BYD Wants To Take the World's Fastest Car Record... From Itself

BYD's own Yangwang U9 Xtreme already holds the production car top speed record, but it's determined to beat that soon.

Photo by: Yangwang

By: Nico DeMattia

Jul 21, at 5:36pm ET

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Apparently, being the fastest in the world isn't enough for the folks at BYD and its luxury subsidiary Yangwang. Instead, it wants to be even more fastest, by beating its own top speed record. Last year, the Yangwang U9 Xtreme, an electric hypercar with unreal specs, broke the all-time production car top speed record at an alarming 308.4 mph. That stole the record away from Bugatti and its 304.8 mph Chiron Super Sport 300+, which set the record in 2019. But BYD felt that the Yangwang left a bit on the field and it wants another crack at it.

At the Goodwood Festival of Speed, BYD executive vice president Stella Li said that the company is eyeing another run, according to CarNewsChina. She thinks a 310 mph (500 km/h) top speed is possible.

Her optimism is backed up by Yangwang's test driver, former German racer Marc Basseng. After the record breaking run last year, Basseng said that the data showed he could have kept it at full-throttle for another second and a half longer than he did. Would that tiny bit of extra full-throttle acceleration gotten the U9 to 310 mph? That's unclear, but BYD wants to find out.

Photo by: Yangwang

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The U9 Xtreme has one of the wackiest stat sheets on the planet. Its quad-motor powertrain makes a total of 2,950 horsepower. That's almost two base Bugatti Chirons-worth of power. Each of those motors makes 744 horsepower on its own, and the car boasts a 1,200-volt battery architecture.

Li didn't say whether there'd be any other tweaks to the car, aside from just telling Basseng to be brave and keep his foot in it longer. It already made some changes to the U9 Xtreme, like removing the rear wing and fitting smaller wheels with wider tires, for the previous top speed run. So maybe some additional tweaks could be made based on the data from last time. Li said to expect another record-seeking run in November.