Eight cars, two completely different answers to the same question: what's the best way to make something move faster than almost anything else on earth? We've covered each of these cars individually on Copy Shep, chasing down what's actually verified about their speed claims. This time we're pulling the covers off entirely and looking only at what's underneath — the engines and motors doing the actual work — because once you line them up side by side, a pretty clear divide in engineering philosophy shows up.

On one side: teams still building some of the most extreme combustion engines ever put in a road car, chasing every last horsepower out of pistons, turbos and fuel. On the other: teams who've decided electric motors already won the argument, and are now competing purely on how cleverly they can manage torque across three or four of them at once. Here's how the engine bay of every hypercar in our coverage actually breaks down.

Team Combustion: The Engines Still Fighting the Laws of Physics the Old Way

Start with the car that arguably started this entire era of one-upmanship. The Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+ runs an 8.0-liter, quad-turbocharged W16 — effectively two narrow-angle V8s fused onto one crankshaft, a 64-valve, DOHC layout that Bugatti has used, in various tunes, since 2005. In its most extreme factory form (fitted to the track-only Bolide), this engine has produced as much as 1,825 hp; the 300+ road car runs a milder but still absurd 1,578 hp tune. The whole assembly weighs around 400 kg dry — roughly what a small motorcycle weighs, for an engine alone. Bugatti officially retired the W16 in 2022 as production wound down, and its combustion successor, the Tourbillon, has moved to a naturally aspirated V16 built with Cosworth instead of continuing the turbocharged W16 line.

Sweden's answer sits in the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut: a 5.0-liter twin-turbo V8 built entirely in-house, producing roughly 1,625 PS on E85 fuel. What makes it genuinely unusual isn't the engine block itself so much as what's bolted behind it — Koenigsegg's own nine-speed "Light Speed Transmission," a multi-clutch gearbox that can pre-select several gears simultaneously rather than shifting through them one at a time. It's the reason the Absolut can post a record-breaking 0-400-0 km/h run using a single engine and rear-wheel drive, against rivals throwing four electric motors and all-wheel drive at the same problem.

Then there's the scrappiest engine story in this entire lineup: the SSC Tuatara. Where Bugatti and Koenigsegg are large, well-funded manufacturers, SSC is a small Washington state operation that nonetheless designed and built its own 5.9-liter, twin-turbo, flat-plane-crank V8 from scratch, producing up to 1,750 hp on E85. A flat-plane crank is the same basic architecture Ferrari uses in its screaming V8s — lighter, higher-revving, and rawer-sounding than the cross-plane V8s common in American muscle cars — which is a big part of why a car from a company most people had never heard of before 2020 has genuinely gone toe-to-toe with Bugatti on a runway.

Hear the Difference

Worth actually listening to this before reading on. Nothing electric on this list makes a sound remotely like it, and that's not an accident — it's the entire reason a shrinking number of manufacturers are still willing to spend the money engineering engines like this at all.

Team Electric: Winning on Torque, Losing on Drama

Every electric car in our coverage solves the same problem completely differently from the four above: instead of one enormous engine, spread the work across several much smaller motors and let software decide, many times per second, exactly how much power goes to which wheel.

The Rimac Nevera R is the clearest example. Four independent electric motors, one per wheel, combine for 2,107 hp — and the torque-vectoring system recalculates how much of that each wheel actually gets 100 times every second. That's the real reason the Nevera R can out-brake and out-accelerate a Bugatti or a Koenigsegg despite having no engine noise, no gears to shift in the traditional sense, and — during its record-setting 0-400-0 run — nothing resembling drama at all beyond the number on the readout.

The Yangwang U9 Xtreme pushes the same basic idea further: four upgraded motors combining for 2,220 kW (roughly 3,000 hp), running on a 1,200V electrical architecture — a genuine industry first for any series-production car. Higher voltage means the motors can be fed more power without the current, and the resulting heat, becoming unmanageable, which is a meaningful part of how this car reached 496.22 km/h without melting anything in the process.

The Lucid Air Sapphire takes a slightly different angle: three motors instead of four (two rear, one front) for 1,234 hp, built around motor technology Lucid engineers, many of whom came from Formula E and Tesla's own early motor programs, have specifically optimized for power density — squeezing more output out of a physically smaller, lighter motor. Combined with a 0.197 drag coefficient body, that's how a car with room for five people and a real trunk pulls 1.89-second 0-60 times without needing anywhere near the motor count of the dedicated two-seat hypercars on this list.

And the Xiaomi YU7 lineup shows the same electric-motor logic scaled down to a mainstream price point: a single 235 kW motor on the base Standard trim, growing to dual motors and 738 kW on the range-topping GT — proof that the multi-motor playbook isn't exclusive to million-dollar hypercars anymore.

The XPeng P7+ makes the same point from a more mainstream angle again: a single rear-mounted motor putting out 180-230 kW on the base car, with an all-wheel-drive dual-motor version confirmed in at least some European markets. It's a useful reminder that everything discussed above — multi-motor layouts, precise torque vectoring, big power from a small unit — isn't reserved for seven-figure hypercars. The same basic electric architecture just gets scaled down, motor by motor, all the way to a family saloon.

Side by Side

Car Engine/Motor Output Type
Bugatti Chiron SS 300+ 8.0L quad-turbo W16 1,578 hp Combustion
Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut 5.0L twin-turbo V8 ~1,625 PS Combustion
SSC Tuatara 5.9L twin-turbo flat-plane V8 1,750 hp Combustion
Rimac Nevera R 4× electric motor 2,107 hp Electric
Yangwang U9 Xtreme 4× electric motor, 1,200V ~2,978 hp Electric
Lucid Air Sapphire 3× electric motor 1,234 hp Electric
Xiaomi YU7 GT 2× electric motor 738 kW / ~1,003 hp Electric
XPeng P7+ 1-2× electric motor 180-230 kW Electric

So Which Approach Actually Wins?

By the numbers we've already covered in detail, electric wins the metrics that reward instant, precisely controllable torque: the Rimac Nevera R's acceleration and braking records, the Yangwang's outright (if uncertified) top speed, the Lucid's absurd 0-60 relative to its practicality. Combustion still wins the metrics that reward raw, sustained power management over distance and heat — the Koenigsegg's 0-400-0 record specifically beat an electric rival using one engine instead of four, and the Bugatti's independently TÜV-verified 304.773 mph run remains a real, physical achievement no electric car in our coverage has yet matched under equivalent verification.

What's actually happening industry-wide, based on everything we've researched across this coverage, isn't electric replacing combustion so much as the two approaches specializing: combustion holding onto outright top-end speed a little longer, electric dominating everything measured in seconds rather than sustained minutes at speed. Whether that split holds for another five years, or whether a fully electric car finally takes the outright, fully-certified top-speed crown outright, is genuinely the most interesting open question in this entire beat.

Quick Answers

Which engine in this lineup makes the most horsepower?

The Yangwang U9 Xtreme's four-motor setup, at roughly 2,978–3,019 hp, is the highest output of any car we've covered — well ahead of the combustion engines on this list, though its top-speed claim carries its own certification caveats, detailed in our full Yangwang U9 Xtreme coverage.

Is a combustion engine or an electric motor faster in a straight line?

It depends what you're measuring. For 0-60 and short-burst acceleration, electric motors' instant torque generally wins — see the Lucid Air Sapphire. For outright top speed sustained over more than a few seconds, the fastest independently verified figure in our coverage still belongs to a combustion car, the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+.

Why does the Bugatti W16 sound so different from other engines?

Its unusual W-configuration — effectively two V8s sharing one crankshaft at a narrow angle — combined with quad-turbocharging gives it a distinctive, layered exhaust note Bugatti's own engineers have described as intentionally "dirty and raw" rather than smoothed out for a cleaner sound.

Do any of these cars use hybrid powertrains?

Not among the cars covered in this specific lineup, though Bugatti's newer Tourbillon (the Chiron's successor) does combine a naturally aspirated V16 with three electric motors — a hybrid approach we may cover in its own dedicated piece.

Read the Full Story on Each Car

And elsewhere on Copy Shep: The 2026 Ford F-150: What Actually Changed and What Buyers Should Know and The 2027 Mercedes-Benz S-Class Isn't All-New, But It Might Be the Most Important Update in Years.

Sources

  • Wikipedia — Bugatti W16 engine and W16 engine configuration specifications
  • Motor1.com — Bugatti V16/W16 engine sound engineering coverage
  • DuPont Registry, FastestLaps.com — Koenigsegg Light Speed Transmission and Jesko Absolut powertrain details
  • Borro.com, AmericanCarBrands.com — SSC Tuatara flat-plane V8 specifications
  • Rimac Newsroom — Nevera R torque-vectoring and motor architecture
  • BatmanGarage.com, BYD official materials — Yangwang U9 Xtreme 1,200V motor architecture
  • TechCrunch, Lucid Group — Air Sapphire tri-motor and aerodynamic engineering details
  • InsideChinaAuto, bydtoday.com — Xiaomi YU7 motor and trim-lineup specifications
  • Our own previously published coverage of each vehicle, linked throughout