BYD YANGWANG electric supercar sets lap record at Nurburgring

BYD’s YANGWANG U9 Xtreme is already the fastest production car on the planet, having reached a world record speed of 496.22 km/h at ATP Papenburg test track in Germany last month.

Now the performance flagship of the brand’s luxury sub-brand has added a new lap record for Electric Super Sportscars around the Nurburgring circuit, also in Germany.

The new record was set while the YANGWANG engineering team was conducting long-term testing on the 20.832-km Nordschleife section of the famous circuit. The team has been carrying out testing since July 2024 to collect data for further development of the U9 Extreme.

YANGWANG issued a statement that the U9X completed a lap in 6 minutes 59.157 seconds – more than 5 seconds off the previous record time in the Electric Super Sportscars class. It is the first car to break the 7-minute barrier.

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The driver for the record lap was Moritz Kranz, an experienced German racer who has done almost 10,000 laps of the ultra-challenging Nordschleife circuit during a career in GT competition. “The Nurburgring Nordschleife is the most demanding track, and our lap time is a testament to the development skills of BYD and YANGWANG. Without their intense work to balance a high-powered EV platform with the difficult demands of the chassis set-up, this great lap time would not have been possible,” he said.

The U9 Xtreme is built on the world’s first mass-produced all-domain 1200V ultra-high-voltage platform and powered by 4 high-performance motors, each capable of spinning up to 30,000 rpm. The supercar delivers a total output of over 3,000 ps, delivering a power-to-weight ratio of 1,217 ps/tonne that sets new global benchmarks for performance.

Based on the same e⁴ Platform and DiSus-X intelligent body-control system as the current YU9, the U9 Xtreme brings Body-Attitude Control technology to track applications – balancing both top-speed and lap-time performance in a single vehicle.

To handle the challenges of the circuit – known for its steep elevation changes and demanding corners – the U9 Xtreme has a completely redesigned cooling system, a new titanium-alloy carbon-ceramic braking system, and GitiSport e·GTR² PRO semi-slick tyres, jointly developed with Singapore-based Giti.

Only 30 units of the U9 Xtreme will be produced for sale.

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