The first big hypercar story of June was that the Aspark Owl has reached a top speed of 272.6 mph, becoming the fastest production EV that money can buy. For context, 272.6 mph is 4.54 miles per minute, which would get me from my house to the closest rapid-served burger restaurant in 59 seconds. It is an impressive feat from the Japanese streamliner, as it would be for any car managing to go that fast. 

The thing is, the Owl isn’t alone in the hyper-EV world; Rimac were the first to arrive with the Concept One in 2011, Nio launched the EP9*, the Lotus Evija followed in dramatic fashion, then Rimac announced the Nevera which Pininfarina re-sculpted into the Battista. While the EP9 programme ended years ago with just a handful of customer cars built as was always intended, it is said that the Evija and Nevera still have order slots to fill.

The second hypercar story of the month came from Bugatti. Aaron Stokes’s brilliant article about the new Bugatti Tourbillon has a key line about the 250 unit production run: all of them are spoken for. This raised my eyebrow and as usual, a conversation with RUSH Magazine Founder, Editor and Crown Prince of Print Craig Toone got me thinking.

The curious case of the hyper-EV could be multifaceted but in reality I think it boils down to one thing, but I’ll get to that later. The hypercar world moves so quickly that it didn’t take long for Koenigsegg to show their intentions of having the first production car to set a world record-abiding top speed of over 300 mph by demonstrating how quickly their Jesko Absolut could get from 0 to 256 mph and back to 0 again. They overshot the target top speed of 400 km/h (248 mph) by quite some margin, and managed to break the records for 0-400-0 km/h and 0-250-0 mph that were set last year by Koenigsegg’s own Regera hybrid hypercar.

In doing so, the Jesko Absolut also eclipsed the time set by the fully electric Rimac Nevera, although that car does still hold the record for the fastest speed attained in reverse gear at a rather impressive 171.34 mph. Over the course of the last decade, since Tesla introduced the first quick versions of the Model S and YouTube repopularised drag racing, it seemed as though the future of outright acceleration bragging rights would belong to EVs; a motor the size of a watermelon with a handful of moving parts could humble an engine with thousands. Of course, with most EVs having single speed transmissions, a multi-gear piston engined car would reach a faster top speed, but a powerful electric car would reach its maximum speed quicker. With the rapid advancement of the battery, control and motor tech combined with the proliferation of the fuel type across multiple body styles, it seemed only inevitable that there would be an electric equivalent for every type of car available with an engine.

That became a reality in 2013 with the first production Rimac Concept One was delivered, before being joined on the market by the Nio EP9*, although at this point I must explain the use of asterisks whenever the car has been mentioned: it wasn’t road legal. Yes, it set a blistering Nürburgring time of 6:45.09 but for a car in this class to be taken seriously, it needs to be able to be spotted in traffic on the M25. It also needs to have something else, but what could that be?

Could it be power? I don’t think so; the EP9 has 1,341 bhp from its quad-motor drivetrain - exactly the same as the Koenigsegg Agera One:1 which has a V8. The Lotus Evija upped the ante further with an incredible 1,972 bhp and 1,254 lb ft (1,700 Nm), but recently Rimac have once again raised the power bar with the 2,078 bhp Nevera R, more than doubling the line in the sand set by Bugatti when they stunned the world with the 987 bhp Veyron in 2003. However, when the Veyron launched, it was the only car that had anywhere near that much power on tap. Fast forward 21 years and there are plenty of cars that knock on the door of the Veyron’s output, with some of them being electric like the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT and the Audi RS e-tron GT. Could it be that we’ve just become used to seeing cars with that much power? Potentially, but I still don’t think that’s it.

Could it be the range or lack thereof? This makes a bit more sense, as we all remember the Top Gear Epic Races that pitched the Aston Martin DB9, Bugatti Veyron, Ferrari 612 Scaglietti, Ford Shelby Mustang GT500, Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (and the rest) against some sort of public transport which would always feature a shot of the car stopping for fuel. A few minutes of pumping petrol and the car would be back on its way. My biggest gripe with almost every EV I’ve driven has been the high-speed energy consumption and this is partly caused by having just one gear and thus putting the motor way out of its peak power and torque bands while it spins twice or three times as fast as a geared engine would at an equivalent cruising speed. 

Remaining range drops quickly at high speeds in an EV causing the battery to be depleted quicker and this is seen as a bad thing. However, one stat that has lived rent free in my mind for years is that at its top speed of 253 mph, a Veyron would empty its fuel tank in just 15 minutes and that is very impressive. Doing the maths and multiplying 15 minutes by the distance travelled in each minute (4.21 miles) would give the Bugatti a range of 63.15 miles, which is very impressive. But a 63 mile range in an electric car at its top speed? Rubbish!

Yes, charging times are getting quicker, as Cambridge-based firm Nyobolt are proving with their EV Prototype that can top up in under 5 minutes, but the average for rapid charging is half an hour at the moment which is nowhere near as fast as pouring some petrol or diesel into a fuel tank. Craig said: “Imagine an old-school Top Gear race with an EV…it ain’t happening.” I agree. However, with so many hypercars never seeing four digits on their odometers, is range really that much of an issue to the people that own cars of this calibre? I don’t think so.

How about the styling? This is an interesting point as design is subjective but in my opinion the latest crop of hyper-EVs look outstanding, irrespective of what they’re powered by; nobody put the jaw-dropping shape of the Jaguar C-X75 into question because of its gas turbine range-extender or eventual four-cylinder hybrid powertrain, did they? The untrained eye would easily recognise the Battista, Evija, Nevera and Owl as supercars or hypercars when sat still as they have all the expressive design cues that a car in that class should, but I think it needs to go further in some way.

Distilled to their core elements, hypercars are about being expressive. They look like nothing else, feel like nothing else, have performance figures like nothing else, and for the most part sound like nothing else. I invite you to think of the notes played by a Lamborghini’s naturally aspirated V12 - you can hear it now can’t you? How about the double-bass burble of Bugatti’s W16? Now tell me if you could tell two EVs apart just by listening to them? Well, I could correctly identify a Tesla reversing as opposed to an electric Mercedes-Benz, but that’s not the point. The ultimate expression of what a car can do is based around the pinnacle of the technology available, and in the case of making the most desirable hypercars that is all based around the petrol-powered piston engine.

It’s more than just the sound, it’s about the sensations. Allow me to reiterate at this point that I like electric cars and have had a lot of fun in them over the last few years. It’s a different ballgame to hustle an EV along at an advanced rate and the sensations that go along with it are different too. The near silent powertrains mean you really do have to focus on your speed and managing this along with the extra weight as you approach a bend. Throwing an EV into a corner does not work and it will usually result in a large dose of understeer; the art is to regen, begin to load the outside corner and then turn sharply in order to get the weight of the battery to move with you smoothly. There is interaction to be had in the cars that offer paddles to adjust the energy recovery, but for those without this key feature it becomes a case of learning to maintain as much momentum as possible.

There are EVs that offer artificial driving sounds - which I do find quite useful when they’re done right - and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is even able to offer the driver a (simulated) 8-speed transmission along with the (simulated) engine noise that is inspired by a 4-cylinder engine. The Hyundai solution seems to be winning over the critics thus far, but I don’t think that would fly in something with a seven-figure price tag for one key reason: a hypercar should offer authenticity, and as such provide the basis for a strong connection to form between driver and machine.

Going through the gears and repeatedly enjoying the symphony of notes played from tickover to the red line, shifting cogs and hearing them all again, making a reciprocating choir’s song echo through tunnels and tall buildings in city centres, reaching speeds that make M3s and 911s appear to be going backwards as they are left in the wake when on a circuit, or threading along an uninterrupted ribbon of tarmac using nothing but the sound of the engine and the knowledge of what gear you’re in to make rapid progress through the countryside, and ultimately knowing that very few others will have the chance to experience the precision steering, braking, chassis setup and powertrain that is at your command. Yes, there are multiple ways of getting an engine to power a car, and there are multiple cars available with electric motors delivering 100 to 1,000 horsepower, but there’s only one way to get a V16, or a V12 with an engine bay covered in gold leaf and that is with a hypercar.

A hypercar seems to need to be separated from a non-hypercar in every measurable or identifiable way for it to be renowned as a great feat or a high water mark for the industry. Craig rightly said: “The McLaren F1 broke new ground, it was the first million dollar car before the world was ready.”

Is it right to say that the hyper-EV is ahead of its time? Given that there hasn’t just been one attempt at making one, I don’t think so, but I think once more to the fact that on the night of the unveiling of the Bugatti Tourbillon, they revealed that every single example was spoken for. The waiting list for the Lamborghini Revuelto is around two years. Pagani have no doubt sold every Huayra, Utopia and reborn Zonda for the next 20 years and are currently satiating demand for ever more exclusive and expressive one-off examples like the new, manual-equipped Epitome. Koenigsegg even re-engined the Gemera four-seat GT owing to customer demand for a V8, as opposed to the fascinating 2.0 litre three-cylinder plug-in hybrid that it was announced with. I think I know where the key to all this lies.

Where’s the hype for the hyper-EV? They seem to deliver everything that their petrol powered counterparts do on paper with incredible power and torque outputs, lightning-quick acceleration, dramatic styling, high prices and low build numbers to match. Let the drivetrain efficiency and simplicity be damned in this context; a smartwatch that uses a battery has greater objective capability and functionality than something which runs on clockwork, but everyone still wants a Rolex. The cars in this class of top trumps and ultimate expression that don’t have build slots left to fill offer one thing that something powered purely by electrons can’t: an engine that can’t be found in anything else.