The Quiet Revolution

Performance Electric Cars Have Arrived, and the Opportunities Are Amazing

- Jeff Smith

So let’s get this out of the way right now: We’re not here to suggest that the internal combustion engine is dead. Far from it. We attend Rotating Mass every day just like you. But neither should a good performance enthusiast ignore what is happening beyond the world of the holy grail of the four-stroke cycle.

Electric cars. There, we said it. Just let that settle in for a moment before you begin banging your keyboard to pen that poison email.

This story is not about green posturing or carbon footprints. This is HOT ROD, and we’re about performance, but it’s time to acknowledge that electric cars have arrived and can perform. We intend to offer several very different examples of electric race cars for your perusal. Dismiss them if you like, but frankly, unless you can set the new world record for Pikes Peak, win the 24 Hours of Le Mans with a hybrid prototype, or run low-8s in the quarter-mile in a door-slammer, then perhaps it’s worthwhile to at least know something about these electron-powered machines, because all of those mentioned achievements have already occurred. We’re just going to scratch the surface of what’s happening out there in the world of volts, amps, and watts.

Let’s start with something traditional in appearance. Chevrolet debuted a COPO Camaro at the 2018 SEMA Show. That’s not news, unless you consider it was powered by an electric motor. It runs 9.50s and can do so lap after lap. The newly dubbed eCOPO Camaro was built by a pair of drag racers: JeffLane of Super Stock and Competition Eliminator’s Hancock and Lane race team, who partnered with Pat McCue, a high school teacher with a tremendous amount of electric car experience. Together, they decided to try a new path.