China

• This is the best look yet at China’s $32,000 lightweight electric sports car, the SSC SC01.
• The car is also driven on public roads, where the reviewer takes a liking to it.
• It’s one of the few EVs built specifically with driving enthusiasts in mind, and it shows.

Most electric cars, even the sporty ones designed to thrill you in the corners, have a weight problem. It’s an inevitable problem brought on by the fact that they have to carry a big and very heavy battery pack that makes them overweight compared to a similar sports car powered by combustion.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of driving a Lotus Exige or an Alfa Romeo 4C, or even a Mazda Miata, then you know just how nice it is to thread a light sports car around a twisty road and how effortlessly it changes direction, as well as builds or sheds speed. Well, now you can add another name to this rather short list of lightweight sports cars, and what makes this one special is that it’s an electric car from China.

We’ve covered the SSC (which stands for Small Sports Car) SC01 before, saying that it’s notable for being a dedicated small, light electric sports car that held a lot of promise. We featured a first drive video centered around a prototype drive on a closed course, where the reviewer raved about its responsiveness and cornering capability.

Now another video has come out, and it paints an even clearer picture about why the SC01 is so great. In this Wheelsboy review, we get to see it driven out on public roads, where it seems to confirm others’ great first impression.

The SC01 has an all-wheel-drive, dual-motor setup with a combined 429 horsepower and 413 pound-feet (560 Nm) of torque. That doesn’t sound like a lot in an age when having 1,000 hp seems almost trivial in an electric vehicle, but unlike many ultra-high-powered EVs, which are heavy enough to generate their own gravitational field, the SC01 weighs just 3,009 pounds (1,365 kg).

That is slightly more than you would expect a combustion sports car of the same size to weigh, but it’s a featherweight compared to any other sporty EV that we know of. As a result, it can sling itself from 0 to 62 mph (100 km/h) in 2.9 seconds, and, more importantly, it’s excellent through the corners, where it is said to feel pretty much like any mid-engined sports car, so an electric equivalent of the Exige or 4C.

This isn’t some under-engineered car that overpromises and under-delivers. It has racecar-like pushrod suspension, a tubular spaceframe chassis and a full aluminum body, which allows it to keep the weight down. One way it achieves typical mid-engined sports car handling is by having its battery pack exactly where you would find the gas mill in a similar combustion car. It’s behind the passenger compartment, not in the floor.

While you would think this raises the car’s center of mass—which it probably does slightly—it doesn’t really matter because the car is very low (around 4 inches/10 cm lower than an ND Miata), so having a bit of extra weight higher in the car is not going to spoil the handling. But does it all translate into a believable and cohesive sports car experience? The short answer is yes, and it seems like an absolute bargain for the equivalent of around $32,000 in China.

But while this is going on sale in China, we’re still waiting for the Tesla Roadster, which is many years too late. Elon Musk last said that it was going into production in 2025, but it seems as if the project is not a priority as the company focuses on self-driving and tries to counter falling sales and the Cybertruck’s plummeting popularity.

The Roadster, even if it does arrive, will be several times more expensive than China’s SC01—with a predicted price tag that could reach $250,000—and even with its much longer range and higher power output, there’s a strong chance it won’t be as fun to drive. Porsche will launch a more attainable electric 718 sports car, but even that has reportedly been delayed as the manufacturer tries to get it right.