There is a braggy bumper sticker that reads ‘I don’t drive fast, I fly low’. So, what if we told you that you can go a couple of hundred kilometres per hour faster on land in a street-legal car than an average commercial aircraft’s takeoff speed? And the vehicle that you can do that in is the Yangwang U9 Xtreme electric vehicle and the speed is 496.22kmph. For a comparison, that is more than 120kmph faster than the highest speed ever achieved a Formula One race car in a race, which is around 378kmph by Valtteri Bottas at the 2016 European Grand Prix in Baku.

Now that we have an idea of how mind-bogglingly fast it goes, let’s state the obvious: that it is currently the world’s fastest production car currently, and faster than the Bugattis and the Koenigseggs of the world. The Bugatti Chiron has a speedo graduated to 500kmph. And the Yangweng might need something higher than that!

Yangwang is the luxury sub-brand of global new-energy vehicle (NEV) company BYD. The 496.22kmph record run by its U9 Xtreme hypercar was at the ATP Automotive Testing Papenburg test track in Germany on September 14, eclipsing its previous EV benchmark and the 490.484kmph maximum of the quickest petrol-powered model, the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+, to become the world’s fastest car overall.

Originally known as the U9 Track/Special Edition, and now officially confirmed as the Yangwang U9 Xtreme in production guise, or U9X for short, the fastest car on the planet takes the existing technical architecture of the U9 currently on sale in China and harnesses the potential of a number of key evolutions.

These include an upgraded powertrain with 1200V ultra-high-voltage electrics (compared with 800V), a lithium iron phosphate blade battery with very high discharge rate, four ultra-high-speed motors that that operate at up to 30,000rpm and produce a total of more than 3,000ps (more than 2,959hp), track-level semi-slick tyres, and revised DiSus-X suspension with specific tuning to cope with the increased stresses of circuit driving.

The driver for the U9X’s record-breaking run was Marc Basseng, a German track specialist with a long history in sports-car racing and endurance motorsport.

There will be a limited series production run of 30 units of the U9 Xtreme. By setting a new global speed record, Yangwang has redefined the sustainable hypercar. With BYD’s innovation and sustainability commitments, Yangwang has used cutting-edge tech to deliver unmatched performance, safety, and driving experience. For once, stunning is probably an apt word to use for the feat.