Video: This electric ‘car’ just set a new 0-100km/h acceleration record

A team of Swiss university students claim to have set a new electric-car acceleration record, with their battery-powered vehicle sprinting from 0-100km/h in less than one second.

It is about half the time it takes the world's quickest-accelerating, road-legal production car to complete the same task – and about a third of the time it would take a Porsche 911 Turbo S sports car.

The team – which consisted of students from Switzerland’s Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, and members of research firm ETH Zürich – built ‘Mythen’, a go-kart-esque vehicle designed with the sole purpose of accelerating faster than anything powered by an electric motor.

The goal for the Academic Motorsports Club Zurich (AMZ) team was to beat the existing record of 1.461 seconds, set by a team of 20 German university students in October last year.

With driver Kate Maggetti behind the wheel, the Mythen electric car accelerated from 0-100km/h in a time of 0.956 seconds, more than half-a-second faster than the existing record.

For context, the Rimac Nevera electric hypercar – the world’s fastest-accelerating production car – achieved a 0-100km/h time of 1.81 seconds, while a Formula One car takes closer to 2.6 seconds to complete the sprint.

The team also claims the sprint was completed in a distance of just 12.3 metres, with its driver subjected to an average force of 2.96G – almost three-times their own body weight.

AMZ’s Mythen is powered by a dual electric-motor setup capable of producing close to 240kW, and the car weighs just 140kg (excluding the driver) due to its carbon and aluminium construction.

For context, the Rimac Nevera has about six times more power – but weighs about 16 times as much.

The electric car is capable of generating enough grip to accelerate without losing traction by using a vacuum-like system to hold it against the ground – similar to the McMurtry Spéirling, which holds the record for the fastest vehicle ever at the famed Goodwood hill-climb course in the UK.

The result marks the third time AMZ has set the world acceleration record for an electric car, having previously achieved the feat in 2014 and 2016, before losing the record to the German team last year.