Image Credit: Yangwang.
It feels like I was just telling you about some unhinged electric hypercar from a company called Yangwang doing silly speeds on a German runway. I'd barely finished thinking about the repercussions of that achievement, and now the Chinese have gone back to Germany. But this time, they didn't just go in a straight line - they went to the track. The Nürburgring. That terrifying, 13-mile ribbon of asphalt winding through the Eifel mountains. The place they call "The Green Hell."
The car is the Yangwang U9 Xtreme. "Xtreme" is in the name, just so you know they're not messing about. This thing just rocketed around the Nordschleife in 6 minutes, 59.157 seconds. Now, for those of you who don't follow these things, that is ludicrously fast. More importantly, it's the first time a production-class electric car has dipped below the magical seven-minute barrier. It's like the four-minute mile, but for cars... and much, much scarier.
Image Credit: Yangwang.
But the U9 didn't just squeak by. It shattered its own previous record by five whole seconds. Five! In the world of 'Ring lap times, five seconds is an eternity. It's the difference between a triumphant lap and being stuck in the barrier at Adenauer Forst, explaining to a marshal how it all went wrong. The guys at Yangwang (which is the luxury brand of BYD, by the way) are clearly not interested in incremental progress. They're using an electric sledgehammer.
You can't just hand the keys to a 3,000-horsepower missile to any old chap and say "have at it." BYD strapped a German endurance racer named Moritz Kranz into the driver's seat, and gave him one job - to prove this car wasn't just a fragile prototype tuned for one battery-draining blaze of glory. After the run, Kranz said it was a "testament to the development skills" and praised the "advanced chassis tuning." That must be German for "Good grief, it actually turns!"
Image Credit: Yangwang.
And that's the bit that has me scratching my head. This very same car, the U9 Xtreme, was the one that hit a top speed of 308.4 mph just last month. I always thought cars that go 300 mph are usually built for one thing: going 300 mph. They're slippery, and they're often a bit rubbish at corners. Cars built to conquer the Nürburgring are all about downforce, grip, and chassis balance. They're not supposed to be the same car. This Yangwang is like finding out a sumo wrestler just won the Olympic 100-meter dash. It doesn't make sense.
The performance figures come straight from China's big book of official car stuff, the MIIT, so this isn't just marketing fluff. The U9 Xtreme has four electric motors, one for each wheel, which is the sensible way to do things these days. Each motor, each, puts out 555 kW. Do the math... or don't, I'll do it for you... that adds up to 2,220 kW, or 3,019 horsepower. It makes high-end stuff like the Rimac Nevera, with its pathetic 1,914 hp, look like a golf cart. It's also a big boy: about 196 inches long (depending on which wing you bolt on) and 80 inches wide. It's not a dainty sports car; it's a land-bound missile.
Image Credit: Yangwang.
All that power and those batteries come with a penalty, and it's called "weight." This thing tips the scales at 5,467 pounds. It's heavier than my aunt's old station wagon, and that had wood paneling. To keep that much-heft-plus-power from flying off into the scenery, they've fitted it with absolutely massive 325-section tires on 20-inch wheels at all four corners.
But the real gut-punch, the part that makes no sense is while European exotics with half the power ask for $2 million, $3 million, or your first-born child, the U9 Xtreme sells for about $232,500 in China. That's a price of a well-optioned Porsche 911 for a 3,000-horsepower hypercar. The world's gone mad. 3,000 horsepower… My first car had 60. This has fifty times that. It's an absurd, almost meaningless number.
Image Credit: Yangwang.
Of course, we must address the small print. Was this really a "production car" you can just wander in and buy? "Production" seems to be doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. The record-setting car was, shall we say, "optimized." It had a "redesigned cooling system," which is code for "we added massive radiators so it wouldn't melt." It also had "special carbon-ceramic brakes," which I'd argue aren't "special" but "mandatory" when you have 3,000 horsepower. And finally, it wore custom-made GitiSport e.GTR2 PRO tires, which are likely made from a compound so sticky they could probably drive up a wall.
But what does this all mean for us, the normal people? It means that BYD, a company that used to be known for making passable family hatchbacks (and a lot of batteries), has just built a car that is faster than pretty much anything else on Earth. Both in a straight line and around the world's most demanding test track. Stella Li, a BYD Executive VP, called the achievement "phenomenal." And you know what? For once, the corporate buzzword is correct. It is phenomenal.
Image Credit: Yangwang.
I'm still an old, cynical journalist. I'm sure that lap drained the battery so fast it probably could have caused a blackout in the nearest village, if it had a charging cable long enough. I'm sure it's completely useless for popping down to the shops for a pint of milk. But as a piece of engineering? As a statement of intent? It's impossible not to be impressed. Anyone who says that "the Chinese are coming" has slept in. They're here, and they're rewriting the rulebook while the legacy players are still arguing about the font.
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