Although the electric future is frightening to many, I find the variety of new concepts being produced and the speed at which they are being explored very exciting. Take, for instance, the McMurtry Spéirling. First unveiled at the Goodwood Festival of Speed earlier this year, the concept behind the car is to make one person go as quickly as possible with electric propulsion. The thing is, though, that I hadn’t seen it next to an actual human before, and with Top Gear’s Ollie Kew for scale, the Spéirling looks tiny.

Now, small cars tend to be light, which is good for track work. Small EVs tend not to have much space for batteries, though. However, because this is a fully bespoke car, McMurtry didn’t have to use another automaker’s EV platform. Instead, they could place the driver, the motors, and the safety cell and any space left over could be filled with batteries, says David Turton, a mechanical design engineer who came to McMurtry from the world of Formula 1. With batteries placed all over, this tiny car has 60 kWh of energy storing capacity, which is roughly the same as a mid-range VW ID.3.

 

Range hasn’t yet been revealed, but to ensure that the EV can go as far as possible, the team was also heavily focused on downforce. Although they grace practically all racing cars these days, big wings also create a lot of drag, which affects range. To solve that, the team has gotten rid of big wings, focusing instead on diffusers and using a trick first developed in F1 (and banned after one race). With two fans moving air through the car, it can generate plenty of downforce while minimizing drag, which Turton says is a more efficient use of the batteries.

That also means, though, that you aren’t solely dependent on the air moving over the car to generate downforce. In slower speed corners and even off the line, the fans can help generate grip to keep this RWD, 1,000 hp EV pointed in the right direction. The downforce-generating fans, then, mean that this car makes quite the racket, unlike most other EVs. Although it’s still just a concept at this point, Turton suggests that a one-make racing series and a road-legal version of the car could soon help customers satisfy their need for speed.