Opinion: a day of high-performance EVs has me feeling good about the future of sports cars

Goodwood Festival of Speed is a frankly ludicrous celebration of the motor car, motorsport, fuel, tyre smoke and engine noise. Or at least, it used to be…

You still get plenty of brawny, hairy-chested old race cars being wrestled up the hill by brawny, hairy-chested old racing drivers, but now the status quo has been disrupted by a new generation of supercars and race cars running on electric power. I didn’t know what to make of it as I arrived on the first day, to be honest.

I’m far from closed-minded when it comes to automotive powertrains, and I’m of the opinion that an electric car is a far better family proposition than a petrol or hybrid alternative a lot of the time, but for a supercar? Eh, not so much.

After being strapped into a petrol-powered Toyota Yaris rally car and thrown around a forest course in the morning, my sentiment was stronger than ever. But when I was offered a seat up the infamous Goodwood hillclimb course in the 1,500hp Xiaomi SU7 Ultra saloon car – fresh off the back of its record breaking Nurburgring run – my curiosity was piqued.

It’s a lovely thing to be inside, with a high-quality cabin and plush materials on par with its posh-looking exterior. There’s a bit too much Porsche, McLaren and Tesla in its rather derivative exterior design, but that can be forgiven for its excellent yellow hue.

And yet when we set off the line at the foot of the hillclimb course, I was pinned back in my seat in a way that a big, comfortable saloon car has no right to manage. The SU7 Ultra felt stable in the corners with almost no body lean, and while the owner-driver wasn’t pushing the car to the limits, it was clear how much performance potential it had.

My mind was blown, but then it was time to go up the hill in something even more extreme: the 2,107hp Rimac Nevera R, a hypercar that can accelerate from 0-60mph in under 1.7 seconds (less than half the time of a Porsche 911 Carrera S), 0-186mph in just 7.9 seconds and onto a top speed of 268mph. Zero-250mph and back to a standstill takes just over 26 seconds. Yes, really.

Being driven by Rimac and Bugatti’s test and development driver, Miroslav Zrnčević, I was in for a wild ride. While he wasn’t going for a record-breaking run, Miro made sure to demonstrate the performance capabilities of the Nevera R, and it made the hugely impressive Xiaomi feel like a taxi cab by comparison.

Acceleration that makes an aeroplane feel slow, insane cornering speeds and agility beyond belief had me giddy the whole way up the hill, but it’s not the next generation of electric supercars that I’m excited about.

While it’s the trailblazers at Rimac and the industrial might of a brand such as Xiaomi that create these remarkable cars at first, this sort of technology trickles down to smaller, cheaper and more affordable sports cars over time – and that’s what I can’t wait for.

The next Porsche Cayman, Alpine A110 and BMW M3 are all going to be electric, and if they can offer even a third of the thrills that the Nevera R and SU7 Ultra can, then we’re in good stead.

Yes, a sonorous exhaust note will be missed, but I’d rather be smiling in silence behind the wheel than stood at the side of the road complaining about it all. Bring it on.

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