A special license to drive an electric GTI?
It’s not on the agenda yet, but the performance boost of electric cars is no longer within the reach of the average driver.
through Jacques Knight
© Lotus
has been published
Audio playback for subscriber only
VSt is an established fact that the arrival of new technologies is carried out by the top of the range in order to be economically viable. The car has never been able to escape this iron rule, but the explosion of the electric car market has reinforced it and created an unexpected distortion effect. Since it was above all a question of obtaining autonomy comparable to or almost with the heat that set the standard, manufacturers added more and more batteries. But they also increase the weight of the car. To provide it with acceptable performance, it is enough to increase the power of the electric motor or add a second one to it on the other axle, which turns the car into a four-wheel drive at a low price.
We come to the “family” electric models with more than 350 or 400 horsepower in thermal equivalent. That’s the case with the latest Smart to offer…. 272bhp at the rear axle alone. The inevitable Brabus version adds a 150-horsepower engine to the front, thus switching to four-wheel drive. Despite 428 hp and 1.9 tonnes priced at €47,490, it crashes in 0-100 km/h in 3.9 seconds, worthy of a Porsche 997 Carrera S.
The same level of performance for the Kia EV6, a family that we did not expect such a party. It offers 585bhp in its GT version and can go from 0 to 100km/h in just 3.5 seconds if it can reach a top speed of 260km/h! It’s almost time for the Porsche 997 turbo PDK…
READ ALSOKia EV6 GT: the big horse
Only here are these electric machines using either pure power or autonomy. But never both at the same time. It’s even worse for long-distance travel, where energy reserves must be managed wisely. But all other short or medium journeys allow these very high powers to be used almost for free (while recharging at home), resulting in extravagant accelerations. For some, they approach the performance of thermal super sports cars like the Lotus Eletre in the sharpest version, and even the F1 for the top of the range. It accelerates from 0 to 100 in 2.95 seconds with 905 hp and 985 Nm of torque. But who can really manage it?
Mr. Dupont in F1
In driving these machines of various categories, we will often find Mr. Dupont released on the open road, not an experienced pilot who develops in a closed circuit. We noted in our tests how much human software has to be changed with these tools that encourage you to accelerate too fast but push you to reach the next obstacle with ten times the energy. Anticipation is the new rule when braking, because if it is not followed, the impact can be very severe, given the ram effect of a car whose weight is increased by 40 or 50% with the ballast of the batteries. . Épinal’s pretty image of wanting to dress up an electric car in the right clothes for the road is very misleading.
So true that when confronted with models like the latest Hummer that can tow up to 4 tons, but also many that exceed 2.5 tons, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) took action, our colleagues at GoCar report. The organization responsible for road safety in the United States says through its representative Jennifer Homendy: “Electric cars are going in the wrong direction, instead of being more powerful and faster, as well as heavier and bulkier. A survey of 1,200 Swiss drivers by AXA shows that electric cars have half the number of accidents compared to thermal cars, due to drivers not being fit for higher performance. From there, the idea of providing a special license for these high-performance electric vehicles with the help of bonuses for uninformed drivers emerged.
