Byd Builds Fastest Car
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BYD has unveiled the world's fastest production car, the Yangwang U9, with a top speed of 496 km/h, sparking discussions on the advancements in electric vehicles and the implications for the global automotive industry.
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https://electriclemans.com/
plays out.
I haven't tracked LeMans much, I know the Toyota hybrids have been dominating it, but is it unrestricted hybrid drivetrains? Can builders make any kind of hybrid / regen / battery size / recharge drivetrain?
If not, I'd love to see what builders can do with go-nuts hybrids: wankel compact recharging, max-solid-state chems, etc.
There's a reason why all the world's land speed records since the 1930s [1] get set at the Bonneville Salt Flats or similar flat desert terrain. FWIW, the speed listed in this article was exceeded in 1937. The hard part is not necessarily going fast, it's going fast in a street-legal vehicle.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_land_speed_records
It is an impressive feat of engineering to get to a vmax record in a BEV.
I suspect theres inductance and capacitance enough that even if the motors can't handle the voltage, it can be "clipped" until the pack comes down. (Especially since fmu these are 3phase AC motors, the motor driver is already regulating voltage and current to produce whatever the optimal waveform is)
(https://youtu.be/z6q7du1q2U8)
It's also interesting that the fastest time on the Nürburgring at 5 min 19 was from a Porsche hybrid with 900 hp, a fair bit quicker than the BYD which took 6:59 I think. The Porsche had a lot more downforce than the BYD.
You're talking about the non-production Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo race car. A Corvette ZR1X did 6:49 with a third of the HP
"The tires on the Veyron can only last 15 minutes at top speed, but that's ok because the fuel tank only has capacity for 7 minutes at top speed." (From memory, IIRC, Top Gear on the Veyron)
> the tires will only last for about 15 minutes but it's okay because the fuel runs out in 12 minutes
The question is also how much power the battery can continuously output, if it's the 3000hp for 15 seconds that won't be of much use for a max speed test.
But they don't make false claims about them.
(1)
https://insidechinaauto.com/2025/02/11/byd-rolls-out-autonom...
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/11/cars/china-byd-smart-driv...
Why ? You "just" need a car that can steer and brake, what's the problem with steering and braking ? Need a steering wheel, good brake pads and tires
TBH the complexities are not even comparable, track engineering for a car is probably a few orders of magnitude more complex than straight line speed.
same car doing Nürburgring Lap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td_c1zeEn2Q
> The U9 was developed by German car designer Wolfgang Egger, who previously served as a head designer for Alfa Romeo, Audi and Lamborghini, and began working for BYD in 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangwang_U9
But honestly, ther are a Lot of production cars that went considerably faster. And the non-production Porsche 919 Hybrid EVO did it in 5:19, which is an entirely different league.
There is a “car” in my hometown in Coventry that goes (I think) 700 mph, but I can only do it in a straight line because it’s powered by two turbo jet engines
That's really cool, I thought it was surpassed :D
For performance applications. None of these cars are great daily drivers.
These are not those cars though.
The downforce to weight ratio is quite different between the U9 and Porsche also. Apparently the Porsche weighed 850kg and probably produced as much as that or more in downforce. The U9 is more like 2500kg and not especially downforce orientated.
There's another eclectic design though, the McMurty that laps thing faster than petrol cars due to having a fan up the downforce https://youtu.be/5JYp9eGC3Cc I don't think it has a Nurburgring time yet.
Sabine Shmitz did the 19,100m length in 10:08.49 using the ford transit van.
That's a far cry from 7:14
However, this year a Ford SuperVan 4.2 made the Nordschleife in 6:48.393, so even without Sabine Schmitz a van was faster than the BYD.
> However, this year a Ford SuperVan 4.2 made the Nordschleife in 6:48.393, so even without Sabine Schmitz a van was faster than the BYD.
You are spouting such absurdities, that is a van in name only:
https://carbuzz.com/nurburgring-ford-supervan-42-lap-record-...
And it was driven by Romain Dumas someone far more qualified to set such a record than Sabine Shmitz - despite your "even without Sabine Shmitz" disingenuous wording. Sabine is half television personality half racing driver...
Funny you mention the Ford SuperVan because that’s much closer to the 919 Evo in the "no homologation no limits" category than anything you could register and drive off a lot. A fairer and much more impressive benchmark is the road-legal Ford Mustang GTD running a 6:52. That's still far quicker than the BYD, with roughly two thousand less horsepower.
If anyone hasn't seen this, I highly recommend it, even if you're not a car fan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQmSUHhP3ug
This allows for more fuel to be added for more bang per engine stroke!
Someone else mentioned KERS (kinetic energy recovery system); that seems a lot more likely.
The regular 9X costs about US$236,000 before Trump tariffs. About half of a Ferrari. Also jumps potholes, can do tank turns, and has some autonomous capability.[1]
There's also the Yangwang U8, which is an hybrid off-road SUV. Does tank turns, and floats.
It's really a promotion for their other cars, but these things are sold in the UAE, Kuwait, and China, at least.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYXGrt5qAuo
Nope, probably too busy faking emission results, lobbying at the EU parliament , or designing overpriced mid tier cars in the US
One thing many car channels are pointing out is that the car could've reached even better numbers looking at how easily it reached its record pace. I wonder if the bottleneck is the battery. Hell, it supposedly discharges at full power in 2 minutes.
(Edit: noting they did the ring)
Cars built for straight line speed are rarely fast in a track – you won’t find the Bugattis breaking any fastest lap records either.
ICEs have more above it.
https://fastestlaps.com/tracks/nordschleife
But yes, the link I posted is lacking lots of data. Apologies.
The hard bits are connecting that power with the ground long enough to reach speed safely, and storing enough energy to do so. EVs don't solve that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev6DiHOidcg
While I agree with your statement in broad strokes - I'd reframe it as the same amount of engineering takes you much further in an EV than an ICE car. Considering this, the Chinese really swung for the fences, and what they made here is quite impressive
The closer ICE comparison would be Koenigsegg (447 kph/278 mph), Hennessy Venom GT (435/270) and SSC Tuatara (455/283, no shenanigans). SSC have reached 295, they were clearly aiming for 300. It's no 308 but it's reasonably close.
All these are also relatively small companies with relatively low budgets -- none of the big manufacturers seem interested in top speeds anymore.
There is some indication that putting rapidly accelerating cars on streets is leading to a proliferation of accidents.
I just had the numbers run to check this. About 650,000 fewer people would have died over my short life so far, if the US had the vehicle fatality rate of my home country.
Putting this level of performance (and better) into boring suburban SUVs bought by ambivalent consumers is negligence.
We hit a wall there for a while. Cars were actually becoming less powerful and slower on average for a couple of decades as governments tightened emissions and safety requirements. It took Tesla to blow the walls off EV production and consumer acceptance. It's a good reminder that progress doesn't happen in a straight line.
That top power draw would drain the 80kWh batteries in around 2 minutes, though I'm guessing you'd hit thermal throttling or catastrophic failure before that. The batteries are allegedly rated to 30C, meaning 2 minutes to full discharge at max current.
I'm curious how the heat dissipation of EVs compares to ICE vehicles. You have much higher efficiency vs combustion and get to split the power between 4 motors instead of one engine, but you don't get the heat capacity of a massive engine block, or the convection of cold air intake + hot exhaust out the tailpipe.
Xiaomi Su7 Ultra had a 400W twin fan, 530W liquid pump and a 28kW heat dissipation for powertrain.
The majority of the lemans (or any endurance race) challenge is not from the electric drivetrain (or regenerative braking) but from the ice drivetrain and friction braking. This is reinforced by the ease that WEC and IMSA have had in implementing electric hybrid drivetrains with relative ease over the last 10 years (by most measurements making the endurance more achievable).
It's not unexpected for a record-attempt car to have severely decreased range at top speed, they're pushing up against all the limiting factors at once, hard. I seem to recall reading something about the Bugatti Veyron only having 15 minutes of tyre life at full throttle, but this not being an issue because it only carried 12 minutes worth of fuel. :)
Also check the same for say a Toyota
You say that like it's an advantage while it's really the opposite. As a car buyer I'm only looking at cars their manufacturer plans to fully support over their lifetime. That rules out new, unproven manufacturers as well as the ones with proven bad support.
Support-wise, trying owning an older model of Tesla like a do and you’d know that your statement cannot be further from the truth, my car bricked several times after a software update and getting repairs done gets met with “oh that’ll take __ to get parts”
...because they don't do model years? Most cars are like that too, except they increment the model year annually, whether or not there are substantive changes.
Their battery and charging technology is impressive and their supercharger network gives them a moat, but not enough of a moat. A concerted federal effort would quickly erase it, and that not happening yet is mostly down to incentives.
It's a premium product. Whether due to brand, features or something else, it's undeniable that Tesla was doing something right vis-à-vis BYD. (That said, they've been losing their edge since even before Musk's recent fuckups [1].)
[1] https://cnevpost.com/2025/09/08/tesla-sells-57152-cars-china...
Allowing in Chinese EVs into markets where there are important domestic auto manufacturers will be very bad for those domestic manufacturers. (US, Germany, France, S.Korea, Japan, etc.) Outside of Tesla, none have EV brands competitive with the Chinese firms and if customers in those non China markets migrate to Chinese brands en masse, it would be tremendous disruption and the failure of many storied domestic brands.
It is important that the US have strong auto companies. Same is true for Germany, France, Japan, S. Korea, etc.
China should have strong car companies for their domestic market. The problem comes when they end up destroying other/outside markets.
Look at solar panels, drones, batteries, for similar comparisons.
It's similar to the logic behind anti-trust actions against monopolists. If the playing field isn't level, then the USA government steps in to level it.
(Whether BYD is subsidised or not is another question, but the above is the logic of protecting local industry.)
It would make no sense to destroy your own industry because it can’t compete with a heavily subsidized foreign industry.
Everyone does.
China funds it upfront, while the US does it after the spending and calls it a bail-out, or a "government contract"
If your product sells like made at a subsidized price, but not at the unsubsidized price, it's not a real business.
America has some of the lowest cost of capital and most effective financial markets in human history.
If the Chinese markets are blocked that doesn’t mean the rest of the world is inaccessible.
Another aspect of government subsidies is that they mask incompetence.
More recently though, it kind of seems like if the playing field isn't tipped strongly towards the US, then the US government will step in to tip it their way.
Car manufacturers serve many purposes. Aside from keeping the UAW membership onside, they are a strategic buttress for an emerging future war risk.
Australia maintained subsidies to Ford and GM for onshore production precisely because of this. And they stopped when a strategic realignment made successive governments decide the risk didn't justify the expense. A decision they may now be regretting.
We have had very little peace in the rest of the world in the meantime between the colonial wars, the various proxy wars of the Cold War, then the numerous stupid adventures of the modern America and now Russia wanting to be an empire again.
- 6:59.127 Lap Time - The first lap record on the Nürburgring
- 496.22 km/h - The Fastest Car on the Planet
- 1200v - World's first series-production model with ultra-high-voltage platform
- Over 3000 HP - Global horsepower record for production cars
- 30000 rpm - Global fastest motor rpm - 4 motors
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