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Mahindra BE 6 Touches 202 kmph in High-Speed Bridge Run

The Alubari bridge I’m on connects Namsai — the home of the Golden Pagoda — to Tezu. “We’re a little cracked in the head,” I chuckle. On a two-day shoot schedule, we’re attempting a record run on a bridge we’d only seen in pictures from 2009. No recce, no warm-up, just straight into it.

Pressure, Briefing and Final Go-Ahead

The train of thought is broken by trained medics, who quickly run checks and give me the go ahead. I’m expectedly on the edge of this. The cold shower in the morning, the black coffee I hurriedly gulped and the nervous chatter among the crew in the morning meant what we were about to do wasn’t easy.

It doesn’t help that I’m told we now have just 3 minutes to get the job done. That’s a third of the originally promised 9 minutes, but I have no time to protest. An energy drink and a customary safety briefing later, I find myself strapped into the driver’s seat of the Mahindra BE 6. Traction controls off. Race mode on. Hands tight on the wheel, a quick prayer and go.

Inside the Mahindra BE 6

The mission is seemingly simple on paper: “Acheive the top speed of the Mahindra BE 6 on the bridge of Alubari.” On Mahindra’s state-of-the-art proving track on the outskirts of Chennai, the BE 6 would happily sit at its indicated top speed of 202kmph all day long. But out here in the Northeast, the situation is different. Besides, achieving speed and being able to hold it with confidence (on public roads) are two very different things.

That’s before we get to some real-world concerns. For starters, you’d probably need to file a petition to raise the speed limit. Thankfully, Mahindra had already handled that by cordoning off the road for us. Then there’s the car itself. Regular ICE cars would scream hoarse here. Mahindra took care of that too with a BE 6. A 286bhp, tyre-shredding exercise in aerodynamics. I looked through the windscreen, it’s bright and sunny.

Camera crews set up. Right then, it’s record time. The Alubari bridge is about under 3km long. The BE 6 takes roughly 1.5km to reach its top speed of 202kmph. I want to maintain this speed for as long as I can, but that means there’s less than a kilometre to back off, brake and come to a complete stop. While the quality of tarmac here is usually solid, bridges are a different story. Expansion joints, loose gravel from passing trucks and crosswinds from the mighty Lohit River are never forgiving.

The High-Speed Run to 202 kmph

The scenery becomes a slow blur as I mash the throttle into the floor mat. 0-100kmph is dispatched in a nonchalant 6.7 seconds. Track day muscle memory kicks in. Around 100kmph, I hit boost mode. About 33 seconds in, we were doing 202kmph. I should’ve gotten back off almost immediately — but Pete Mitchell in me had other plans. “Just a little more.” And it paid off. Eight seconds at top speed, and still enough room to slow down and come to a complete stop without unsettling the car. That was my first run. We went back, exchanged a few hugs and lined up again, just to be sure. Same result. Same consistency. And just like that we now hold the record for the highest top speed achieved by an electric SUV.