Electric Cars in CSR2 Are Faster and Less Forgiving
The 29 electric cars in CSR Racing 2 are half a second quicker than the Tier 5 median and take four times their share of the top 100 — but reward driving less.
Electric cars arrived in CSR Racing 2 quietly and then took over the parts of the leaderboard that matter. There are only 29 of them with a recorded time, about 2% of the sheet, and they are wildly over-represented wherever the racing is close.
They also behave differently from everything else in the game in a way that changes whether you should buy one.
Half a second clear at the median
Holding tier constant, because race distances differ between tiers, the gap is not subtle:
| Electric cars (23) | 6.836s | |
|---|---|---|
| Everything else (862) | 7.369s |
The typical electric car in Tier 5 is 0.533 seconds quicker than the typical petrol one.
Half a second is an enormous margin in a tier where the whole top ten is covered by 0.074 seconds. It is not one freak car dragging an average either — the electric field is quick from top to bottom.
The quickest is the Rimac Nevera R at 6.598, eleventh in the entire game. Behind it the Nevera and the Nevera Time Attack both record 6.653, the Audi Hoonitron 6.709, the Porsche Mission R Concept 6.764, the Aspark Owl 6.787 and the Pininfarina Battista 6.790.
Four times their share of the top 100
This is the number that makes the case. 29 electric cars exist on the sheet and 9 of them sit inside the global top 100.
That is a 31% hit rate. Across all 1,251 ranked cars, the baseline chance of any given car being in the top 100 is 8%. So an electric car is roughly four times more likely to be genuinely competitive than a car picked at random.
Tier 4 is even more lopsided. There are only 6 electric cars in the entire tier out of 232, and 4 of them are in the tier's top ten — two Hyundai IONIQ 5 Ns and two IONIQ 6 Ns. Two thirds of the electric cars in Tier 4 are among the ten fastest cars in it.
But they give back less to driving
Here is the part nobody mentions, and it is the reason this is not a straightforward buy recommendation.
| All cars on the sheet | 0.115s | |
|---|---|---|
| Electric cars | 0.076s |
Electric cars return about a third less to good driving than the field average.
The gap between a car's dyno prediction and its best real time is pure driving — launches and shift timing. Electric cars return a median 0.076 seconds against 0.115 for the sheet as a whole.
At the very top it almost disappears. The Nevera R finds 0.009 seconds over its dyno. The Pininfarina Battista finds 0.002. The Battista Anniversario finds exactly nothing — its recorded time matches its prediction to the thousandth.
That makes intuitive sense. These cars deliver torque instantly and have little or no gearbox to mistime, so there is simply less for a driver to get right or wrong. The car does what it is going to do.
What that actually means for you
Put the two findings together and electric cars are not universally better — they are better for a specific player.
- If your shift timing is average, an electric car is a large upgrade. You get the 0.533-second median advantage without needing to earn it, because the car is not asking you to.
- If you drive very well, the advantage narrows. A skilled driver in a petrol car with a big dyno gap recovers a chunk of it. The Honda Hoonigan Indy Truck finds 0.336 seconds — four times what the average electric car gives back.
- In Tier 4 specifically, take the IONIQ. Four of the tier's ten fastest cars are IONIQs, and the tier is six and a half seconds wide, so the car choice matters more there than anywhere else.
- Do not expect to improve an electric car by practising. The ceiling arrives almost immediately, which is either reassuring or boring depending on what you enjoy.
Who actually builds them
The 29 electric cars come from only seven manufacturers, and the split explains a lot about the performance spread:
| Manufacturer | Electric cars | Where they sit |
|---|---|---|
| Porsche | 7 | Taycans, mid-table, plus the Mission R |
| Hyundai | 6 | IONIQs, all Tier 4, four in that tier's top ten |
| Rimac | 4 | Nevera variants, all inside the global top 60 |
| Audi | 4 | Hoonitron and e-tron, wide spread |
| Pininfarina | 4 | Battista variants, all near the top 100 cut |
| Lotus | 3 | Evija, just outside the top 100 |
| Aspark | 1 | Owl, 92nd overall |
Rimac is the standout. Four cars, every one of them inside the global top sixty, and the Nevera R leading the entire electric field. No other manufacturer in the game converts a small lineup into top-end results at that rate.
The Nevera is also one of the cleanest star comparisons on the sheet. Three purple-star entries run 6.598, 6.653 and 6.653; the gold-star copy runs 6.731 on 2,593 EVO against 2,635. Same car, 0.078 seconds and 42 EVO points apart, with fusion the only variable.
Widen the net slightly and the picture holds: 9 electric cars are in the global top 100 and 15 are in the top 200. More than half the electric field is inside the fastest 16% of the game.
The Taycan problem
Electric does not automatically mean fast, and the Porsche Taycans are the clearest illustration. The Taycan Turbo GT records 7.108 and sits 326th. The Taycan Turbo S records 7.565 and sits 580th, with the Cross Turismo and Pride versions a thousandth or two behind it.
Those are respectable Tier 5 cars and nothing more. They are over half a second behind the Nevera and nowhere near the top 100, despite being electric and despite being Porsches.
Interestingly they are also the electric cars that reward driving most — the Taycan Turbo S finds 0.225 seconds over its dyno, three times the electric median and twice the sheet median. The further an electric car sits from the top, the more it behaves like a petrol one.
Every electric car named here is in the record database with its full tune, and you can compare any of them against a petrol rival side by side.