Rolls-Royce Claims World’s Fastest EV…Except It’s Not On Land
Rolls-Royce claims that it now holds the world title for Fastest Electric Vehicle when its all-electric aircraft reached a speed of 387.4mph during a recent test. Of course, the Spirit of Innovation, which is what the plane is called and what a mouthful it is, achieved this record-breaking speed while in flight. Whether it can be compared with land-based electric vehicles is for another argument.
The usurped record holder is a Siemens’ electric plane which set a top speed record of 210 mph in 2017. The British carmaker also set a few other speed records in the recent tests and also broke the fastest time to reach an altitude of 3,000 metres with a time of 202 seconds, which is a whole minute faster than the previous record holder. It really is quite impressive considering that the Spirit of Innovation first took to the skies less than three months ago.
Rolls-Royce has already submitted these numbers to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), which oversees aeronautical and astronautical records worldwide.
The Spirit of Innovation is propelled by a 400kW electric powertrain and the most power-dense propulsion battery pack ever made for the industry, so the company claims. And while the folks over at Rolls-Royce are very clever, can we just call it The Spirit or Spinno or something with two syllables or less?
These record-setting flights come just after the COP26 and Rolls-Royce believes that these efforts will “help make ‘jet zero’ a reality and supports our ambitions to deliver the technology breakthroughs society needs to decarbonise transport across air, land and sea.”
What remains to be answered is what happens when the plane runs out of battery mid-flight?
