Jon Excell

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Drayson smashes lightweight electric car speed record

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Drayson Racing - the motosport R&D firm set up by former science minister Lord Drayson - has set a new World Electric Land Speed Record of 204.185mph.

The Drayson B12 69/EV electric Le-Mans Prototype achived the feat earlier this week at RAF Elvington in Yorkshire, smashing the previous 175mph record, which had stood for nearly forty years, by 29.2mph.

‘I’m delighted we’ve beaten the record tonight and can show the world EVs can be fast and reliable,’ commented Drayson, ‘Drayson Racing is a laboratory for EV technology, testing it to the most extreme level, as we’ve seen today.’

The Drayson vehicle doesn’t hold the outright electric car land speed record. That dinstinction belongs to the Buckeye Bullet, an electric racer built by students at Ohio State Univerisity in the US which achieved a speed of 314 mph in 2004. The Drayson record is for a sub-1000kg vehicle. The Buckeye Bulllet weighed around 1814kg.

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