13 electric hypercars we're looking forward to

Yikes. The incoming Tesla Roadster (incoming when, exactly, we don’t know), kinda caught the rest of the car world napping. With good reason: it’s FAST. 0-60mph in 1.9secs, 0-100mph in 4.2secs, the quarter mile done in 8.8secs and a top speed of over 250mph, fast.

Bananas. Much faster than we’ve seen from any of the world’s conventional supercar manufacturers, nothing short of record-breaking. Faster than a Bugatti Chiron, no less. Yours for the bargain sum of $250k.

The countdown is on, Mr Musk…

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In 2017, Ariel revealed plans for an all-electric hypercar called the P40. Yes, Ariel. Builders of the Atom and Nomad, taking on the big scary world of electric hypercars.

The stats are mad: 1,180bhp and 0-100mph in 3.8 seconds and a top speed of 155mph. It will weigh just 1,500kg, and feature four electric motors, each of which delivers the same power as a supercharged Type R motor. Small, too.

There’s also a turbine range extender. Running at 120,000rpm, it generates 47bhp solely to charge the battery pack. It’ll feature a closed-cockpit two-seat design, and Ariel reckons the P40 will need ground effect tech to keep the thing pointing in a straight line. Sheesh.

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Last year, a car you’ve never heard of from a company you’ve never known about managed to go from 0-60mph in 1.9s. Welcome then, to Japan’s answer to the electric hypercar question: the Aspark Owl.

It has butterfly doors, boasts 429bhp and 563lb ft of torque, four-wheel-drive and a 174mph top speed.

OWL.

Read the full story here, and some more here, and more about a proposed Nürburgring lap record, here.

Welcome to the age of the electric hypercar, and Britain’s first entrant. Whether or not this will be a long chapter in the history of very fast cars, or a curious cul-de-sac on the way to future forms of power and performance remains to be seen. But Lotus isn’t waiting to see which way the tech wind blows and then cash in its Chinese-funded chips...

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This, ladies and gentlemen, is the most powerful road-legal car ever to come out of Italy. It’s probably worth pondering that for a second. Thanks to a 120 kWh lithium ion battery pack, the Pininfarina Battista produces approximately 1,900bhp and 1,696 torques. Barmy numbers. And because of the unique properties of e-motion, it’s enough to give this drop-dead beautiful looking thing Formula One car-style acceleration. Zero to 62mph apparently takes a tarmac-melting sub-two seconds, 186mph up in less than 12. All without the toxic haze of spent hydrocarbons from the tail-pipe, which is the more relevant point.

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Proving there’s yet unchartered territory in the electric hypercar space comes this offering via Taiwan’s Xing Mobility. The ‘Miss R’ – yeah, us neither – will apparently be the first electric hypercar with off-road ability. Because nothing screams terror like 0-60mph in 1.9s across wild terrain.

Read more about it here, if you want. Just don’t hold your breath...

The C_Two is the successor to the Concept_One electric hypercar. It’s more powerful, faster, goes further on a charge, and terrifyingly clever. And rather beautiful, in a futuristic kind of way. Strap in, and prepare yourself for an absurd set of numbers.

Rimac claims the C_Two’s four electric motors develop a combined 1,914hp (1,887bhp) and 1,696lb ft – or 2,300Nm in new money. The front wheels individually use a single-speed gearbox each, while the use of twin two-speed gearboxes at the rear makes for a truly terrifying top speed. Rimac is claiming v-max at 258mph.

On the way, we’re told the C_Two will have cracked 0-60mph in 1.85 seconds (albeit with an American drag strip-friendly one-foot rollout), and 0-62mph, for we Europeans, in 1.97 seconds.

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In 2017, we spoke to Williams Advanced Engineering’s tech director Paul McNamara. Why? Because Williams had built a lightweight, full EV platform, capable of producing 652bhp with a three-motor setup and available to any budding EV hypercar makers out there.

You’ll need to read the full debrief here, but in short, if you fancy becoming a carmaker and need an all-electric 4WD base – complete with solid gold race expertise underpinning it – give Williams a shout.

Enter the Dendrobium D1, shown off to over 300,000 enthusiastic race fans at the 2019 Le Mans 24-hour race. What is an Dendrobium D1? It is – or it will be – a fully electric hypercar that’ll set you back just over a million quid, perhaps a tad more for a limited series of ‘First Edition’ cars.

For that, you get ballistic horsepower and speed. The technology powering the D1 – and by that we mean the batteries – is still being finalised, but we know the car will feature a full carbon body with a monocoque, built over two subframes. There’ll be a couple of motors on each axle, and lots of aero.

The target weight is 1,750kg, because batteries are heavy of course. There’ll be no shortage of speed, Dendrobium targeting 0-62mph in 2.7secs and a top speed of over 200mph.

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Porsche’s next hypercar is likely to be pure-electric, according to CEO Oliver Blume.

“We have a big history here, and we’ll have one in the future,” he told TG.com during the reveal of the Cayenne Coupe. “It has to be the best in the market, the highest performing… right now we haven’t got a concept for that car. But might it be a pure-electric car? Yes.”

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Pagani is going electric. Well, you didn’t think Pagani was going to let the likes of Aston Martin, Bugatti and Koenigsegg steal all of the Geneva motor show supercar limelight, did you?

The shock news wasn’t announced publicly. Company founder Horacio Pagani himself told TopGear.com about the decision backstage, on the 20th anniversary of the Zonda first gracing the world’s biggest car exhibition.

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Koenigsegg sees a battery cell shortage in our all-electric, shiny new future. Which is why company boss Christian von Koenigsegg is a bit hesitant about building a proper, world-beating fully electric hypercar.

It’s definitely something he imagines, though. “Eventually, we see that as a possibility. It has everything to do with battery pack weight, the car weight, the cell availability, and – to a certain degree but not much – battery cell cost,” he told TopGear.com.

“There will come a time when a BEV (battery electric vehicle) will be able to beat what we can do with a hybrid,” he adds. That time however, is still quite a way off into Koenigsegg’s future.

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Truth be told, we really just wanted another excuse to gawp at a pic of Lamborghini’s unhinged electric hypercar concept dubbed Terzo Millenio. Designed in conjunction with MIT, it was an attempt at defining what form a third millennium Lambo could take.

In short, nuts. Four motors. Regenerative capability. It’s practically Wolverine on wheels. And we’ll never see it. Unless you’ve suddenly found the secret to eternal life. Anyone?

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