Electric cars are becoming increasingly popular, and for good reason. They’re more efficient and environmentally friendly than gas-powered cars, and they’re starting to offer the same level of performance. In fact, some of the fastest cars on the market today are electric. That alone makes them enticing enough to want to learn more about, even if very few (if any) of us interested in the topic get the chance to drive one. Even if we do, we’re not the ones setting any kind of land speed records. But in our heads, we’re sitting at the head of ten miles of paved straight away with a signed letter from the governor telling us to burn out the electric motors humming underneath us.
Lucid Air Sapphire
Top Speed: 200+ mph
Price: $249,000
Not that any of the following cars weren’t the products of infinitesimally detailed planning, but the Lucid Air Sapphire feels different. The Motortrend hands-on article reads like a Swiss watch-maker took a bunch of Adderall in an automotive garage. Fundamental parts of the car have been redesigned, anything that they could have (or preferred to) custom build was, and the car drives with the smooth precision and effortless power it’s supposed to. Really, the only negatives I could see were that the car got a little bumpy with the brakes going between its two modes and that the prototype was a little rough around the edges.
Tesla Model S Plaid
Top Speed: 200 mph
Price: $108,490
It’s probably self-evident, but the Tesla Model S Plaid is Tesla’s overt and highly conspicuous homage to Spaceballs. Setting aside any personal feelings one may have about the owner of Tesla, the Model S Plaid comes with some impressive upgrades, as detailed in Car and Driver’s test drive. The rotors are sleeved in carbon fiber, there’s no dropoff in horsepower at top speed, and engineers have eliminated the performance drop other Teslas suffer after repeated acceleration spurts. It’s a great car made even better.
Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance
Top Speed: 168 mph
Price: $138,000
Where the Sapphire was Lucid’s attempt at a ground up design of the ultimate combination of luxury and performance, the Grand Touring Performance feels a little more marketable. Really, it’s Lucid’s version of a Model S. The price, range, and performance are all roughly the same, and Lucid is working on an autopilot to match Tesla’s current offering. In fact, one of the better reviews of the car comes from a man who switched from his Model S and X to an Air Grand Touring and is adamant that he wouldn’t switch back. He’s watched everything about the car improve with software updates and regular maintenance checkups, including, oddly, the car’s range.
Tesla Model 3 Performance
Top Speed: 163 mph
Price: $40,240
It’s nice that more of us can get slightly more environmentally friendly speeding tickets with the affordability and performance of the Tesla Model 3, but it’s also terrifying that the economic barrier to turning ourselves into juice on a freeway has been broken down that much lower. Not that rich people are particularly good or responsible people, because they aren’t, but at least most of us have to pay for special sessions in super cars and when we do, they’re in small controlled courses.
Porsche Taycan Turbo S
Top Speed: 161 mph
Price: $194,900
Porsche is coming at their electric car offerings with an earned confidence. People love their traditional cars and are going to follow them to electric vehicles. The company also understands that their electric ones absolutely shouldn’t shake off the decades of design tradition. In fact, the power source seems to be the only real difference between the Taycan family of cars and Porsche’s other offerings. The Taycan Turbo S is still recognizably a Porsche, you just put a different kind of energy into it now.
Audi RS e-tron GT
Top Speed: 156 mph
Price: $143,900
Counter-intuitively, it looks like Audi found edges to round off and curves to sharpen when they designed the RS e-tron GT. It’s simultaneously more polygonal and bubblier than the other Audis I see on the street. It’s a good look for an electric car for sure.
Porsche Taycan Turbo S Cross Turismo
Top Speed: 155 mph
Price: $197,500
I have to laugh a little here because based just on the specs I have listed, it looks like you’re paying three grand more to go six miles per hour slower compared to Porsche’s other offering. What you’re actually paying more for is better off-road capabilities and increased storage, standard features that merit an upcharge and take a tiny little bite of any car’s performance, whether they’re powered by combustion engines or batteries. When you figure that you’re probably never going to hit 155 but you are going to fill the trunk over and over, you probably won’t even notice the tradeoff.
Tesla Model Y Performance
Top Speed: 155 mph
Price: $47,740
I’m not sure I like the idea of the family car doing triple digits on the way to and from the suburbs, regardless of how late to soccer practice anyone is. But the world does need electric SUVs, which I guess means taking our lumps and giving that classic family car shape access to instant torque.
Mercedes-Benz EQE AMG 53 4Matic+
Top Speed: 149 mph
Price: $108,050
It’s comforting that the Germans brought their standard overengineering to this car. It’s powerful, luxurious, expensive, stylish, and, most importantly for the purposes of this list, fast.
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