Students from ETH Zurich and Lucerne University have broken the previous acceleration world record with their self-built electric racing car “mythen”. The car accelerated from 0 to 100 km/h in just 0.956 seconds and 12.3 meters.
The joy in the Academic Motorsport Association Zurich (AMZ) is enormous: for almost a year, the students from ETH Zurich and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences spent every free minute working on their electric vehicle “mythen”; They have overcome setbacks and had to repeatedly start from scratch when developing individual components. Now they have received official confirmation from Guinness World Records: “mythen” has broken the previous world acceleration record for electric vehicles. The car accelerated from 0 to 100 km/h in just 0.956 seconds at the military airfield in Dübendorf, directly in front of their workshop. The vehicle was only able to cover a distance of 12.3 meters.
Kate Maggetti was behind the wheel. The previous world record of 1.461 seconds, set in September 2022 by a team from the University of Stuttgart, was beaten by more than a third.
«Working on the project parallel to my studies was very intensive. Nevertheless, it was a lot of fun to continually find new solutions with my colleagues and to put into practice what I had learned theoretically during my studies. And of course it is an absolutely unique experience to be involved in a world record,”
says Yann Bernard, responsible for the engines.
Lighter, stronger, more traction
All components of “Mythen”, from the printed circuit boards (PCB) to the chassis and the battery, were developed by the students themselves and optimized for their function. Thanks to the use of lightweight carbon and aluminum honeycomb, the racing car weighs just around 140 kilos. Four self-developed wheel hub motors and a special drive train give the vehicle an impressive output of 240 kilowatts (326 hp).
“When setting an acceleration record, it’s not just the performance that plays an important role, but also how you can effectively transfer the force to the ground,”
explains Dario Messerli, responsible for aerodynamics. In conventional Formula 1 vehicles, this is solved via aerodynamics: a rear or front wing ensures that the car is pressed onto the ground. However, this effect only comes into play when the car has reached a certain speed. In order to ensure strong traction right from the start, the students on the AMZ team have developed a type of vacuum cleaner that sucks the vehicle onto the ground.
Hard-fought world record
The AMZ team has previously set the world acceleration record for electric cars twice – once in 2014 and again in 2016. In the following years, their record was broken by a team from the University of Stuttgart. Now the world record is back in Switzerland and the ETH students are confident that they will not give it up again any time soon.
About the Academic Motorsport Association Zurich (AMZ)
The AMZ was founded in 2006 by students at ETH Zurich. Since then, the approximately 30 members have developed a new car every year, with which they take part in various international design competitions – the so-called “Formula Student” in Europe (FSE). After three vehicles with combustion engines, AMZ has been building purely electrically powered racing cars since 2010. The University of Lucerne has been a partner in participating in the international student competition FSE for 13 years. The association offers students the opportunity to put the theoretical knowledge they have acquired into practice in a highly complex technical environment. The association is financially independent and is supported by numerous sponsors and various Swiss universities.
Source: Lucerne University of Applied Sciences HSLU, Sep 12, 2023
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