Charis Michelsen, writing on GAS 2.0, reports that the Offenburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany) has broken the distance record for electric vehicles:

Electric vehicles records are dropping like flies these days, as more and more vehicles push the boundaries of what’s possible for electric cars, boats, and planes.  The latest to fall:  the record for longest drive ever in a battery-powered vehicle (no recharge) was broken last weekend by a new, experimental electric vehicle called “Schluckspecht” (“heavy drinker” in colloquial German).

Developed at the University of Applied Sciences in Offenburg, the car – which is not pretty – does a solid Energizer bunny routine, going and going and going for 1631.5km (1013.77 miles) without needing to recharge the battery.

The test drive took place in Boxberg at the Bosch corporate test track, where a team of four drivers made the record run alongside a camera-equipped pace car. The 36 hour and 12 minute drive (which didn’t exactly break any EV speed records) was also monitored by European testing agents from TÜV Süd.

This world record follows the team’s successful participation in the South-African Solar Challenge 2010, in which the Schluckspecht drove 626.6km (389.35 miles) on public roads – farther (at the time) than any other electric vehicle.

The Schluckspecht boasts little in the way of creature comforts, a fact which helped reduce overall weight and was no doubt helpful during its record-setting drive. However, the engineering behind its design also played a large part in its success, as the Schluckspecht was built from the ground up specifically to chase battery-powered vehicle records in a lab belonging to Ms. Sunmin Lee from Pforzheim University. The body was shaped with “pure aerodynamics” in mind, and – since the vehicle makes use of two wheel-mounted hub-motors – without the need to accommodate an internal engine or transmission.

Source: Gas 2.0 (http://s.tt/132cX)