The cattle-grid rattles under the car. Not for the first time it occurs to you that as a way of heralding the arrival of a great experience, there’s none more understated than the humble cattlegrid. But there they are, at the start and finish of many of the country’s greatest roads.  You know this car and you know this road. It’s why you’ve brought it here. You know the drill, too: a kick of the clutch and a blip of the throttle. You’ve already decided how many gears you’re going to drop. Then down goes the foot. Let it build. You feel the engine respond and hear it, too: the induction noise hardening, the exhaust note sharpening. The revs rise, but slowly at first. There’s no external assistance from turbos here, but you’re happy to wait. At 4000rpm it starts to build, at 5000rpm it’s beginning to fly. So you let it go, growling and howling its way past 6000, 7000 and onto 8000rpm before you deftly dip the clutch once more, a mere fraction of a second before the limiter cuts in.  Okay, so the car happens to be a new Porsche Cayman GT4, but in essence, and saving details like where the red line on any given car might be, what I’ve outlined is an experience enjoyed in one form or another by millions of enthusiastic drivers not just for years or even decades, but for more than a century. Good car, good road. Good fun. That really is all there is to it.  Let’s do it all over again, except we’re a few years into the future and the car is not a 414bhp Porsche but an electric hypercar with around 2000bhp. If you think that sounds like science fiction it’s not: there are already at least three that have been shown with outputs of 1900bhp or more and which are now being readied for production. The cattle grid rattles under the car. There’s no clutch to kick nor even a paddle to pull, let alone a stick to shift. There is no decision-making process because there’s nothing to do. Except put your foot down. You can still do that. So the car now tries to transmit 2000bhp plus all that attendant and instant torque to the road.  Of course it has four-wheel drive, but that’s still a 911 GT3’s worth of power per tyre. Of course it can’t dump it all on the Tarmac, which is perhaps as well. Full throttle in a Bugatti Veyron is a pretty bewildering experience and these cars have double the power. I wouldn’t be able to guarantee the security of my breakfast under such an assault. I’d want to know my passenger was in good nick, too, before springing such a surprise. Perhaps a disclaimer on the passenger door, you know, like the ones they put next to the more vomit-inducing rollercoasters. Involuntary acceleration-induced myocardial infarction: the legals would be interesting.  But that doesn’t happen. The systems kick in and you are hurled forward only at the rate at which your chocolate slicktermediate tyres can handle – which will still be enough to make you feel uncomfortably giddy and your passenger really rather ill. Is that fun? Maybe for some.  But what then? Well, and just as an example, Lotus says the Evija will get from rest to 186mph in fewer than nine seconds. Well, you’re not going to reach that speed in public and you won’t start from rest. So just how long do you think you’ll be able to bury the throttle – which, remember, is the only thing this car requires you to do to save steer and brake – before some sense, common or survival, makes you lift? How long can this extraordinary but potentially somewhat disquieting experience be enjoyed? Or should I say endured? Not long. And then what? Slow down and do it all over again?  Perhaps. But with nothing to listen to and nothing to do save flexing a hoof, I think the novelty might soon wear off, and that’s just for the driver.  I am being mischievous here, because I’m clearly not comparing like with like. We have already reported that the 2022 Cayman will have a fully electric powertrain at least as an option, but it’s not going to have 2000bhp and the car won’t cost £1.7 million-plus. But I’m doing it to illustrate a point, namely that just because it’s easy to provide electric cars with huge power doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. But I understand the temptation. How else do you present electrification as interesting to the enthusiast? These are cars that make no sound worth listening to, don’t need gearboxes and deliver all they have to offer at once. They’re long on instant gratification and thereafter worryingly short on giving the driver stuff to do.  And that’s an enormous problem, not for manufacturers making electric cars as mere transport – in fact, for them it’s probably a net bonus – but for those with reputations for producing genuinely fun and sporting cars to maintain. As statements of the bleedin’ obvious go, to observe that the more involving a car is, the more involved its driver will be is right up there with the best. But so too is it true.  The reason I love old cars is that they’re mostly rubbish. If they
Origin: Long read: What is the future of driving for fun?