Not too long ago, we brought you the news that a group of students from Stuttgart in Germany had set a new world record for the fastest-accelerating EV. Their machine raced from zero to 100km/h in a mere 1.461 seconds, smashing a previous record set by students from the ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

Turns out the Swiss don’t like it very much when you take records away from them, and the members of the Academic Motorsports Club Zurich worked tirelessly to create a machine that could outrun their German counterparts—with success. The new world record for the fastest-accelerating electric vehicle is now at home in Switzerland again, and stands at a ludicrous 0.956 second.

Not only did the students create a pocket rocket that can race up to 100km/h in less than a second, but their speed machine (called the Mythen) does it in just 12.3m of road. To achieve such insane figures, a lot of hard work and ingenuity was needed.

Instead of fitting a bigger motor and wider tires—or using a lighter driver than the Germans—wouldn’t have been enough to shave more than a third of the previous record.

Instead, the Swiss team used their planet-sized brains to come up with a clever way to generate extra grip. More grip means that more power can be put down, but using traditional front or rear spoilers wasn’t an option as they simply don’t work efficiently at these speed ranges and over a short distance.

Instead, a custom ground effect setup was created that literally sucks the car to the tarmac like a vacuum cleaner. Complete with a driver, the machine weighs around 180kg, and the fan car setup pretty much doubles that number where usable downforce is concerned. This means the four-wheel hub motors can make the most out of their combined 326hp and literally catapult the open-wheeler off the line.

Not only is the new record an impressive achievement, but it’s even more astonishing when you consider that the students worked on this next to their full-time studies. And the whole machine—from the carbon-fiber chassis to the battery, the circuit boards, and even the electric motors—was developed by the students themselves.

No doubt this record will now be an extra hard nut to crack, and the team behind it won’t have any problems finding jobs in the automotive industry after their studies should they wish to do so.

After all, ever-faster electric vehicles seem to be where the whole hypercar world is going, and having the brains behind the fastest-accelerating EV in the world on your staff roster has got to be a pretty desirable thing.