Written by / Tu Yanping
Editor/ Qian Yaguang
Design / Zhao Haoran
In 1951, at a hunting party, Hugh Beaver, executive director of the Guinness Brewing Company, had an argument with others: which bird in Europe flew the fastest. The debate had no answers, but it inspired Hugh Beaver: if there was a book that could provide answers to such debates, it would be a huge hit.
So he hired the McWott brothers, who were running a data collection station in London at the time, to write such a book. In August 1955, the first Guinness Book of World Records was published and became a huge hit. Since then, the book has been revised about 1/5 of the year to launch a new version.
Up to now, the Guinness Book of World Records has included about 2 million world records, including many car brands.
The most recent one is a fledgling car. On April 17, 2022, Zhiji Automobile held an online conference to announce that Zhiji L7 set a Guinness World Record.
At Shanghai Tianma Circuit, Zhiji Automobile Engineer Wei Pengda drove a white Zhiji L7 with 258 consecutive drifts, with a cumulative drift time of 1 hour and 6 minutes and a continuous drift distance of 43.646 kilometers. This achievement set a new world record for "the longest drift distance for electric vehicles on slippery roads" and received Guinness certification.
Previously, the highest edignage distance in the world was set by Porsche. In 2020, Porsche driver Dennis Retera drove the Porsche Taycan to spend 55 minutes at the Porsche Experience Center in Hockenheim, Germany, drifting 210 laps continuously, 42.171 km continuously.
What is the point of the continuous drift project? Drift itself is an oversteer way to keep the front wheel grip and the rear wheel slip, and the long-distance continuous drift is the ultimate pressure test of the long-lasting endurance of the brakes, tires, power, and suspension.
To successfully challenge the world record, you still need two brushes.
The all-aluminum chassis structure of 50:50 axle-to-load ratio lays a balanced layout for the whole vehicle, coupled with the 490mm center of gravity height and 1664mm wheelbase, which effectively suppresses the rollover in the high-speed driving of the vehicle, making the anti-roll coefficient of the Zhiji L7 vehicle reach 1.69.
The Zhiji L7 is equipped with a straight waterfall oil-cooled motor, which can provide a power output of 425kW/725N·m, reach peak torque in 60ms, and accelerate 3.87s from 000 km/h. The electrified four-wheel vector drive technology enables the rear wheel of the Zhiji L7 to achieve a total steering angle of 12° in both directions, which can realize the intelligent adjustment of the virtual wheelbase under different working conditions. This allows the Zhiji L7, which has a length of more than 5 m and a wheelbase of 3.1 m, to achieve a minimum turning radius of 5.4 m for the vehicle.
"Behind this record, what we really want to challenge is the performance standards in terms of power and handling that the fuel car took 135 years to build, which seem to be unbreakable and unchallengable." Liu Tao, co-CEO of Zhiji Automobile, said.
He also revealed, "Driving control is our first choice at the beginning of the zhiji project. "In 2019, when the Zhiji team defined the product of zhiji L7, one of the core highlights was to have the performance of the supercar.
As the first model of the Zhiji brand, zhiji L7 played the driving control card, hoping to achieve snake-like flexible control on the administrative-sized electric car, so it also specially gave this driving control experience a name called SNAKE MOVE.
Liu Tao believes that performance and extreme driving control are the bottom card of luxury intelligent electric vehicles, and electrification technology has subverted the rules of the traditional luxury car game. The benchmark model of the Zhiji L7 is the BMW 5 Series.
As the No. 1 project of SAIC Motor Group, Zhiji Automobile undertakes the heavy responsibility of the upward breakthrough of SAIC's own brand. From the release of the Zhiji brand in January 2021 to the listing of two models of Zhiji L7 in March and April this year, the pace of Zhiji can be described as rapid.
The first zhiji L7 Pro is priced at 408,800 yuan, which has broken the ceiling of savoy's own brand passenger car price. The 368,800 yuan Zhiji L7 Dynamic was listed, and the price was pragmatically lowered to the 300,000 yuan range.
Among the many new car brands, it is not easy to establish a label that is different from others and suitable for themselves. The delivery of Zhiji L7 is imminent, and the choice to refresh the Guinness World Record of "Longest Electric Drift" is the effort of Zhiji Automobile to further clarify the label of "driving control" to consumers.
Of course, it should be pointed out that the Zhiji L7 and the Porsche Taycan are not a performance competition between the two, but only the former has refreshed the Guinness World Record for the electric drift distance of the latter.
However, as a brand marketing action, breaking the Guinness World Record is attractive enough, not to mention the record that Porsche once set. As of 13:00 on April 19, the total number of weibo #Guinness Electric Drift New Kings # topics was 260 million times.
Setting a Guinness World Record has always been a favorite marketing method for car brands.
For example, 200 Xiaopeng P7s formed a phalanx to set the Guinness World Record for the "Largest Light Show", 1339 Geely Emgrand posed a bullhead pattern to set the Guinness World Record for the "World's Largest Car Puzzle", and Genice Broke the Guinness World Record for "Most Drones Flying At the Same Time" with 3281 drone flights.
Another record-breaking way is to fight for ideas. In 2019, Chevrolet broke two Guinness World Records, one was the world record of "the longest standing time on the flat belt between traveling vehicles" at 1 minute 57.28 seconds, and the other was the world record of "the largest car GPS drawing" of 11212.46 kilometers.
There is also a kind of fighting strength. Zhiji's new world record of "longest galvanic drift" falls into this category.
World records are about to be broken, just as car brands are keen to refresh the Lap times in New North. In 2017, NIO EP9 broke the fastest lap record of New North electric vehicles with a time of 6 minutes 45 seconds and 900 seconds, and became famous in one battle. Two years later, the record was surpassed by Volkswagen ID.R with a time of 6:5.336.
In any case, electric vehicles are willing to set off such an inner volume, and consumers are always happy to hear it.
This article was originally produced by Automotive Business Review
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