Students have built an electric car that'll do 0-62mph in 1.5s

Some students have built an electric racing car, and it's really rather fast. Backed by the BMW Group, students from ETH Zurich and Lucerne University built 'grimsel', which has gone from 0-62mph in 1.513 seconds.

Ridiculous, right? It beats the previous record of 1.779 seconds, having reached 62mph in a distance of less than 30 metres. Thanks to copious use of carbon fibre, it weighs just 168kg, and thanks to four wheel hub motors, it produces 200bhp. Enough for a power to weight ratio of about 1190 bhp/tonne. To put that into perspective, that’s almost twice that of a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport and over 100 more than the fearsome Caparo T1. Talk about punching above your weight.

The car is being prepared for the upcoming Formula Student Germany event at the Hockenheimring in August this year, where student teams from around the world build, test and race their own small scale formula race car. The team who built it, AMZ racing, achieved second place last year so they are hoping for another good result this year.