The Lotus Evija, the all-electric hypercar from British performance marque Lotus, has set a new benchmark for acceleration performance during Autocar’s definitive road test, becoming one of the fastest production cars ever evaluated by the magazine since the testing programme began in 1928.
The Evija, which recently entered customer deliveries, recorded the fastest time for a 0–200 mph sprint in Autocar’s testing history, and outpaced all rivals in the standing quarter-mile and standing kilometre. The publication described the hypercar as a standout in acceleration metrics, with the vehicle’s performance well beyond what had been previously documented for road-legal models.
Among the most notable figures: the Evija reached 150–180 mph in just 2.7 seconds—equivalent to the time it takes some high-performance saloons to accelerate from 60–90 mph. It also became only the third road-legal production vehicle to be timed from a standstill to 200 mph by Autocar, completing the run within a standing kilometre and hitting its electronically limited top speed of 217.4 mph inside the distance that most rivals use to reach 180 mph.
“Hypercar makers some time back shifted their focus away from top speed as a distinguishing feature. Some have opted for outright circuit pace, but Lotus chose something powerful electric motors could be truly exceptional at: the 0–200 mph, standing-kilometre drag-strip blast,” said Matt Saunders, Autocar’s road test editor. “In 2011, the Bugatti Veyron cut the standard for that – as verified by this magazine in 1994 with the McLaren F1 – by 21%. In 2025, proportionally speaking, the Evija’s leap is twice that size.”