Unpopular opinion: These electric cars are too cheap - Why the 2025 Tesla Model 3 Performance, BYD Seal Performance and MG4 XPower should cost more | Opinion

Performance electric cars are too cheap.

We've got price parity on regular electric cars, which now start at below $30,000 but what about at the top-end of the performance bracket?

The ability to go from a standstill to 100km/h in three seconds used to be a serious feat of engineering achievement that was so rare on our roads it meant something special.

You could easily guess that car had a horse or bull logo on its bonnet and you could hear it coming from a mile away.

Now you can access that performance for less than $90,000.

Tesla’s Model 3 Performance costs about $88,000 drive-away depending on the state you live in.

It can hit 100km/h in 3.1 seconds. An insane speed for a car so easily accessible.

Some of the other go fast eclectic cars are the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N (3.4 sec), Kia EV6 GT (3.5 sec), Ford Mustang Mach-E GT (3.7 sec) MG4 XPower, BYD Seal Performance (3.8 sec) and BMW i4 (3.9 sec), which can all make the sprint to 100km/h in less than four seconds.

Want that performance in a petrol car such as a BMW M3? Then expect to double the price of the Model 3 Performance. Petrol performance cars also come with more extensive hardware upgrades that help balance the performance such as bigger brakes, adaptive suspension and countless tweaks to the chassis.

The fact is it shouldn't be so easy to step up from a RAV4 Hybrid to a vehicle that is as fast as a Ferrari.

The Model 3 uses two electric motors to pump out about 350kW and roughly 750Nm. Those are video game numbers that haven’t and won’t exist in petrol performance cars at that price.

The point I’m trying to make is that cars this fast should not be as common on our roads and be in the hands of the everyday driver.

To go that fast requires either plenty of experience at that speed or increased training. A lot can go wrong very quickly when you have that speed on tap.

Also harnessing that speed on public roads is dangerous, and best saved for track days. Anecdotal evidence points to a minimal amount of electric cars in attendance, so it's most likely these things are getting unleashed on our roads by drivers not used to travelling at such speed. 

Governments have been telling us “speed kills” for a long time, but what if we are reaching those speeds quicker and easier than ever before? 

If you want to have fun driving, then speed isn't the only answer.

Drivers need to look no further than cars such as the Mazda MX-5 or Toyota GR86 to realise that headline grabbing numbers aren’t what makes a car fun to drive.

Both these cars are extremely slow compared to the Model 3 Performance, completing the benchmark spring in more than double the time of the potent electric car.

The Volkswagen Golf GTI was often considered the benchmark affordable performance car, but its 180kW and 370Nm now seem pedestrian compared to these devilishly powerful electric cars.

It too can only hit 100km/h in 6.4 seconds, but anyone who has driven one knows a twisty bit of bitumen at legal speeds is pure heaven on four wheels.

Let’s be honest, we don’t need to travel as fast as some of these electric performance cars allow. So why don’t we walk it back a couple of seconds and make our roads a bit safer.