Rally champ smashes weird world record

I think it’s fair to say that rally drivers are some of the wildest, most battle-hardened drivers on Earth. They spend their lives trying to figure out how to send cars at horrifying speed through the trees, eating the Earth beneath their gnashing tires. Miko Marczyk, 2025 European Rally Champion from Poland, just spent 45 hours doing almost the exact opposite.

Marczyk has set a new Guinness World Records title for the longest journey by an electric car on a single charge, driving an Audi A6 Sportback e-tron performance for 1,338 kilometers, or about 831 miles. How’s that for range anxiety?!?! That is considerably farther than the car's official WLTP range of around 776 kilometers, and it smashes the previous record of 1,205 kilometers set in a Lucid Air Grand Touring.

The feat is particularly amusing considering Marczyk's day job. The 30-year-old Polish driver normally competes in a 300-horsepower Škoda Fabia RS Rally2, where conserving energy is, as a rule, buried deep in his list of priorities. For this particular challenge, however, the goal was to make every joule count.

Longest range in an electric car in 2026

The record attempt began at 1:55 a.m. on September 11 in Zakopane, in Poland's Tatra Mountains. From there, Marczyk drove through Kraków and followed the Vistula valley toward Sandomierz, continuing through Puławy, Warsaw, Płock, Włocławek, Toruń, Grudziądz and the Tri-City area before reaching Hel on Poland's Baltic coast. He then turned around and drove back along much of the same route, completing his 831-mile gauntlet. 

Guinness

The Audi A6 Sportback e-tron performance, which is not exactly an economy special, makes 367 horsepower, can reach 62 mph in 5.4 seconds, and uses a 94.9-kWh net battery. Its slippery shape also gives it an exceptionally low drag coefficient, helping explain why the A6 can travel so far when driven with considerably more restraint than its performance credentials might suggest.

The Audi eventually ran out of juice between Toruń and Ciechocinek, having traveled exactly 1,338 kilometers on a single charge. The entire attempt lasted more than 45 hours, and the car remained on public roads throughout, including plenty of traffic and rush-hour driving. There was, naturally, a little more to it than simply pointing an Audi north and seeing what happened.

Marczyk averaged just 7.09 kWh per 100 kilometers during the attempt. The average temperature was 15 degrees Celsius, or 59 degrees Fahrenheit, while the lowest recorded temperature was 7 degrees Celsius, or 45 degrees Fahrenheit, at 5:30 a.m. in Grudziądz. Energy-efficient Michelin tires were also used as part of the attempt.

Marczyk has some experience with these sorts of automotive endurance experiments. In 2025, he set another Guinness World Record after driving a fourth-generation Škoda Superb 2,831 kilometers, or about 1,759 miles, on a single tank of fuel while averaging just 2.6 liters per 100 kilometers. Who knew a rally champ could contain such restraint? 

While records like this might not seem to fit into anyone’s real-life data, observations from this sort of thing tend to stick with engineers. This question of electric range still creates worry and doubt for some drivers. It will be interesting to see how/if this new record uncovers any new insights into stretching EV range. Either way, congrats, Miko. Now go rip up a dirt road somewhere.