There’s a new “world’s fastest EV” in town. ElectrekJapanese car manufacturing and engineering company Aspark has teamed up with Italy’s Manifattura Automobili Torino to develop an upgraded version of its super-fast (and super-expensive) hypercar, the OWL, and then took the EV to the track, hitting a top speed of 277 mph.
Aspark is an automotive engineering and design company founded in Osaka, Japan nearly 20 years ago. Since its inception, the company has focused on one hypercar: the OWL. Aspark caught our attention 13 years after its founding, when the company took a prototype of the OWL to the track in an attempt to beat Tesla’s second-generation Roadster’s 0-100 km/h (0-62 mph) time.
The victory came in about 1.9 seconds.
While we’re still waiting for the production-ready Tesla Roadster, the OWL luxury hypercar has hit the market, a car that held the title of the world’s most expensive EV (at €2.9 million per unit) for several years, at least until last summer when Automobili Pininfarina unveiled its topless Barchetta EV for €4.4 million.
Since its limited production launch in Italy, the original Aspark OWL has delivered a total power output of 1,980 horsepower (1,456 kW), 1,920 Nm (1,416 ft-lbs) of torque and a range of 250 miles (400 km). The hypercar has cruised across Europe, landed in Japan and launched in the US in March of this year.
This version of the EV is one of the fastest EVs in the world, accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 1.72 seconds and reaching a top speed of 260 mph (413 km/h). As a result, the OWL has already secured two Guinness World Records in the UK: 1/8 mile at an average speed of 192.03 mph (309.02 km/h) and 1/4 mile at an average speed of 198.12 mph (318.85 km/h).
Today, Aspark released video footage of a new version, called the OWL SP600, which has recently been hailed as the world’s fastest EV after hitting an astounding top speed of 438.7 kph (272.6 mph).
Aspark OWL SP600 becomes the world’s fastest EV
To prove that its new owl-eyed electric hypercar is indeed the world’s fastest EV, Aspark logged a day on the circuit with a team from its development and engineering partner Manifattura Automobili Torino (MAT), which built the commissioned vehicle in Italy.
The Japanese company describes the OWL SP600 as “an evolution of the original Aspark OWL” and it comes equipped with bespoke Bridgestone Potenza race tyres. Prior to the record-setting run, Aspark says it put the OWL SP600 through an exclusive campaign of wind tunnel validation activities and several days of track testing with professional driver and Nürburgring 24 Hours winner Marc Bassén.
On June 8, 2024, the Aspark OWL SP600 achieved a top speed of approximately 439 km/h at Automotive Testing Papenburg (ATP) in Germany, which was verified using the Racelogic V-Box, a high-precision GPS-based measurement device provided by ATP.
According to Aspark, the OWL consistently recorded a top speed of 420.8 km/h (261.6 mph), then 430 km/h (267 mph), and finally 438.7 km/h on its way to being certified as the world’s fastest EV. Aspark CEO Masanori Yoshida had this to say about this record-breaking EV:
It has been almost 10 years since we started developing the OWL Hypercar. We aimed to create a car with the fastest acceleration in the world, and challenged the world land speed record with our new hypercar, the OWL SP600, which we achieved today. This technological capability inspires all involved to strive for personal excellence and to take on new challenges and growth in the future.
You can see footage of the record-setting day in the MAT video below.
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