The BYD subsidiary's electric hypercar reaches 503.17 km/h while driving in the Emirates, surpassing its own world record for series vehicles.
Dusseldorf. Chinese luxury electric brand Yangwang has set a new speed record for production vehicles. The U9 Xtreme electric hypercar reached a certified top speed of 503.17 km/h in the United Arab Emirates. This makes the all-wheel drive vehicle currently the fastest car in the world.
The trip took place on November 1st on the Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed International Road (E11), which leads from Abu Dhabi towards Saudi Arabia. German racing driver Marc Basseng was behind the wheel. Yangwang thus secures two official entries in the Guinness Book of Records, as the fastest production vehicle in the world in a single trip and as the fastest electric production vehicle on a public road. The world motorsport association FIA also recognizes the achievement.
The car significantly exceeded its own record of 496.22 km/h, set in September 2025 at the test site in Papenburg, Emsland.
Technically, the record car is based on four electric motors with a total output of 2,220 kW, which corresponds to 3,018 hp. The basic model of the Yangwang U9 has 1,306 hp (960 kW), meaning BYD has more than doubled the output.
Each of the four separately controlled motors has a peak output of 555 kW (approx. 755 hp) and rotates at up to 30,000 revolutions per minute. The manufacturer puts the maximum torque at 3,360 Nm. The power flow is made possible by a 1,200-volt ultra-high-voltage platform and an 80 kWh blade battery.
According to the company, the biggest challenge was not performance, but cooling. At full throttle, extreme heat is generated in the battery pack, which is why BYD significantly upgraded the cooling system for the Xtreme version with three-dimensional oil cooling for the engines. The aim was to ensure that the drive did not limit electronically shortly before the 500 km/h mark.
Fastest car in the world: Previously records held by Bugatti and Koenigsegg
Before Yangwang, no brand has ever managed to break the 500 km/h mark with its production vehicle. For years, the record was firmly in the hands of the former VW subsidiary Bugatti, which was the first to exceed the 400 km/h mark in April 2005.
At the time, test driver Uwe Novacki drove the Bugatti Veyron 16.4, reaching a top speed of 407 km/h on the VW Ehra-Lessien test track. In 2007, Bugatti had to briefly hand over the record to the SSC Ultimate Aero. But back in 2010, the then VW subsidiary got the record back with the Veyron Super Sport. The 431 kilometers per hour measured at that time was the best value in the industry for seven years.
Until the Swedish super sports car manufacturer Koenigsegg drove a full 447 kilometers per hour on a closed road in Nevada in 2017 with an Agera RS. To this day, this record is considered by many to be the cleanest because an unmodified customer vehicle was used.
There is no central authority that bindingly checks the maximum speeds of production cars. In practice, Guinness World Records and the FIA, which has its own rules for record attempts, as well as measurement technology from independent providers count.
The standard procedure requires the car to travel twice in the opposite direction over the same route in a short period of time. The average of both runs counts, within 60 minutes. In this way, wind, gradient and incline balance each other out, helping one run and harming the other.
The definition of what a series vehicle is is also not clear. The usual rule is that the car must be street legal and the record must be driven in exactly the configuration in which customers can buy it. According to reports, Guinness recently required at least 30 identical copies, other lists set the limit at 20 or 25.
There was already a dispute with the Veyron Super Sport as to whether the record was set with a production vehicle: Bugatti built 30 cars, but only five of them as record versions without a speed limiter. Guinness reviewed the entry after an objection and ultimately confirmed it.
The fact that Bugatti took back the speed record in 2019 is also considered controversial. The measured 490 km/h was driven by a pre-production Chiron Super Sport. The production version of the Super Sport achieved 440 km/h in record runs.
And the Yangwang U9 Guinness therefore explicitly keeps the record as a single trip record.
