NIO, China’s foremost maker of mad electric vehicles and winner of the 2014/15 Formula E world championship, has just released a video of its supercar, the EP9, making it around the Nurburgring in 7:05.120.
That time is the fastest ever recorded for an electric car and is a scant 13 seconds off the recently set overall record for production cars.
With one megawatt of power at the wheels (you’d have to harness 1,341 horses to make that much power, and anyone who’s priced out curples and saddles lately knows that would be impractical), the NIO can make it to 200 kph (124 mph) in just 7.1 seconds.
It’s about more than just power, though, because each wheel has its own motor and gearbox, so the NIO can send optimal power to each individual wheel, getting it around corners faster. And with two times more downforce than an F1 car, the EP9 can generate up to 2.53 lateral G in the bends.
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Even when it isn’t being driven this is an enthusiast car. No, not an enthusiast’s car, but an enthusiast car (do robots feel joy yet?). That’s because this futuristic electric supercar can also drive itself, as it recently did in Texas, when it set a 2:40.33 lap time at the Circuit of the Americas, making it the fastest autonomous car ever to go around the track.
All NIO needs now is for the internet to come up with a conspiracy about how the video and, indeed, its lap time were faked to make this a truly modern record.
