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We’re really hoping that if Panasonic is planning to market its new Oxyride electric car at Christmastime it manages to include a few packs of batteries in the box to keep the kids happy past lunchtime.

Unsurprisingly, as it has just topped 100km/h and entered the record books as the world’s fastest vehicle powered by commercial dry-cell AA batteries, the Oxyride machine eats up 192 of the cells at a time.

The batteries in question are also known as Oxyride and were being tested in the car as a promotional stunt organised by Panasonic. However, the record is genuine and has been verified by the Guinness Book of Records.

At a racetrack in Ibaraki, Japan, on Saturday the Oxyride car sustained an average speed of 105.95km/h over a fixed distance, thereby entering the record books. It also hit 122km/h in other runs.

Including the batteries, the car weighs just 38kg and looks like an airplane fuselage without the wings. The driver’s cockpit is so small he has to lie down and is unable to move anything except his hands and feet. We’ll refrain from sizeist jokes about Japan at this point, but you can see plenty more photos here.

Although the record is impressive - and this isn’t the first Oxyride stunt; a previous attempt saw the batteries power a light aircraft - one was to wonder how many other contenders there are in the powered-by-commercial-AA-batteries category?

(Crossposted to Tech.co.uk)

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