Is Electrification the Future of Performance Cars?
When someone thinks of a green, net zero future, it’s unlikely they’re thinking of a hypercar worth many £100,000s racing around the Nürburgring at break-neck speeds. But performance cars have been having a big impact on passenger vehicles for as long as we’ve had different manufacturers racing them against each other.
If you’ve been keeping up with our other articles on the electrification of different industries, it might not be surprising to hear that the earliest example of a hybrid-car was manufactured in 1901. What might surprise you to hear though is that it was designed by Ferdinand Porsche, the founder of car manufacturer Porsche. The Lohner-Porsche, as it was called, was nowhere close to what you might picture when you think of Porsche these days, but it kickstarted their existence to eventually become one of the leaders in performance cars.
Of course, now Porsche is dominating the luxury/performance electric vehicle market. With the Taycan and Macan electric both dominating the competition on range: the Taycan claiming 380 miles and the Macan’s claimed to go up to 486 miles.
For most people these cars are prohibitively expensive, and the majority of cars on the road can’t be replaced by a luxury electric estate car or a luxury SUV. But the technology and new thinking around the development of hypercars, super cars, and racing cars often end up spilling down to your everyday runaround to make them lighter, more aerodynamic and more efficient.
The Environment
Let’s first take a look at what some might consider the least important factor in the electrification of performance cars – their impact on the environment. With the current record holder for the world’s fastest (road legal) car, the Bugatti Chiron, managing a measly 11 MPG, efficiency is obviously not the highest consideration for performance car manufacturers. And when the Rimac Concept One, an early attempt at a modern, electric hypercar manages a claimed range of 200 miles (though not at top speeds), it actually holds up fairly well compared to its ICE competition.
In terms of emissions, your average petrol car will emit around 164 g of CO2 per mile. For the Bugatti Chiron, it’s about 486 g at its lowest and 571 g at its highest. Of course, for the battery electric Rimac Concept One, the vehicle emissions are 0 g.
The Performance
Next, let’s look at the performance, with almost 100 years of improvements made on combustion engine technology, you might think it would be difficult for EVs to gain popularity and dominate the space in just over a decade.
But this doesn’t mean that EVs aren’t putting up a good fight. The biggest hurdle for manufacturers developing battery electric performance cars is weight. For the performance car space, finding any way to reduce weight in the car can make a huge difference to acceleration. When developing ICE vehicles, some with far less powerful engines can out-perform cars that can generate much more torque, simply because they weigh less.
This is easily overcome by an electric motors’ ability to generate a lot more torque over a wider rev range, much quicker than their ICE counterparts. Even with larger, heavier batteries, fully electric performance cars accelerate at record-breaking speeds.
The Rimac Nevera (the successor to the Rimac Concept One), set a whopping 23 acceleration records all in one day, managing 0-60 mph in 1.74 seconds, and a quarter mile in 8.26 seconds.
But Rimac is only a small portion of a much bigger, and consistently growing market that sees EVs and other low-carbon technology as key to bigger and better performance.
Hybrid
Hybrid EVs are in a golden era at the moment, with almost every major manufacturer, from Citroen to Bentley, having a plug-in hybrid version of their most popular cars. And many car manufacturers have started to see the benefits of a smaller kWh battery and an ICE working together to power a car.
The petrol BMW 330i matches its 330e counterpart closely, but the added torque from its ~10kw/h battery gives the 330e a slight advantage when it comes to acceleration. Although batteries might bring extra weight to a vehicle, the increased torque they provide has the possibility to improve performance massively.
In the mid 2010s, the world saw a flurry of announcements from the likes of McLaren (with the P1), Porsche (with the 918 Spyder), Ferrari (with the LeFerrari) and Honda (with a re-imagined NSX) announce the incorporation of hybrid technology into their vehicles. Not requiring as large a battery as a fully electric car meant they had the benefits of an electric motor without committing huge amounts of weight to batteries. And Ferrari, McLaren and even Lamborghini have all included plug-in technology to one of its fastest-ever production cars. The Ferrari SF90 Stradale has a 4 L V8 engine and a 7.9kWh battery managing a combined 986 hp and about 16 miles running on just the battery alone.
The performance capabilities of this technology speak for themselves. At the 2015 Geneva Motor Show, Swedish manufacturers Koenigsegg unveiled their limited-run Koenigsegg Regera. Producing only 85 of the plug-in hybrid hypercar at the time of the reveal, the Regera was the most powerful production car by horsepower (producing 1,500 hp), and remains the third most powerful non-ICE production car, losing only to joint first-place holders the Rimac Nevera and the Pininfarina Battista.
It isn’t just hypercars that have taken advantage of the combined power of a combustion engine and an electric motor. Volvo’s EV offshoot, Polestar, also began with the Polestar 1 – a hybrid coupe that combines a 2 L engine with a 34 kWh battery that offers a 77-mile range on its own. The car was more of a proof of concept, but Volvo have happily embraced PHEV technology on most of its saloon, estate and SUV models.
BEV
Similarly to Polestar beginning its life with a sporty PHEV coupe, the Polestar 1, another titan of EV manufacturing began with a sporty EV – Tesla. The 2011 Tesla Roadster boasted a respectable 3.9 second 0-60 mph, and, alongside Polestar, showed the world that EV technology should be taken seriously.
We’ve already talked about Rimac, who might be a lot newer than the likes of Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, McLaren, Bugatti or even Koenigsegg, but the Rimac Concept One and the newer Rimac Nevera have solidified themselves as matching their performance easily.
But Rimac aren’t the only ones who have made BEV performance cars their bread and butter. Japanese company Aspark, who began life solely focusing on offering engineering services to the automotive industry developed the Aspark OWL, an incredible looking hypercar capable of 0-60 mph in 1.72 seconds and its evolution – the OWL SP600 – recently set a world record for the fastest speed in an electric hypercar, topping out at 272.6 mph (438.7 kph).
We’re still in the early stages of seeing a lot of these EVs hit the market, and a lot of startups and manufacturers are seeing that the capabilities that EVs can manage isn’t just great to sporty coupes and hypercars, but also for sports saloons. In 2019, American startup Drako Motors unveiled their luxury, 4-door sports saloon car, the GTE.
But sports saloons are only the start for Drako Motors. Taking lessons from many other hypercar manufacturers, they unveiled the Drako Dragon in 2022, a 5-seater, fully electric, 2,000 hp SUV capable of (a claimed) 0-60 mph in 1.9 seconds. The car is yet to be released to the market, but, once it is, it could be a real challenger to the likes of the Ferrari Purosangue, Lamborghini Urus and the Aston Martin DBX. The Drako Dragon isn’t the only “hyper-performance” electric SUV nearing the market; earlier this year, Mullen, who have a legacy of low- and no-carbon vehicles (mostly commercial vehicles), announced the Mullen 5 RS, another blisteringly fast sport crossover capable of producing over 1,000 bhp and achieving 0-60 mph in less than 2 seconds and a top speed of over 200 mph.
But there is one manufacturer who has already released a fully electric sporty SUV, Lotus. The Lotus Eletre is a so-called “Hyper-SUV with Racecar DNA” and the company’s journey into EVs puts Lotus back from makers of nippy little sports cars of the late 90s and early 2000s to makers of cars that are once again challenging the likes of Lamborghini and Aston Martin, all while the Eletre helped Lotus reach its highest yearly sales figures in its 75+ year history.
The trickledown effect
With mainstream manufacturers, it’s clear to see there is an excitement about the possibilities that electric vehicle technologies present. We previously mentioned the Porsche Taycan, which has quickly become Porsche’s best-selling car ever in Europe. But even in the hot hatch world, EVs could bring in a new golden age for speedy hatchback cars. The 650 hp Hyundai Ioniq 5 N might be a little bigger than the likes of a Renault Clio V6, but with a top speed of 161 mph and achieving 0-62 mph in 3.4 seconds, it’s clear to see why car reviewers are calling it one of the best new hot hatches on the market. And Hyundai isn’t alone. The Fiat 500e matches its ICE counterpart by having its own sporty, Abarth version – not quite as quick as the Inioniq 5 N (0-6 in ~7 seconds), the EV version of the iconic sporty hatchback will easily match the ICE-powered Abarth 595.
But moving away from hot hatches, EV technology might be ushering in a new age of smaller, more affordable sports cars, similar to the incredibly popular Mazda MX-5. That’s all thanks to the MG Cyberster, a convertible coupe with a starting price of around £55,000 new. The quirky design with arrow-shaped taillights might make it stand out, but the Cyberster also manages a 3.2 second 0-60. MG aren’t the only ones to try out a new battery; electric coupe Volkswagen announced a new electric version of the Scirroco, which sheds the hot hatch labelling to fully embrace a new sporty body design. The new Scirroco is set to hit the market in 2025, but it’s impossible to say whether other manufacturers will dive back into sports coupes and roadsters thanks to new EV technology. Perhaps with Lotus seeing success from its Eletre and Evija models, we’ll see it return to its little sports car roots soon.
Performance cars might not be the biggest emitters of carbon, and won’t ever be used frequently enough to be a big threat to the climate. But what performance cars are, is a proof of concept. The Rimac Nevera’s design and the technology within it runs so efficiently, it can accelerate faster than 100 years of ICE engineering could ever allow a petrol car to achieve. That battery efficiency, the quad motor design, its aerodynamics will all trickle down to your standard family cars or daily commuter vehicles and we’re excited to see where the next decade of innovations leads us to.
There’s no doubt that the next few years will see a whirlwind of new EVs, hybrid cars and maybe even a few more hydrogen fuel cell cars hit the market. But the thing that will really change the performance car market isn’t just the speed and acceleration – it will be the fun factor. And with manufacturers trying new things with EVs and EV technology every year, we’re sure that petrol heads will find something to enjoy out of the next generation of low- and no-carbon vehicles.
