Yangwang U9 Xtreme passes 500km/h in Abu Dhabi
Words: Richard Edwards
BYD’s Yangwang U9 Xtreme has become the first production car to go faster than 500km/h, hitting 503.17km/h on a closed stretch of public highway in Abu Dhabi. That beats the 496.22km/h the same car managed in Germany last year.
Racing driver Marc Basseng did the driving on 1 November, on the E11 highway in Abu Dhabi’s Al Dhafra region. About 10km of desert road was shut and swept clean before the runs, which took place over two days.
Guinness World Records has given the run four titles: fastest production car, fastest electric vehicle, and two tyre records for the Giti rubber it wore.
Getting there took some fiddling between runs. Engineers adjusted the tyre pressures, suspension and aero, retuned the adaptive dampers to deal with bumps in the road surface, and changed the rear wing angle for more downforce. The big swan-neck wing the car wore at the Nürburgring stayed off.
Power isn’t in short supply. The U9 Xtreme has four motors with 555kW each, 2220kW in total, running on a 1200V electrical system. Only 30 are being built, at about US$3 million apiece.
The car set its previous record of 496.22km/h at the ATP proving ground in Papenburg, Germany, in September 2025, the same month it lapped the Nürburgring in under seven minutes.
There’s a catch for the record books. The 503.17km/h is a one-way figure, and Yangwang didn’t do a run in the opposite direction for a two-way average. That means the SSC Tuatara’s 455.3km/h average from 2021 is still the two-way record.
Not all of the testing went to plan. Before the Abu Dhabi attempt, a U9 Xtreme crashed during high-speed testing in China while aiming for 420–450km/h. It hit the left guardrail, spun across the road into the right guardrail, and was badly damaged.
Test driver Jiang Wen, a 23-year BYD veteran who volunteered for the job, said the first impact came at around 360km/h. He said the car felt like it was floating, and when he lifted off the throttle the rear started to swing. He took his hands off the wheel and held them to his chest as the car crossed the road. Hospital checks found no serious injuries.
Yangwang’s next big moment comes on 8 November, when it reveals its Altior flagship sedan at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi.
