Are EVs too fast for their own good?

29 June 2024

When the original Nissan Leaf first appeared on our roads more than a dozen years ago, it’s promise was to be the future of eco-friendly motoring. It wasn’t exciting, the battery range was terrible and the public charging infrastructure was almost non-existent, so unsurprisingly most car buyers saw it as little more than a curiosity.

Then Elon Musk came along.

Musk understood the obvious point – car makers were never going to get the general public excited about electric cars if they were ugly shopping trolleys with little real-world relevance. So he gave us the Tesla Model S, which immediately revolutionised the idea of electric motoring and kick-started the global shift towards EVs that’s now underway.

The Tesla Model S had three key selling points over any other electric car that existed or was in development at the time. Firstly, it was a large five-seat saloon that had a proper real-world battery range of more than 200 miles. Secondly, he built a global Tesla charging network to charge his cars, rather than relying on governments to do it for him. And thirdly, the Tesla Model S was about the fastest thing on four wheels.

The Model S was aimed at buyers of Mercedes E-Class, BMW 5 Series and Audi A6 executive saloons. Even lower-spec models offered acceleration that was massively better than any of its more conventional rivals, while top-spec versions could out-accelerate pretty much any Ferrari, Lamborghini or Porsche supercar on the roads. All while carrying five people and their luggage.

Tesla quickly built up an enormous fanbase, and all of its subsequent models (Model X, Model 3 and Model Y) have followed in a similar performance vein. They were also popular with regular car buyers as opposed to just performance car enthusiasts, and the Tesla Model Y was the world’s best-selling car of any kind – not just EVs – last year.

Other car companies have quickly jumped on the performance bandwagon, with a rapidly growing number of cars that go from a standing start to 62mph (the imperial equivalent of 100km/h) in less than four seconds. And the car companies are not shy about proclaiming their performance levels – a quick check of all the websites from the car companies shown below found that most of them prominently displayed the 0-62mph times for their fastest electric models, which they generally don’t do for their petrol and diesel models. There’s usually accompanying copy and images or video, extolling the performance levels of their electric wondercars.

This week, I was at the launch of the new MG Cyberster roadster (review coming next week). At the press briefing, the MG people were very keen to stress that the Cyberster GT model’s 0-62mph time of 3.2 seconds is exactly the same as for the legendary McLaren F1, still regarded by many experts as possibly the finest supercar ever built. If you’d like to buy a used F1, the current going price is about £10 million. A Cyberster GT is £60,000. So you get the same acceleration for 167 times less money…

Why are EVs so fast?

Not all EVs offer this sort of breakneck acceleration; plenty are sold with fairly ‘normal’ levels of performance that are similar to any petrol or diesel family car. But it’s much easier for car companies to generate enormous performance from an electric motor, which can deliver maximum performance instantaneously. A petrol engine, in comparison, generates more performance as the revs increase, so the acceleration is more linear.

With a bigger electric motor, or adding an additional electric motor, getting tremendous acceleration out of any sort of car is simple – like a Tesla saloon that’s faster than a supercar.

So why is this a problem?

Electric vehicles have brought a whole new level of performance to ordinary vehicles, and within the affordability of hundreds of thousands of car buyers. And as older EVs work their way through the used car market, the prices are getting very cheap.

It’s all well and good being able to out-drag a Ferrari, but most Ferraris (or Porsches, or McLarens, or Aston Martins, etc.) are enormously expensive cars, that are usually fastidiously maintained by wealthy owners who tend to have other cars for their day-to-day driving needs.

Their stratospheric price tags and running costs also inevitably limit the number of these cars on the roads, and generally only appeal to enthusiasts who are likely to treat them well.

A quick check on Motors (our preferred used car marketplace) this week revealed that you can buy a 2015 Tesla Model S, which will accelerate from 0-62mph in 3.1 seconds, for £12,750. That’s less than the cheapest new car on sale in the UK, but with supercar-beating levels of performance.

There were about 20 Model S cars for less than £20,000. Several have covered more than 100,000 miles, and a quick check through all the pictures showed many of these cars on budget tyres – one even had three different brands of tyres on four wheels – and a few showed signs of kerb damage on the wheels that hadn’t been repaired.

The electric motor performance won’t degrade over time like petrol engines often do, so these cars will still retain their breakneck acceleration, but potentially on cheap tyres (and possibly brakes), and with wheel alignment issues from bouncing off kerbs or potholes over the last decade. That’s a recipe for trouble.

There are thousands of high-performance electric cars in the process of entering the used car market, and in the next few years we are going to see many more of them at very cheap prices. How long until we start seeing regular reports of used EV drivers getting themselves involved in dramatic accidents when you combine enormous performance, poor driving standards, wet and slippery roads, budget no-name tyres and neglected maintenance?

Back to the MG Cyberster…

The new MG has a big button on the steering wheel, labelled ‘Super Sport’. This unlocks the full 500hp and 725Nm of performance, unleashing acceleration that can frankly feel sickening if repeated too often. Having played with this a few times on the Scottish highland driving route and becoming increasingly nauseous, I then pulled over for a breather. While admiring the scenery, I was joined by a local Scotsman who owned a Tesla Model 3 Performance, but was very enthusiastic about the MG. He knew all about it, and was definitely interested in swapping his Model 3 for a used Cyberster in a few years.

But the Tesla is a four-door saloon and this is a two-seat roadster, I pointed out. “I’m not bothered about that,” he said as he ran around the MG taking lots of photos. “I don’t need a four-door car, it’s the performance I’m interested in. How fast is it?” I gave him the magical McLaren-matching time and his face dropped. “That’s slower than what I’ve got now.”

What about insurance costs?

One thing that’s likely to deter more than a few buyers from a used performance EV is likely to be the car insurance cost. The insurance companies are already wise to the risks of drivers completely unprepared for blistering EV acceleration, and the quickest EVs tend to have very high insurance costs.

The inevitable flip side to that is likely to be a growing number of people driving very fast used EVs without fully comprehensive insurance – or maybe no insurance at all. That, in turn, will drive up insurance costs for the rest of us.

Given that governments are unlikely to intervene to limit EV acceleration, it may be insurance companies that come up with a solution. It’s entirely possible we’ll start to see aftermarket chips or modifications that can limit an EV’s performance, and insurers may well insist on owners fitting these limiters to nobble their cars’ performance in return for reduced insurance premiums.

The fastest accelerating electric cars on sale in 2024

Make	Model	0-62mph time	New car price	Cheapest used price
Tesla	Model S Plaid	1.99 seconds	£104,735	£91,345
Porsche	Taycan Turbo GT	2.2 seconds	£186,300	N/A
Porsche	Taycan Turbo S	2.4 seconds	£161,400	£61,989
Audi	RS e-tron GT Performance	2.5 seconds	£143,780	N/A
Tesla	Model X Plaid	2.5 seconds	£106,935	£93,335
Maserati	GranTurismo Folgore	2.7 seconds	£179,950	N/A
Porsche	Taycan Turbo	2.7 seconds	£134,100	£52,990
Lotus	Emeya R	2.78 seconds	£129,950	N/A
Audi	RS e-tron GT	2.8 seconds	£127,280	£61,450
Tesla	Model 3 Performance	2.9 seconds	£59,990	£16,490
Lotus	Eletre R	2.95 seconds	£120,000	£112,000
Tesla	Model S	3.1 seconds	£88,990	£12,750
MG	Cyberster	3.2 seconds	£59,990	N/A
Porsche	Macan Turbo Electric	3.3 seconds	£95,000	N/A
Audi	S e-tron GT	3.4 seconds	£108,680	N/A
Hyundai	Ioniq 5 N	3.4 seconds	£65,000	N/A
Kia	EV6 GT	3.5 seconds	£62,675	£39,992
Mercedes-AMG	EQE 53 saloon	3.5 seconds	£105,860	£65,000
Tesla	Model Y Performance	3.5 seconds	£59,990	£41,990
Volvo	EX30 Twin Motor	3.6 seconds	£40,244	£35,980
BMW	i7 M70x	3.7 seconds	£164,320	N/A
Polestar	4 Long Range Dual Motor	3.7 seconds	£66,990	N/A
Porsche	Taycan 4S	3.7 seconds	£95,900	£42,480
Smart	#3 Brabus	3.7 seconds	£45,450	N/A
BMW	i5 M60	3.8 seconds	£97,745	£72,235
BMW	iX M60	3.8 seconds	£124,605	£67,000
BYD	Seal Excellence AWD	3.8 seconds	£48,695	£41,495
Mercedes-AMG	EQS 53 saloon	3.8 seconds	£161,860	£89,993
MG	4 XPower	3.8 seconds	£36,495	£25,490
Tesla	Model X	3.8 seconds	£93,535	£34,999
BMW	i4 M50	3.9 seconds	£70,900	£41,000
Smart	#1 Brabus	3.9 seconds	£43,450	£32,767
Genesis	GV60 Sport Plus	4.0 seconds	£67,705	£35,950
Polestar	2 Long Range Performance	4.0 seconds	£57,950	£23,995

Most of the cars listed above are new or near-new models, having only been launched in the UK in the last year or so. But there are a few cars that stand out for the performance they offer at a ridiculously cheap price, which I’ve noted in bold.

If you’re looking at a new car, you can get a brand-new MG 4 XPower for about £36K (less any discount you can negotiate). If you’re happy to take a nearly-new demo or used car, you can get that down to about £25K. And they’re going to get cheaper, as this model was only launched last year.

The brand-new Volvo EX30 is the Swedish brand’s smallest and cheapest model, starting at £40K for the Twin Motor version. But with two electric motors, it can accelerate faster than a £100K Porsche 911.

On the used car side, Teslas currently represent a performance bargain. As previously mentioned, you can buy a used Model S for less than £13K – less than the price of the cheapest new car on sale, but with better acceleration than a used Lamborghini Huracan of similar age for ten times the price.

Alternatively, you can get a five-year-old Tesla Model 3 Performance from about £16K, with acceleration that will shame just about any petrol car, regardless of age or price tag.

All of the used car prices in the right-hand column above are going to keep coming down over the next couple of years. Right now, there are relatively few five-year-old EVs available for sale compared to petrol or diesel cars. There are more than a million EVs on UK roads today, but about three-quarters of those cars are less than three years old. So the majority of EVs have yet to hit the used car market, let alone filter through multiple owners.

Within a very short period of time, there will be a staggering number of used cars on our roads with performance well in excess of anything most people have ever experienced. As of today, Auto Trader (which includes both car dealers and private sellers) has more than 1,500 used EVs for sale with 0-62mph acceleration of less than four seconds. By the end of this year, that could well have doubled, with prices steadily falling.

Should we be concerned about this? Absolutely. Is there a realistic solution? Other than insurance companies insisting on performance limiters (which are not widely available at this time), I doubt it.

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