Tesla-Powered Kit Car Becomes a 9-Second 129 MPH Drag Racer

We commended the job the guys at Eurodyne and Tapp Auto did with this project and wished them well in their attempt to take the vehicle into the nine seconds territory. We hadn't heard from them in a while, but now they're back and they didn't come empty-handed.

This is what we said back in 2016: "The extra power [after switching from a Model S 85 to a P85 unit] was soon felt on the drag strip where the previous best run of 10.98 seconds for the quarter-mile was cut short to just 10.1 seconds. That's literally a fraction of a second away from making the electric kit car a nine-second vehicle, which would be a tremendous achievement."

Well, they've only gone and done it. Their red rear-wheel-drive sports car has become a nine-second vehicle, completing a run in 9.86 seconds with a top speed of 129 mph (207.6 km/h). The car is largely unmodified from when it ran last year, meaning it still has that 470 hp of Tesla drive unit with the higher discharge rate Chevy Volt batteries, but the team did fiddle with its T1-C controller.

They claim that in the current setup, it's good for 200 kilometers - approximately 124 miles. That just happens to be the same maximum range as the 2017 Volkswagen e-Golf's, that is despite it has a larger battery pack (40 kWh compared to 32 kWh) and a less powerful motor.

What the German hatchback has in spades over this kit car, however, are convenience features. Plus, we're pretty sure that if it were to perform a burnout, the smoke wouldn't make it inside the cabin in the e-Golf.

But enough about obsolete EVs, and back to rapid-accelerating ones. The team doesn't go into any details about what made the jump to nine seconds possible, nor does it say whether it plans to continue pushing the envelope even further. Because, let's face it: we're all thinking about how fast it could go with a dual-motor setup. Unfortunately, we don't think that's possible with the 818 model.