One kilowatt equals 1.341 horsepower. That used to be dyno-room trivia, not dinner conversation. Now it is the reason your neighbor’s beige crossover can outpace the legends of supercar history. Stack the cells, wind the copper, drop in magnets, and suddenly 600 horses are politely queuing at Trader Joe’s. Nobody asked for it. Power without preparation is liability, yet here it is, parked in driveways like a subscription you forgot to cancel.
As with so many curious turns in modern life, Elon Musk bears some responsibility. Tesla did not just make electric cars fast, they made speed a requirement. Ask for the longest range or all-wheel drive and you are handed a 384-horsepower, sub-five-second Model Y Long Range without even asking. Bolting in big motors and chasing a 0-60 brag is far easier than building genuinely efficient cars with features people will actually use. What began as a Silicon Valley party trick became an industry reflex. The answer is always more windings, more current, and bigger numbers. The “performance” is not engineered, it is dialled in because it is easy and because it flatters a spec sheet.
We have been here before. In the muscle car era, Detroit stuffed big-block V8s with more than 400 horsepower into sedans and called it progress. Brakes and handling were treated as luxuries. Critics warned, regulators circled, and Ralph Nader built a career out of blaming the Corvair for sins shared by every Porsche and the Mercedes 300SL Gullwing, problems Chevrolet had already fixed in the second generation. At least those cars wore their intent openly, sold to buyers who knew exactly what they were getting. Today’s version is worse. These are family crossovers, status appliances, and all-weather wagons carrying nearly twice the power of a Chevelle SS or Plymouth Road Runner, riding on efficiency tyres, soft suspensions, and brakes spec’d for a rental lot.
The manufacturers know it. GM freely admits the Blazer EV SS with 615 horsepower was never meant for the track. Slapping an SS badge on the tailgate and bolting on slightly larger brakes is not engineering, it is theatre. Especially when those brakes are clamped to low rolling resistance tyres chosen for range, not grip or high-speed safety. The result is a field of cars with inflated straight-line numbers and hardware that has not caught up. The shortcomings of the sixties muscle car are now disguised as family transport.
The real difference is that nobody bought a sixties muscle car by accident. The cost, the exclusivity, and the effort made them deliberate. Now you can ask for longer range, a plusher interior, or an extra USB port and find yourself with performance figures that once took a decade in a garage or a trust fund to achieve. Intentional performance has been replaced by incidental excess.
If this were about real innovation, we would be talking about batteries that last more than four hours at highway speeds, brakes matched to mass, and tyres that can cope with all that torque. Instead we get more windings, more current, bigger numbers. It is engineering by marketing, not by need. The decimal point trick for spec sheets.
To be clear, this is not a romantic plea for the days of supercars without ABS or stability control. Those cars demanded everything from their drivers and carried risk in the trade for performance. In that way, modern EVs resemble the supercars they are now compared with. Too much power, not enough engineering elsewhere.
But nobody ever suggested every family should own one. Danger was mitigated by price, rarity, and intent. Modern supercars like the Porsche 911 Turbo S match their output with tyres, brakes, stability systems, and honesty. The family crossover does not, and that is the problem.
So yes, EV crossovers are the new muscle cars, and no, it is not a compliment. If history is repeating, it is doing so without style or self-awareness. Manufacturers are handing out dangerous levels of power in cars never engineered or marketed for it, and calling it progress. It is not. It is abdication wrapped in marketing gloss.
Nobody is happier. Nobody is safer. The only thing falling faster than battery prices is the meaning of horsepower itself. The market has crashed. The line of credit is closed. From here on out, count power in kilowatts and leave horsepower to those who remember what it cost, why it mattered, and how it felt to earn.
