1,599 Miles: Student-Made EV Sets New Record For Longest-Range Electric Car

Students from the Technical University of Munich needed six days to run the 15.5-kilowatt-hour battery dry.

By: Iulian Dnistran

Sep 14, 2023 at 3:35am ET

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Without help from solar power, students from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany set a new world record for the longest-range electric car in the world with their single-seater “muc022” prototype, driving 1,599.27 miles (2,575.79 kilometers) before the battery was completely empty.

To achieve this, the TUfast Eco team modified the vehicle that was previously used in other competitions for efficient electric cars, concentrating on making it as aerodynamic and as light as possible, as well as fitting a larger battery with an output of 15.5 kilowatt-hours. And yes, that’s not a typo.

The car itself weighs just 374 pounds (170 kilograms) and its single electric permanent-magnet synchronous motor has an output of just 400 watts, while the drag coefficient is calculated to be 0.159 Cd.

The team set up shop in an empty airplane hangar at Munich airport and started driving, passing the previous record of 999.5 miles (1,608.54 km) in four days. But the battery still had juice in it, so they kept going for another two days, eventually stopping after 99 hours on the road, during which time some members of the TUfast Eco team slept inside the hangar.

When it was all said and done, the all-electric vehicle returned an energy consumption of 103 miles/kWh (0.6 kWh/100 km), making it one of the most efficient if not the most efficient electric cars in existence. By comparison, the Mercedes-Benz Vision EQXX prototype has an energy consumption of around 8 miles/kWh, while the Tesla Model Y, which is touted by the American EV maker as being “The most efficient Electric SUV ever built,” has an efficiency of around 4 miles/kWh.

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The team went with their record-breaking car at the IAA Mobility show in Munich, where a Guinness World Records representative awarded the students with the award for “Greatest distance by electric vehicle, single charge (non-solar).”

In related news, another team of students, this time from Zurich and Lucerne in Switzerland, set a new record for the fastest-accelerating EV in the world, achieving a 0-62 miles per hour sprint in just nine-tenths of a second.