Electric cars accelerate faster than gasoline cars, and the fastest cars can reach the world’s highest speeds. it helped make tesla It’s one of the strongest brands in the auto industry, proving that EVs are more than just golf carts. But sales data, officials and even fans insist there’s no longer enough to sell to Americans.
For a long time, performance has been essential to justifying EVs to car buyers. That was essential to Tesla’s sales pitch.
“This kind of thing started when Tesla launched the original Roadster in 2008,” said Sam Abuelsamid, vice president of market research at Telemetry Insights. “At the time, people had this impression of EVs as being like golf carts, not very fast, not very exciting. Tesla decided to use performance to really make the case for electric cars, to show that you could build an EV that would go 250 miles on a single charge and go from 0 to 60 mph in 4 seconds. That’s a little slow by today’s standards, but still.”
“We have to be clear,” Musk said at a 2021 delivery event for the high-performance Tesla Model S Plaid. “Sustainable energy vehicles can be the fastest cars, they can be the safest cars, and they can be the most shocking cars in every way.”
Other automakers have followed suit, creating trucks that can accelerate in less than three seconds. Audi’s RS e-Tron GT is the fastest production model ever. More achievable EVs like the Kia EV6 GT Line can reach 60 mph in 4.5 seconds. This is something that was once only possible for sports cars.
Although EVs have won the battle for acceleration, speed, and superior performance, they still fall short of 10% of new car sales in the United States (about half of the global sales rate). And now that incentives are gone and automakers are scaling back production, insiders say the next battle remains: lowering prices and improving charging and range.
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