Jaguar says it has set a world speed record for an electric boat it created with a Canadian powerboat manufacturer.
The boat, called the Jaguar Vector V20E, set an average speed of 88.61 mph (142.6 km/h) at Coniston Water, a long, narrow lake in central England that has been the site of many water speed records. The previous record was 76.8 mph (123.6 km/h), set in 2008.
While Jaguar doesn't provide much detail about what makes the boat go (it's safe to presume there are batteries, a motor and a propeller), the British company said its Formula E road racing team, Panasonic Jaguar Racing, was brought in to help engineer the V20E's go-fast bits.
While Jaguar Racing refers to Vector as a British powerboat brand, it was co-founded by a Canadian named Rex Jardine, who decided to get into speedboats after nearly two decades with Campion, a Canadian maker of more mainstream cruisers and ski boats.
While moving at 142 km/h on water sounds quick (and is, if we're being honest), we dug up some other water speed records to provide some context.
According to Guinness World Records, an Australian named Ken Warby owns the water speed record for hitting an official 511 km/h in 1977 at the controls of a jet-powered hydroplane. He apparently also set an unofficial speed of 555 km/h the same day.
The record for the fastest prop-driven vessel belongs to the USA's Daryl Ehrlich, who hit 420 km/h in a top fuel boat called Problem Child in 2009.
In 2010, a pair of Qataris named Sheikh Hassan Bin Jabor Al-Thani and Abdullah Al-Sulaiti covered 300 km in a record-setting 1 hour, 55 minutes. Their vessel, the Qatar Challenger, was powered by two gas turbine engines the same as those used in the Bell AH-1 Cobra helicopter.
Finally, Guinness says that in 2012, a Swiss concern covered more than 60,000 km in a solar-powered boat called Ms Turanor PlanetSolar.
