The Volkswagen I.D. R race car destroyed the overall record at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, and it repeated that success at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this past weekend.
Volkswagen's all-electric racer captured the EV record at Goodwood's hill climb with a time of 43.86 seconds. Its record-setting run beat the previous EV best, which has been around since 2013, by 3.48 seconds. Its primary competitor, the Nio EP9 supercar, couldn't match the pace of the VW, but it did manage to set a record for production cars in the process.
While the VW broke the EV record, its run didn't hold a candle to the overall record, which still stands at 41.60 seconds. Nick Heidfeld set that record in a McLaren-Mercedes MP4/13 Formula One car all the way back in 1999. Some folks, myself included, thought the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo could beat that time, as it utterly demolished the Nürburgring Nordschleife record earlier this year, but it chose not to make a timed run up the hill.
The Volkswagen I.D. R Pikes Peak was built specifically to smash records, and that's what it's done so far. Its electric motors provide 680 horsepower and 479 pound-feet of torque, enough for a 0-to-62-mph run of 2.25 seconds. It's a svelte little thing, weighing just 2,425 pounds. I wouldn't expect much in the way of range, as its 43-kWh battery was built to balance power delivery and weight without concerns of range extending beyond Pikes Peak's 12.4-mile course.
