Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Cars
  3. News

The Nio EP9 is not only the fastest electric car, it’s the fastest self-driving car

Lulu Chang
By

nio ep9 self driving screen shot 2017 02 27 at 11 52 22 am
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Nascar drivers, look out. Autonomous technology could be literally giving you a run for your money. On Monday, car company Nio announced that just a few days prior, one of its autonomous vehicles set a new record for the fastest ever self-driven lap at the Circuit of the Americas Race Track (COTA) in Austin, Texas. On Thursday, the Nio EP9 drove itself around the track in just two minutes and 40.33 seconds, hitting a top speed of 160 mph. The Nio EP9 also set a new record for the fastest COTA lap time for a production car with a driver, with a lap time of 2:11, hitting a top speed of 170 mph.

Padmasree Warrior, CEO of Nio U.S., lauded the accomplishment. “At Nio, we are all about raising the bar for the entire automotive industry,” Warrior said. “Breaking records with the Nio EP9 demonstrates our automotive and technology expertise to be a leader in the global market. Our goal is to be the best next-generation car company, by delivering autonomous vehicles with amazing experiences for people all over the world.”

Recommended Videos

The executive gave credit to Nio’s Silicon Valley-based team, which managed to deliver this incredible vehicle in just four months.

Related

Nio is no stranger to setting and breaking records. In October, the Nio EP9 became the fastest electric car in the world, setting a record at the Nürburgring Nordschleife in Germany. The EP9 boasts four high-performance inboard motors and four individual gearboxes and a full megawatt of power (1,342 brake horsepower). With a zero to 124 (forget 60) mph speed of 7.1 seconds and a top speed of 194 mph, this is one seriously fast car.

“We are honored to be a part of Nio’s amazing lap record and see performance and autonomy coexist,” said COTA Chief Operating Officer Katja Heims. “We all know that autonomous vehicles are part of the future and this new record is further proof.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Lulu Chang
Lulu Chang
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
Officers confused as they pull over an empty self-driving car
Cruise

In what appears to be the first incident of its kind, police officers recently pulled over a self-driving car with no one inside it.

The incident, which took place on a street in San Francisco earlier this month, was caught on video by a passing pedestrian. It shows several traffic cops pondering about how to handle the incident after stopping the vehicle for failing to have its front lights on while driving at night.

Read more
How a big blue van from 1986 paved the way for self-driving cars
Lineup of all 5 Navlab autonomous vehicles.

In 1986, a blue Chevy van often cruised around the streets of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania near Carnegie Mellon University. To the casual observer, nothing about it appeared out of the ordinary. Most people would pass by it without noticing the camcorder peeking out from its roof, or the fact that there were no hands on the steering wheel.

But if any passerby had stopped to inspect the van and peer into its interior, they would have realized it was no ordinary car. This was the world's first self-driving automobile: A pioneering work of computer science and engineering somehow built in a world where fax machines were still the predominant way to send documents, and most phones still had cords. But despite being stuck in an era where technology hadn't caught up to humanity's imagination quite yet, the van -- and the researchers crammed into it -- helped to lay the groundwork for all the Teslas, Waymos, and self-driving Uber prototypes cruising around our streets in 2022.

Read more
We now know what the self-driving Apple Car might look like
A render that shows what the Apple Car might look like.

Thanks to several 3D concept renders, we now know what the future self-driving Apple Car might look like.

Vanarama, a British car-leasing company, took inspiration from other Apple products, as well as Apple patents, in order to accurately picture the rumored Apple car.

Read more