Enlarge / This is muc22, and it set a new record for electric vehicle range on a single charge, driving for six days inside this hangar. (credit: TUfast Eco Team)
It must be the season for student-set world records. Earlier this week, we learned that a Swiss team of student engineers set a new world record for the fastest electric vehicle 0–62 mph (0–100 km/h) time. Today's story features another EV designed and built by students, this time from the Technical University of Munich, and they took a lot longer to set the record.
The car, called muc22, looks more conventional than the Swiss speedster, if only a little. The diminutive coupe in this case was built for efficiency, and in a six-day test at Munich airport, it set a new distance record on a single charge (for a non-solar EV): 1,599 miles (2,574 km), with less battery capacity than many plug-in hybrids—just 15.5 kWh.
The specs for muc22 are extreme, but they're on the far other side of the scale compared to something like a Pininfarina Battista hypercar. For one thing, the streamlined EV has a top speed of just 26 mph (42 km/h) and weighs just 374 lbs (170 kg) without a driver. The airflow-optimized shape has faired-in rear wheels and a drag coefficient of just 0.159; more importantly, though, it has a pretty tiny frontal area (it's only 39.4 inches/1,000 mm tall and 47.2 inches/1,200 mm wide).
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