"Records are made to be broken," or so the saying goes. Breaking a record, especially twice within the span of a single day, however, is almost unheard of. Electrified records even more so. Yet, that’s what recently happened to the EV Cannonball Run record, which was previously set by The Drive’s own Alex Roy two years ago. In both instances, they were set in Tesla Model 3s.

There’s something quintessentially American about cross-country road trips. Even more so when you decide you’re going to Cannonball the trip, making your way across the Plains of the Midwest, deserts of the South, and rainy roadways coming to the East Coast as fast as a car allows. It’s a test of skill, bravery, stupidity, and also of strategy as you need to have a strategy if you’re going to break a record. Cannonballing itself has a long history, but in recent years has fallen out of favor as it’s become far harder to accomplish and beat records.

With the adoption of EVs, however, records are back on the table. One of the most recent records occurred in 2018 when Alex Roy and Dan Zorrilla left the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, California piloting a Tesla Model 3 with a final destination of the Red Ball Garage in New York City, the traditional start and endpoint for the Cannonball Run. But as mentioned, two teams recently beat Roy and Zorrilla’s 50 hours and 16-minute record, first by two hours, and then by five.