Video: watch an electric car do 0-62mph in 1.7 seconds

It’s been a great week for fast electric cars. Tesla announced its upgraded Model S will boast a ‘Ludicrous mode’, good for 0-60mph in 2.8 seconds, only for that rather impressive stat to be humiliated by a group of students from Germany.

0-62mph in 1.779 seconds. Just let that number sink in for a second. That’s a car, driven by a human, going from standstill to 62mph in less times than it takes to say ‘1.779 seconds’. And yes, the Germans had to run to an extra two miles per hour, just to rub salt into Tesla’s wounds. Take that, imperial units.

And whom do we applaud for this improbable Guinness World Record? It’s the ‘GreenTeam Formula Students’ of the University of Stuttgart, whose bespoke electric single-seater beat the previous record by a wafer-thin 0.006 seconds.

You’ll be wanting some car stats, so get a load of these. The car’s actual power output is only 134bhp – the same as a Suzuki Swift Sport. But the beauty of electric motors – four of them, in this car, giving massive all-wheel drive traction – is that power arrives the moment you breathe on the throttle, not in a high-rev powerband.

And when you factor in that the record-setting car weighs just 160kg, you see just why the GreenTeam racer – which is, as you’ll have guessed, very much not-road-legal – is so terrifically rapid. It’s got a superior power-to-weight ratio to a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, or a Porsche 918 Spyder.

Very sticky race tyres don’t hurt, either.

Of course, feats of engineering like this are at their best when they have a clear real-world application. Something all of us can benefit from.

So, GreenTeam of Stuttgart, fancy sending your findings to Renault? Imagine how much fun this bundle of tech would be in the next Twizy…