The Yangwang U9 Xtreme Just Set Two Guinness World Speed Records

The fastest production car in the world. No, not necessarily an attribute that would be useful in your real life, unless your driveway is a section of unrestricted autobahn, but as an achievement, it's something automakers love to boast about. Porsche. Ferrari. Bugatti. And now Yangwang.

The luxury division of Chinese giant BYD (as Lexus is to Toyota), Yangwang's appropriately named U9 Xtreme hypercar just hit 312 mph on a public road in Abu Dhabi. This feat nets it two Guinness World Records at once: the single-direction highest speed for both a production car and for a production electric car.

At this point, perhaps the electric production speed record doesn't need its own subdivision, especially since the U9 was chiefly breaking its own previous record of 308 mph, set last year. The U9 Xtreme, or U9X, has four electric motors, one at each wheel, for a grand total of over 3000 hp. That's three Veyrons concentrated into a single car.

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The battery architecture is also distinct from the standard U9, with a 1200-volt architecture and the ability to both send and receive huge amounts of power with greatly improved thermal efficiency. Even when nearly depleted, at 20 percent charge, it can still pump out 1800 kilowatts of power (2414 hp), or soak up 700 kilowatts through regenerative braking.

A motor at each corner means almost limitless fine-tuning for torque-vectoring control, meting out all that power with minimal wheelslip. The U9X also features electric dampers that clamp down on squat and dive under hard acceleration and braking, and active aerodynamic elements to maintain stability at speed. A tip of the hat also goes to Indonesia's Giti Tires, who developed the rubber capable of putting up with these tremendous speeds and forces.

Yangwang only plans to build thirty of these U9X models, and it's not like you can just slap on a license plate and bully 911 Turbos on the Autobahn. The 4.35-mile stretch of public road used for the record attempt was closed at the time, and also fastidiously cleaned of debris, including going back over the surface looking for any wires left by the street sweepers.

However, as a demonstration of just how advanced BYD's battery chemistry can be, this new speed record represents all kinds of bragging rights. Speed records come and go. For now, nothing can touch the Yangwang U9 Xtreme.

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