China is laying claim to having produced the world's fastest electric car. But at least one other company is challenging that claim.
NextEV, a startup company from China, is boasting that its Nio EP9 supercar finished a lap at the 12.9 mile Nürburgring Nordschliefe in 7 minutes and 5.12 seconds. New production cars often go for a spin on the popular German racetrack which has become the benchmark test. The EP9 also finished the Circuit Paul Ricard in France with a time of one minute and 52.7 second. Both times are the current records for electric cars on the famous racetracks.
NextEV also mentioned that the EP9 is capable of clocking 0 to 100 kph (62 mph) in 2.7 seconds, 0 to 200 kph (124 mph) in only 7.1 seconds, and 0 to 300 kph (186 mph) in 15.9 seconds. The supercar's top speed is 194 mph.
The Nio EP9, launched in the United Kingdom, gets its power from four electric motors which produce a total of 1,341 horsepower or around 1 megawatt of power. Its batteries can be fully charged in just 45 minutes but replacing the drained battery with a charged one will only take 8 minutes.
There is no official price announced yet but the company claims the cost to build one unit of Nio EP9 is $1.2 million. It is safe to say then that the supercar will be worth more than that figure. Only six units of the EP9 will be made which will likely make the price even higher.
NextEv is relatively new to the scene. Probably the only time people have heard of the company is when it sponsored a team in the Formula E electric-car race series. NextEV is aiming to duplicate or even exceed the success of Tesla and the EP9 is the company's way of making some noise before it enters the consumer market for electric cars which will be sometime in 2017.
