Think electric cars are slow? Think again. There’s actually a long history of speedy ones! An electric car called La Jamais Contente (“The Never Satisfied”) was the first vehicle—gas or electric—to go over 60 miles per hour. And that was in 1899!

Last week, the electric car Venturi Buckeye Bullet 2.5 hit a whopping 320 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Wendover, Utah. Its team also garnered a Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) world land speed record for an electric car with an average of 291 mph. Um...pretty fast. (The previous record was a measly 248 mph.)

What makes this even more impressive is that the 36-foot-long vehicle was designed and built by students in Ohio State University’s Center for Automotive Research (CAR), an entirely student-built, student-run organization. Ohio State University raced electric cars in the Formula Lighting series with the Smoking Buckeye during the ’90s. After winning every national championship and more than half their races, they decided to try to break the world speed record for electric cars. 

Starting in 2000, before the Buckeye Bullet 2.5, CAR designed and built two other electric cars. The Buckeye Bullet 1 was a battery-powered electric land speed racer that still holds the national and international land speed records in the EIII class with tops speeds over 314 mph. CAR’s other electric car, the Buckeye Bullet 2, was a hydrogen fuel cell-powered electric land speed racer that holds the fastest hydrogen vehicle record at more than 302 mph. This year, the fuel cells have been replaced with lithium batteries from A123 systems, thus the Venturi Buckeye Bullet 2.5.

CAR is taking everything they learned in the past decade and applying it to an entirely new battery-powered electric land speed racer: the Venturi Buckeye Bullet 3. Watch out, newly set world record!

Learn more about CAR at buckeyebullet.com and follow the Buckeye Bullet on Twitter at twitter.com/buckeye__bullet.

Image: buckeyebullet.com

--Treena Colby