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Ferrari 488 Pista Drag Races Porsche Taycan 4S, the Track Is Too Short

The simple fact the Taycan can line up against a Ferrari 488 Pista at the start of a drag race without raising any eyebrows shows you how far EVs have come, and whether you like that or not, we mostly have a certain Elon Musk to thank for that.
Ferrari 488 Pista Vs Porsche Taycan 4 S drag race 7 photos
Photo: Varryx/YouTube screenshot
Ferrari 488 Pista Vs Porsche Taycan 4 S drag raceFerrari 488 Pista Vs Porsche Taycan 4 S drag raceFerrari 488 Pista Vs Porsche Taycan 4 S drag raceFerrari 488 Pista Vs Porsche Taycan 4 S drag raceFerrari 488 Pista Vs Porsche Taycan 4 S drag raceFerrari 488 Pista Vs Porsche Taycan 4 S drag race
You can question him for a lot of other things, but there's no denying that Tesla was the main driving factor behind the current EV revolution we're witnessing. Even though it may not be enough to save Musk's image if he goes full villain on us, it's still something that nobody will ever be able to take away from him.

It's not that Porsche, or the rest of the industry, wouldn't have known how to make an EV without Tesla; it's just that it wouldn't have felt the need to. And since Tesla also had the inspiration to make its products exciting (read "very quick over the standing quarter"), the ones that followed had no option but to follow suit as best they could.

It speaks volumes that Porsche didn't even need to field its most powerful Taycan to meet the track-special Ferrari, and it still came up on top. In fact, if the Turbo S had shown up, the outcome might have even looked slightly humiliating for the 488 Pista, and if you love cars, that's never something you want to see.

On the other hand, watching the Pista trying to claw its way back into the race is a spectacle in itself, especially when you compare it to the cool composure of the EV. In the end, though, all that noise and commotion turned out to be for nothing. Unlike other EVs that are very good at accelerating off the line but tend to fizzle down once they get into the three-digit speeds, the Porsche Taycan can continue to pull hard even after that, thanks to its two-speed transmission, a true rarity among electrics.

Looking at the landscape, there's also the question of the altitude at which the race took place. We all know oxygen becomes more and more rarefied the further up we go from sea level, and internal combustion engines need as much of it as possible to work at optimal parameters. EVs, on the other hand, you could race them on Mars and still get the same result—which is something we're sure Musk plans on doing the moment SpaceX will make it possible.

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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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