Why the great British sports car is losing the race to go electric
Howard Mustoe
7 min read
With its 2,000 horsepower Evija model, Lotus is an electric pioneer while other sports car makers lag behind - Lotus
They can be quicker, they don’t need gears and don’t need constant tinkering under the bonnet. But that’s precisely why many sports car enthusiasts are left cold by the new generation of electric vehicles.
“I think that the main thing is the noise,” says Hugo Holder, a 15-year racing enthusiast who owns a Caterham and is a director of the Classic Sports Car Club in Wiltshire.
For many weekend racers or Formula One fans, the roar of the engine elicits a thrill that is hard to match. A barely audible hum from an electric engine simply doesn’t cut it.
“People who race enjoy the control aspect, being in control of a vehicle that you can make do what you require in order to win,” Mr Holder adds.
“Now, if you're talking about an electric car, a lot of that's taken away, particularly because you don't have gears.”
While mass market auto makers such as Ford and Renault are pushing ahead with the gear shift to electric at speed, manufacturers of high-performance sports cars are – perhaps ironically – proceeding with more caution.
McLaren chief executive, Michael Leiters, last week became the latest senior figure in the sector to warn that his company wasn’t yet ready to go electric.
Leiters praised the technology, but said it was not mature enough for his designers to use. The batteries are too heavy, he complained. An electric race car from his firm could be up to 10 years away, he said.
Michael Leiters, chief executive officer of McLaren Automotive Ltd., speaks at the FT Future of the Car Summit in London, UK, on Tuesday, May 9, 2023. The summit of automakers runs until Thursday, May 11. Photographer: Carlos Jasso/Bloomberg - Carlos Jasso/Bloomberg Finance LP
Others, such as Ferrari and BMW, are concerned that a battery-powered engine will be dull to drive even if they can reach the same speeds. If there’s no roar of an engine, where’s the thrill?
“You watch a Formula One start, it’s a visceral thing,” says Mr Holder, whose club organises race days around the world for its 1,000-strong membership and is planning a trip to Daytona later this year.
“A lot of [electric] cars winding off the line is probably, I would argue, not so exciting and so immersive.”
For luxury carmakers like Bentley and Rolls-Royce, electric is an easier sell. They are easy, comfortable drives and weighty limos are seen as a selling point rather than a problem.
But Leiters’ comments are the latest sign that top-end sports car makers have doubts about an electric future, at least for now.
Assuming racing customers demand the same range as a petrol model, almost a tonne of weight can be added to a car through a heavy lithium battery. That radically changes its driving characteristics.
Jim Saker, motoring expert and emeritus professor at the University of Loughborough, says: “Basically, you need an awful lot more power to get the thing going.”
Will the net zero push to go electric spell game over for the weekend sports car?
Auto companies believe they have found a third way that allows them to meet government demands to go green while also providing the same visceral experience that drivers have come to love.
McLaren is focusing on hybrid technology in order to maintain the “emotional experience” of its cars, Leiters said. It is developing a petrol engine with a small battery to hoover up power lost in braking and spend it on accelerating again.
Porsche, which is owned by Volkswagen, favours so-called e-fuels, which can be put into standard diesel or petrol engines.
E-fuels, or synthetic fuels, are made with the same combination of hydrogen and carbon atoms as petrol or diesel.
However, rather than being dug from the ground, refined and burnt, they are made from water and air using green electricity. That means they are classified as environmentally friendly.
The process of making e-fuels is convoluted, meaning mile for mile it will probably always be more expensive to make synthetic petrol rather than to use green electricity to charge a battery. However, buyers of cars costing north of £100,000 will be less fazed by the price.
Lobbying from Germany helped win the exemption for e-fuels to the EU’s forthcoming 2035 ban on the sale of combustion-powered cars. Britain has yet to decide on whether to embrace the technology.
Lotus carmaker factor - David Rose
Car makers including Aston Martin and Ferrari have signalled their interest in e-fuels, as has McLaren.
There are, however, some sports car companies that are embracing electric.
Lotus, famous for its pedigree in lightweight speedy racers, said last year it will be the first established sports car maker to drop petrol altogether. Its Emira will be the last model to be powered by a combustion engine.
In its place comes the Evija hypercar. Unveiled in 2019, the 2,000 horsepower monster, which costs £2m, has a fairly modest 70kWh battery pack that keeps the vehicle's weight under 1.7 tonnes. It can make 60mph in less than three seconds, rinsing petrol competitors.
Gavan Kershaw, Lotus's director of vehicle attributes, says the Evija “has a phenomenal amount of torque that it can deliver. But you can map that via pedal position as you can a petrol engine”.
Noise from tyres, wind, motors and power systems mean there is some feedback for electric racers.
He adds: “You can make the car super agile. It can be fun, engaging, confidence-inspiring, it doesn't have to be terrifying.”
Founded by racing car driver Colin Chapman, Lotus has long focused on lean designs that cut out any unnecessary weight, or as Mr Chapman put it: “Simplify, then add lightness.”
The challenge for Lotus is balancing range, performance and charging time, says Mr Kershaw, whose job it is to maintain the feel of the cars.
“You can have people who want to do long tours with them, or someone who’s going to go to a track day,” he says. “And they'll do a 20-minute track day session, charge for 15-20 minutes and go out again.”
MONACO, Monte-Carlo 06. May 2023; START of the race, in the lead #5, Jake HUGHES, (GBR), NEOM McLaren Formula E Team, NISSAN e-4ORCE 04 followed by #23, Sacha FENESTRAZ, (FRA) and #17, Norman NATO, (FRA), both Nissan Formula E Team, NISSAN e-4ORCE 04 and #7, Maximilian GUENTHER - MASERATI MSG Racing, Maserati Typo Folgore - FIA Formula E in Principality of Monaco, Monaco E-prix, Electric racing on the street circuit of Monaco on 6. May 2023 - Thierry Carpico/ATP images
Mr Kershaw points out that tastes in cars change. The V8 muscle cars of the cheap oil era of the early 1970s gave way to tighter, turbocharged, four-cylinder cars after petrol prices spiked.
Electric racers could benefit from the same shift as petrol and diesel cars start to be phased out.
Other marques are exploring electric: Ferrari plans on releasing an electric sports car but in the meantime it has been fretting over the lack of noise an electric version would produce. It has patented ways of harnessing motor noise and amplifying it.
Prof Saker points out that today’s combustion engines are the product of decades of refinement, and battery vehicles will benefit from the same runout.
“You need to have a five to 10-year cycle to really understand what's actually happening to the handling,” he says.
Much of the latest technology in sports cars started out on the track in Formula One. Formula E, the rival competition for electric cars, offers the chance at similar development.
Members of the Classic Sports Car Club in Wiltshire are intrigued. Presented with a comparable battery-powered racer that has the noise and smell of its own, “of course, we'd be interested,” Mr Holder says.
Just when that fabled model finally arrives is another question altogether.
