Dreame, a Chinese company known for robot vacuums and other home appliances, is back with another electric supercar concept, this time with some actually unbelievable numbers.
Try this one on for size: 0-62mph (0-100km/h) in 0.9 seconds.
When I got this press release, I was skeptical at first. It had little information about the car, but that headline acceleration spec did more than raise my eyebrows.
The problem with this number is that tires simply do not have the grip to allow for numbers like that.
Most of today’s fastest electric supercars are already traction-limited, meaning that they are accelerating and decelerating as quickly as the friction between rubber and ground will allow for. This means that adding more power does nothing to increase low-end acceleration, because the tires are what’s holding you back.
So the only way to get to that point is to bypass the issue of traction somehow. You can either do this by increasing traction (through a fan car-like system that sucks the car to the ground… which would have been kind of appropriate for a vacuum company, come to think of it), or by getting thrust through something other than the tires.
Dreame has chosen the latter route, claiming that the Dreame Nebula NEXT 01 Jet Edition will have “custom-built dual solid rocket boosters” capable of delivering 100 kilo-Newtons of force (this is how rocket force is measured, it doesn’t translate well to horsepower) and activating in 150ms (which is ages compared to a fast electric drivetrain, but still quicker than the quickest human reaction time).
This supposedly allows for under one-second 0-62mph acceleration, which would be the fastest, uh, ever. The current record-holder for EV acceleration is a student-built ultra-light racecar that did it in 0.956 seconds, but it weighs about 300lbs and doesn’t have a roof.
The jet system seems to be bolted-on to Dreame’s already-announced concept car, the Dreame Nebula 1, which started off as an 1,876hp EV supercar first shown this year at CES. Dreame said its goal is to make the “world’s fastest car,” and wants to get it into production starting in 2027, but also promises that it will have high-resolution LiDAR for autonomous driving tasks.
Dreame said it has partnered with BNP Paribas to build a factory outside Berlin, which will be used to build this car and any others Dreame decides to build (it already has a Rolls Royce Cullinan-like SUV in the works, supposedly).
Other than that, we don’t have a lot of details. We asked the company multiple times for more, but couldn’t get many straight answers, about either the original announcement or this one about the JET edition.
While a lot of this seems unbelievable, we have seen other Chinese companies that don’t traditionally make cars come seemingly out of nowhere and set records, like Xiaomi. The speed and execution of the Chinese EV industry is currently unparalleled, and we can’t write Dreame off just yet.
The Dreame Nebula Jet Edition also bears some resemblance to another EV we’ve heard about over the years: Tesla’s next-generation Roadster. That car was introduced in 2017 and had some crazy numbers, but was also promised to have an optional “SpaceX package” with “cold air thrusters” which would make it capable of doing 0-60 in 1.1 seconds.
Tesla’s solution would likely be easier to fuel than Dreame’s, given the Roadster will only need compressed air, whereas you’ll have to find some way to get your hands on solid rocket fuel to refill the JET edition’s boosters. Dreame’s solution also throws away the concept of emissions-free acceleration, at least when the rocket boost is activated.
But Tesla’s idea has its own fair share of unrealistic promises. Since Tesla’s reveal, CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly promised that the car will be able to fly, despite that that isn’t how physics works and would not provide any performance benefit.
That car is also currently at least 7 years late, and a second reveal event which Musk promises to be the most exciting product demo ever has been repeatedly pushed back. It looks like Dreame – again, a vacuum company – beat Tesla to the punch, at least for the reveal.
Now let’s see if either of them get into production… any bets?
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