The best electric sports cars – driven, rated and ranked

Best for: Luxury

The Taycan is a four-door fast grand tourer that's slightly smaller than the ICE Panamera but certainly not the lesser car of the two.

The Turbo S is outrageously quick, yet it manages to make its speed approachable, and balance it with road manners that belie Veyron-baiting acceleration.

Illya Verpraet, Road Tester

It possesses fine body control, rare balance, superbly calibrated operating controls and palpable steering precision. That it rides extremely well on its air suspension only adds to its appeal. 

From the steering weight to the unerring agility and expensively calibrated damping, the Taycan marks itself out as a true product of Zuffenhausen.

The £140,000 Turbo S musters 751bhp and is surely one of the quickest real-world cars on the planet, considering its 2.6sec 0-60mph time.

If that's not enough, the more hardcore Turbo GT pumps out a whopping 1094bhp, instilling the Taycan with hypercar-levels of acceleration: 0-62mph is covered in just 2.2sec. 

Best for: Affordable electric fun

The Alpine A290 is arguably one of, if not the most engaging and fun to drive electric cars on sale today. 

The ride is quite remarkable for a sporty small car on passive suspension, particularly if you've experienced a Mini Cooper SE.

Illya Verpraet, Road Tester

Far more than just a Renault 5 in spangly blue paint, it features Alpine-specific mechanical updates, including new springs and dampers, anti-roll bars, hydraulic bump stops and a lighter, aluminium front subframe.

Two power outputs are on offer: 178bhp and 217bhp. The fastest model, the GTS, has a claimed 0-62mph time of 6.4sec. 

Aside from its impressive and expensive-feeling interior, the A290 possesses a remarkable ride, accurate steering and a genuinely engaging throttle.

It's a worthy winner of our Best Fun EV title and gives us real hope that the hot hatch is back. 

Best for: Multi-millionaires

Few car makers have made such a big impression in such a short space of time as Rimac. In little more than a decade, the Croatian firm has grown into a company that's partly owned by Porsche and directing Bugatti. 

It steers very keenly and, because it’s low and relatively stiff, there’s tightly controlled movement of its 2150kg.

Matt Prior, Editor-at-large

Its Nevera hypercar is built around a composite tub, and there's an electric motor for each wheel, with independent single-speed gearboxes at the front and two two-speed dual-clutch 'boxes for the back axle.

All this means it boasts 1888bhp and a mountainous 1696lb ft of torque, which allows it to hit 0-62mph in just 1.95sec. Its 120kWh battery also allows for up to 340 miles of range. 

With double-wishbone suspension, torque vectoring and the potential for level-four autonomous driving, the Nevera has the works - and an eye-watering £2.4 million price to match.

Best for: Hypercar lovers

Lotus's radical electric hypercar is, put simply, the fastest car we've ever put through the Autocar road test.

Full-bore acceleration isn’t eviscerating, but it is an attack on the senses. If I had been in the passenger seat and not so engaged with keeping the car tracking straight and picking a braking point, I’d probably have shut my eyes and simply held on.

Matt Saunders, Road test editor

With our satellite timing gear affixed to its carbonfibre body, the Evija obliterated every acceleration and high-speed record set since our testing began back in 1928. 

The 2039bhp hypercar can travel from 0-150mph in 7.7sec and 0-200mph in a brain-out 13.0sec, and 150mph-180mph is covered in a mere 2.7sec, the same time it takes a BMW M3 CS to go from 60-90mph. Particularly staggering, though, is the Evija’s ability to hit 217.4mph in just a kilometre. 

It doesn’t handle like a Elise or Exige but is communicative, well-balanced and very capable on the road, despite its intimidating power output.

Overall, it’s not a revolutionary driver’s car but certainly a groundbreaking EV. 

Best for: Looks

The Emeya marked a seismic shift for Lotus, with the brand pivoting away from its lightweight sportsters and towards high-performance luxury EVs. 

Find a charger that can match the Emeya’s peak rate of 420kW and you can boost the battery from 10-80% in as little as 15 minutes.

Sam Phillips, Staff Writer

Its engineers had the unenviable task of developing a 2.5-tonne electric sports saloon that maintained the spirit of Lotuses of the past – and for the enthusiast, they were successful. 

To drive, the Emeya maintains Lotus principles with a chassis that's poised and agile on UK roads and has true handling appeal, thanks to its delicate steering and good body control.

The 603bhp Emeya 600 can sprint from 0-62mph in a pacey 4.1sec, but it's the 905bhp Emeya 900 that will scramble your mind: it can travel from 0-62mph in a mere 2.8sec and still offer up to 301 miles of range. 

Best for: Billionaires

Much like the relationship between the Porsche Taycan and Audi RS E-tron GT, the Pininfarina Battista shares much hardware (and software) with the Rimac Nevera. For the purposes of differentiation, it's being presented as the more outwardly luxurious, more touring-oriented of the pair.

The different driving modes bring more steering weight and tighter dampers as well as more power, but the ride is always calmly controlled.

Matt Prior, Editor-at-large

Even so, this is no soft-centred cruiser, as the raw statistics reveal. With 1900bhp and 1696lb ft on offer from its four motors, it's perhaps no surprise to find it can do 0-186mph in less than 12sec and 217mph all out - although even these numbers pale into insignificance alongside the £2 million asking price.

In the metal (and carbonfibre, obvs), the Battista is beautifully wrought both inside and out and largely Italianate, despite the fact that Pinfinfarina is now based in Munich and its parent company (Mahindra) is Indian.

The engineers and trimmers themselves, however, include alumni from Pagani and the Mercedes-AMG One hypercar, so there's no lack of talent on display here.

Best for: Daily driving

Unlike the iX SUV, the i4 saloon isn't built on a bespoke EV platform but instead uses a version of BMW's CLAR architecture. In essence, it’s an electrified 4 Series Gran Coupé. Yet it's still an excellent EV.

The upshot is that, if you had to guess, you might put the i4’s kerb weight a good deal lower than it really is, and you can enjoy tackling quicker and more challenging stretches of road quite a lot.

Matt Saunders, Road test editor

There's an entry-level rear-drive eDrive40 model that's brisk enough, but for true bar room bragging rights, you need the M60 xDrive, which packs a hefty 593bhp for an M4-baiting 0-62mph time of 3.7sec.

Despite its kerb weight, it handles with surprising agility and control, its powerful motors and allowing some tail-happy action if you're in the mood. It offers tangible dynamics and real entertainment on a twisty B-road. 

And it achieves all this while enveloping the driver in a comfortable, practical and upmarket cabin that only enhances the i4’s appeal. 

Best for: Coupé lovers

Over the decades, there have been many false dawns for Maserati, but somehow the iconic Italian brand has failed to move out of the shadows of its early-1950s heyday, when its cars were winning Formula 1 world championships on the track and the hearts of enthusiasts on the road.

Alas, the recipe feels like a work in progress. Greater range and efficiency is needed. A little less dynamic compromise too.

Richard Lane, Deputy road test editor

First up, there was the launch in 2020 of the sensational MC20 supercar. Then it pulled the covers off a new mid-sized SUV (crucial for sales success) and now there's the all-new Granturismo, a coupé that's designed to do exactly what it says on the tin.

More importantly, it's the first Maserati to get the all-electric treatment. Known as the Folgore (that's thunderbolt in English), it's based on an all-new, largely aluminium platform that's designed to work with both ICE and BEV powertrains.

It has the raw statistics: with a tri-motor set-up (two at the back for torque vectoring and one at the front), it delivers 751bhp for 0-62mph in 2.7sec and a 199mph top speed.

What's more, its battery (83kWh for a claimed range of 280 miles) has been designed in an elongated H-shape layout, with the centre section slotting down the spin of the car. Not only does this deliver a lower seating position, but it also centres the masses and helps to give the car greater agility.