tesla does not need a driver!
Re: (Score:3)
The unspecified condition is "under its own power".
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, but at aphelion the nearest charging station is up to 2.66 astronomical units away. Once Elon's Tesla battery runs dry, he'll be stuck out there forever.
Lets be honest here (Score:2)
Who doesn't need to go 300 mph? 495 km/h?
Fuck yeah, I'm going to the beer store, honey. I'll be back in ...umm.. 12 seconds.
Re: (Score:3)
For that matter why do EVs need to accelerate from 0 to 60 in 2 seconds either, shedding tires in the process? Seems to me using there are efficiencies from limiting acceleration (surely 8 to 10 seconds is more than enough). Been watching the electric trucker drive some long range trucks that are optimized for efficiency, including reducing acceleration (making it equivalent to a diesel truck) and smaller motors with an optimized gear train. But I guess EVs need to have a selling point to attract custome
Re: Lets be honest here (Score:2)
Clearly you've never had to pull out onto a busy fast highway from a standstill.
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And yet gasoline-powered cars do it all the time. I guarantee you they are not doing it in 2 seconds. Many of those are SUVs even. Gasoline SUVs are not beating 7 seconds by much and 7 seconds is really fast.
Re: (Score:2)
Pasadena Freeway onramps.
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When I lived in LA, there was one on the Pasadena that I never figured out what the road designer was thinking. If I remember right, you twist around a tight curve and merge onto the freeway 10' later. Death trap.
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The Pasadena Freeway was originally built in 1940 then extended in 1953. Your description of the ramp is accurate to my memory.
Re: (Score:2)
Absurd acceleration is a side-effect of wanting to do as much of the braking as possible with the electric motor. Because braking often happens at much greater decelerations than 60-0 mph in ten seconds, this means you end up with a motor that is much more powerful than you need on the acceleration side of things.
How long will this record stand? (Score:2)
I recall a year or two back that Bugatti was working on an EV. Anyone have any word on how they're doing with that?
And fastest car *not* in production (Score:2)
[1]Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster [wikipedia.org]? :-)
> The maximum speed of the car relative to the Sun will be approximately 121,000 km/h (75,000 mph) at perihelion.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk's_Tesla_Roadster
Normal (Score:2)
"One small caveat that doesn't lessen the impressiveness of the feat is that while the U9 Xtreme does classify as a production model, it barely does. That's because BYD is planning to limit production of the top-speed version of the U9 to no more than 30 units. "
The car that previously held the record, the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+, that claimed the title of the world’s fastest production car in 2019.
Only 30 cars were made.
That's what MAKES it a production car and not one of half a dozen protot
Re: (Score:2)
> That's what MAKES ...
IIRC,once upon a time, "production" meant a minimum release of 200 units. Obviously, the goal-posts have shifted.
Can I has the option package with wings? (Score:2)
With 495 km/h, this thing should be able to lift off within a few second
Re: Can I has the option package with wings? (Score:2)
450-500km/h is a cruising speed of a typical passenger turboprop airliner, such as ATR72.
meh ... (Score:2)
OK, so it goes really fast on a track. it will go at the same speed as every other car on the road when it is stuck in a traffic jam. And I don't want to think about the insurance costs for a car that has "it goes really fast" as a major selling point.
In a EV, any car actually, I want the following, in order of importance; comfortable, range to do what I need, reasonably priced for that range, low maintenance, doesn't look like a rusty abandoned clunker.
My 2 Yen.
The camera car is more impressive (Score:2)
It seems to be able to literally run circles around the Y9 while it's at full speed! Or maybe there's some tricky editing...
Supermarket speed (Score:2)
I can finally drive to the supermarket at a proper speed whilst being kind to the environment...but not in the US. The US doesn't like better products if the lobbying group has sufficient grasp on government. Why would Americans want to drive anything but one of Musk's high quality full self-driving EVs??
Re: Meh. (Score:3)
The warp drive is not available yet. This is impulse power only. It will be an option on the sports version in 2026. Too bad antimatter charging stations are still rare to find.
What's the point of such a fast car? (Score:1)
So why did you propagate the vacuous Subject? And why couldn't you come up with a Funny joke?
However my reaction to the story was to wonder "Why?" Where could you possibly drive such a car at such a speed? And why would you be in such a hurry?
Also reminds me to wonder about the fancy imported sports cars I see around here. I keep trying to imagine why any sane person would invest in such a car and I'm unable to come up with any positive reasons, though there seem to be various negative ones: (1) Good for p
Re:What's the point of such a fast car? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why?"
Bragging rights.
Where could you possibly drive such a car at such a speed?
Some sort of dedicated strip or salt flats.
And why would you be in such a hurry?
You wouldn't be. You don't drive at 300mph to get somewhere specific in a hurry.
Re: (Score:2)
Should I try to file "bragging rights" under Question (1)?
However in regards to your answer to one of my unnumbered opening questions, I was actually wondering if China has any roads without speed limits. Doesn't seem likely.
Or maybe it's intended for short trips on those famous German roads? But I can't imagine that the car can keep it up for a long distance...
Re: What's the point of such a fast car? (Score:2)
That is a lot of "why" questions. All I know is it started with a big bang. Why? Beats me.
Re:What's the point of such a fast car? (Score:4, Informative)
Supercars this fast have tires that last less than fifteen minutes, perhaps eighty miles traveled on the track of you're lucky. And since the wear isn't linear, if you go just a little bit faster, you might only get a minute or two at the speeds this car goes before you have to change all the tires, which will set you back $40,000.
The point of such a thing is the same as one of those suborbital tourist space flights. The point is to *have had* the experience, which is too brief to be practically useful.
Re: (Score:2)
> Supercars this fast have tires that last less than fifteen minutes, perhaps eighty miles traveled on the track of you're lucky. And since the wear isn't linear, if you go just a little bit faster, you might only get a minute or two at the speeds this car goes before you have to change all the tires, which will set you back $40,000.
> The point of such a thing is the same as one of those suborbital tourist space flights. The point is to *have had* the experience, which is too brief to be practically useful.
I'm not sure what you need for tires for 300mph, but your "typical" 200mph supercar uses tires not that much different from ordinary street cars, just in larger sizes. And of course if you have ever driven on racing slicks that is an entirely different world, but even those are not terribly expensive. I think about a grand apiece for an F1 car (where they do indeed last minutes, maybe even just a qualifying lap).
Re: (Score:2)
Last I checked it was $40k for a set of Veyron tires.
Re: (Score:2)
Fair enough. Veyron owners probably consider it a feature. Seems a lot of extra money for 30mph over, say, a McLaren W1 with P Zeros.
Re: (Score:2)
> Where could you possibly drive such a car at such a speed? And why would you be in such a hurry?
What makes you think this has a practical use for transport? Where can you drive such a car at such a speed? Racetrack. Like... obviously.
Why would someone buy it? Why would someone buy a mechanical watch when literally every one on the market is outclassed by a $10 Cassio?
If you're trying to judge this car by the practicality of owning it then this car (nor any cars in this price range, or in this class) are even remotely made for you.
Re: What's the point of such a fast car? (Score:2, Interesting)
I cycle past McLarens and other such cars in the traffic here in London all the time. Some people seem to like owning penis extensions, but it doesnâ(TM)t mean theyâ(TM)ll ever get any real pleasure.
Re: What's the point of such a fast car? (Score:2)
The point is that there are press articles about it.
Re: What's the point of such a fast car? (Score:2)
Why? Only 30 of these get built, they are a foolproof sign for marking the biggest of fools.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait ... isn't selling consumers on features that will be available real-soon-now-trust-us-on-that the way American electric car companies sell *their* vehicles?
Once again, Chinese companies are stealing American (ish) ideas.
Re: Meh. (Score:2)
You got it all wrong. They WILL deliver the warp drive. They send overconfident egomaniacs to re-education camps to tune them down a bit. Chinese entrepreneurs would not dare to do a Musk manoeuvre (/s)
Re: (Score:1)
70 mph faster and it'll go half the speed of the [1]the fastest car [wikipedia.org] (763 mph)!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThrustSSC