Up to 100 km/h in less than a second: Swiss electric kart breaks the world speed record

A Swiss student team has built an electric go-kart founded New world record for acceleration speed. The 100 km/h mark was reached in less than a second.

This incredible car was brought together by the Academic Motorsport Club Zurich (AMZ), which consists of students from ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences. They have been developing electric karts for many years and have already set records with previous cars in 2014 and 2016.

However, the lead lies with a rival team from the University of Stuttgart: In September 2022, their kart broke the acceleration record to 100 km/h and improved the value from 1.7 seconds to 1.461 seconds.

AMZ’s revenge was phenomenal as the team improved the record by more than a third. This was achieved with the new myth car – a small kart weighing just 140 kg and a four-speed engine with 240 kW (326 hp).

How can such a light vehicle accelerate to 100 km/h in less than a second? There are some tricks here, as no amount of power will help if you can’t keep the wheels on the ground, and this is where the AMZ team have made some pretty crude improvements. It used a vacuum blower system that sucks the car to the road, generating significant downforce even at rest and pushing the tires to the asphalt for superior traction.

Kate Maggetti, the driver of the car on the track, reached a speed of 100 km/h 0.956 seconds after the start. And the most amazing thing is that you only had to drive 12.3 meters from the starting line. These numbers are confirmed by the Guinness Book of Records and the team does not expect this record to fall any time soon.