BYD has a flair for dramatic timing. Days after one Yangwang U9 Xtreme was reduced to scrap on a Chinese test track, another reportedly hit 312.7 mph in Abu Dhabi, making it the first production car to officially cross 500 kmph. The previous benchmark belonged to the same car at 308.4 mph, so BYD is now competing mostly with itself. The gain is only 4.3 mph, but at those rarified speeds, every single mile per hour is bought with real engineering. For scale, at 312.7 mph the car covers a football field, both end zones included, in 0.79 seconds, or about the time it takes to just say “touchdown”.
Unlike earlier attempts on closed proving grounds, this one happened on real tarmac, with real heat, crosswinds and desert dust. The “track” was a 6.2 mile long section of closed road, with a maximum straight of 4.3 miles. Crews swept the route, then checked for stray wire shed by the cleaning brushes, which sounds fussy until you imagine a bristle meeting a tyre at 300 mph. At full tilt that straight lasts about 50 seconds, and the car needs a fair chunk of it just to get going.
The record was a two-day affair. The first day’s two passes reached 490 kmph (304.5 mph). Overnight, engineers adjusted temperature preparation, rear wing angle, suspension damping and tyre pressures, and the pass the following day produced the record.
Of course, there was a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears that went into the record too. Just days earlier, test driver Jiang Wen lost the rear end during a preliminary run in China and hit a guardrail hard enough to rip the rear axle off. Reports put the speed anywhere between 224 and 280 mph, and BYD has not said which. Jiang walked away, the carbon passenger cell held, the battery stayed intact and no fire followed. A $3 million car became parts, the occupant did not, and BYD got the most persuasive safety rating it could never have commissioned.
The Yangwang’s extreme hardware explains the confidence, though. Four motors spinning to 30,000 rpm make 2,977 hp on a 1,200V platform, and no more than 30 cars will exist. Marc Basseng, who drove the earlier German record, said “Thanks to the electric motor, the car is quiet, there are no load changes,” which is a polite way of saying nothing upsets the chassis mid-sprint. Of the Abu Dhabi run he added, “At these extreme speeds every detail matters.” Stella Li calls her engineers “young, bold and maybe a little crazy.” Wreck one on Monday, and then set a record within days; we’re not arguing with that logic.
