Tesla has made its name in modern electric car engineering, but it may not hold the position of industry leader for long. A group of university students at the University of New South Wales in Australia have just tested their newest energy-efficient car, called the Sunswift eVe, and this vehicle has managed to break a 26-year-old record of the fastest electric car over a distance of 500 kilometers on one battery charge. According to its latest tests at a racetrack in Geelong, Victoria, the car is able to achieve an average speed of 100 km per hour — easily surpassing the previous record of 73 km per hour.

The eVe isn’t the first of its kind by any measure, and a great deal of hard work has gone into its creation. The eVe is the fifth car built by this group of students, who belong to an Australian solar car racing team founded in 1996, have released earlier versions of the Sunswift car with the hope that it would set a world record for speed while showing the promise of eventually becoming available to the general public. Based on the latest tests, the students seem confident that the car will meet Australian road registration requirements within the next year, and developers note that its 500 km distance on a single battery charge is probably the maximum distance that a normal driver would want to travel in one day. The car uses solar panels attached to the roof, which charge a 60kg battery, but the car can also be plugged into an industrial port to charge as well.

Although this model certainly isn’t ready for everyday use by the average person, this advancement shows that the electric and hybrid car industry is becoming more influential — many people are already very interested in electric and hybrid cars, and it seems likely that these car sales will only continue to grow.