► Yangwang claims the production car speed record with the U9
► It hit a top speed of 312.65mph on a closed road in Abu Dhabi…
► … beating its own previous top speed record by almost 4mph

Yangwang has finally banished the bee from its bonnet. The U9 Xtreme electric hypercar was already the fastest production car in the world, having hit a top speed of 308.4mph back in September 2025. That’s fast – but it wasn’t fast enough for the company’s targets.

Yangwang always wanted the U9 to hit more than 500km/h and, thanks to some extra fettling and a very long stretch of closed road in the middle of the Abu Dhabi desert, it’s now managed it. The U9 has broken its own record, laying down a new top speed of 503.17km/h (or 312.65mph if you can’t wrap your head around the metric system).

This record was set across two days. On day one, the U9 Xtreme hit 490km/h (304mph). Yangwang’s engineers then worked through the night, adjusting the angle of its rear wing, fiddling with its suspension to stop the imperfections in the tarmac from unsettling the chassis and tweaking its tyre pressures for better stability.

On day two, the U9 set its record-breaking speed – and between each run, Yangwang trailed up and down the road with cleaning brushes to give the tyres the best possible chance of maintaining their connection with the tarmac. Sand is slippery and, with the attempt taking place in the desert, it wasn’t exactly in short supply.

Plus, as the video below shows, Yangwang recently had a bit of an off with another U9 undergoing speed testing in China, which it was keen to not replicate here.

The record was set by Marc Basseng. He was the test pilot for the previous U9 land speed record attempt as well as an unofficial global EV speed record in an Aspark Owl SP600 back in 2024. He said: ‘This time, we took on an entirely different challenge – pushing the limits of speed on a public road in Abu Dhabi.

‘Unlike a dedicated test track, a public road presents a different set of challenges, making precision, stability and confidence in the vehicle more important than ever. Breaking a world record once is extraordinary but doing it again in such a different environment is truly special.’

Stella Li, executive vice president of YangWang’s parent company BYD, said: ‘I always tell people that our engineers are young, bold and maybe a little crazy – but in a good way!

‘Even as the team celebrated the astonishing 496.22km/h (308.22mph) in Germany last year, they were looking through the data and discussing how to take U9X to its next level. 503.17km/h (312.65mph) is a fantastic achievement, and it moves the benchmark for pure electric power even further ahead.’

What are the Yangwang U9 Xtreme’s specs?

Well, they’re quite… erm… extreme. It has an electric motor on each wheel, producing 744bhp each. That adds up to a grand total of 2978bhp. To frame that figure another way, the U9 Xtreme has more than two Bugatti Veyrons worth of horsepower.

If you spend any length of time on social media, you’ve probably seen this car playing hopscotch, too. That’s thanks to BYD’s DiSus-X Intelligent Body Control System, which can not only counteract pitch, roll and squat, but can also fire the wheels into the tarmac to launch the car off the ground. Which is handy for avoiding potholes, we guess.

Production of the Yangwang U9 Xtreme will be limited to just 30 units worldwide. Prices for this record-setting model haven’t yet been confirmed, but the ‘standard’ model, with a little less than half the horsepower, is expected to cost around £200,000.