Speed Record Claimed by Modified Electric Corvette

The world record for the fastest street-legal all-electric vehicle has been awarded to the Genovation GXE, an all-electric conversion of the 2006 Z06 Corvette, which achieved a top speed of 186.8 mph at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The GXE is a prototype vehicle that employs state-of-the-art electric motors and batteries to deliver over 700 horsepower and 600 foot-pounds of torque. Genovation, the company responsible for the GXE stated that the record-breaking run took place on only their first day of testing and that it is expected that the vehicle will be pushed even further in future.

While 186.8 mph is an impressive speed for an electric car, beating out the Tesla Model S by over 30mph, the GXE will have a fight on its hands to keep the record. Many other high-end electric vehicle teams could be staged to take the record away, including Mitch Medford’s Bloodshed Motors, whose Zombie 222, a modified 1972 Datsun 1200, which was a previous holder of the world record, able to reach 173.2 mph last year. In an interview with The Verge about the GXE’s record run, Medford said that he and the Bloodshed Motors team were making some adjustments to the Zombie 222, which, when complete, aim to achieve over 200mph at the Texas Mile.

One of the concerns over electric cars was always held by enthusiasts, believing that electric vehicles could never be as impressive or capture the imagination the same way the internal combustion engine has. However with companies like Genovation and teams like Bloodshed Motors pushing electric vehicles to speeds that can compete with many traditional sports cars, I think we can rest assured that the excitement of cars will not end in the electric generation.