BYD’s luxury brand Yangwang has broken its own speed record to become the first production EV to hit 500kph (312mph), beating its previous best by 4mph. 

The record run has garnered two Guinness records – ‘highest speed achieved by a production car in a single-direction run’ and ‘highest speed achieved by an electric production car in a single-direction run’. 

Yangwang said that the speed record had also been recognised by international motorsport federation the FIA, for whatever that’s worth. 

The new benchmark was set on a public road in Abu Dhabi last weekend with German racing driver (and 2012 Le Mans winner) Marc Basseng at the wheel, but you'd have to imagine that local bus services were diverted for the attempt. 

UK drivers might quibble with the production car award, because the U9 isn’t available on sale in the country – it’s set to arrive in 2027, priced around £200,000. 

It might be too late by then to get your hands on one of these lightning fast versions of the car, though – there are 30 examples of the U9X being built globally with a reported price of just over £2m. 

We did get a brief glimpse of the car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed earlier this year, not long after its Nürburgring lap record was snatched back by the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT. 

There’s a lot of car involved for the discerning millionaire though (probably billionaire once you’ve factored in things like insurance and tyres) – the U9X has a 1,200V architecture and one of BYD’s Blade LFP batteries. 

The company hasn’t said how big the pack is underneath the U9X’s intimidating bodywork, but the standard Yangwang U9 uses an 80kWh unit. Yangwang has said that the battery system is capable of discharging at 30C, which if you could do it continuously would drain the entire battery in two minutes. 

The company isn’t suggesting you do that, but rather it’s highlighting how robust it’s been built to deal with big power. 

The Xtreme version of the electric supercar has 3,019hp available underneath the suitably brave right foot, bespoke tyres from Giti to deal with the motor at each wheel and has been upgraded all round to deal with those massive amounts of power. 

Yangwang says that its computer system is even faster than the car, able to make more than 100 adjustments a second to the torque that’s being sent to each wheel. 

Not the ideal car to take to the shops then you would say, but BYD does have something for that job too if you’re interested.