GENEVA (AFP) - A racing car designed and built by students in Switzerland on Monday set a world record for acceleration in electric vehicles, their universities said on Monday.

The "grimsel" car revved from zero to 100 kilometres an hour in just 1.785 seconds, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich said in a statement.

Students from ETH and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts thus smashed the previous record of 2.134 seconds clocked up in the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, the statement said.

Driving on a track at a military airfield in the Zurich suburb of Dubendorf, the car hit 100 kilometres after just 30 metres, ETH said.

The students had spent less than a year building the car, the university said, adding that "no other production vehicle in the world has reached a similarly strong acceleration."