China’s electric hypercar sets blistering record at Nurburgring

May 16, 2017 by Alastair Sloane

Chinese start-up carmaker Nio can now claim its EP9 electric hypercar is the fastest road-legal car around Germany’s Nurburgring circuit.

Not only did it set a new lap record, it beat the 7min:5.12sec time it set last October by an unheard of 20 seconds. (See video of the October run below).

The EP9 has just recorded 6min:45.9sec for the 20.8km run, a full 7 seconds quicker than the 6min:52.01sec the Lamborghini Huracan Performance set earlier this year as the fastest production car.

The EP9’s time is also three seconds quicker around the Nurburgring than the barely road-legal Radical SR8LM’s 6min:48sec.

But the EP9 is not exactly a production car. Only six have been made so far and the next run is expected to start at US$1.48 million apiece.

Nio said the car delivers a megawatt of power – 1000kW or 1342bhp – and 24,000 Newtons, or 2452kg, of downforce at 240km/h. It can sprint to 200km/h in 7.1sec and on to a top speed of 315km/h.

Nio claims it can pull three Gs in a corner – that’s roughly the same as an astronaut experiences during a rocket launch.

EP9 had a driver at the wheel for the Nurburgring run. But not back in February this year, when it EP9 clocked an autonomous lap of the 5.5km Circuit of the Americas Circuit in Texas in 2min:40.33sec, reaching a top speed of 260km/h.

Nio said a driver was in the car in Texas, but that the car completed the lap “without any intervention.”

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