On Thursday night, Elon Musk upstaged his own semi truck launch with the news that Tesla is going to build a new performance car, the Roadster. The specs certainly have the Internet ablaze this morning: a 200kWh battery and 620-mile (1,000km) range, 0-60mph in 1.9 seconds, the standing quarter-mile in 8.9 seconds, and a top speed of 250mph. That's truly impressive—particularly if it costs just $200,000. But Musk's claims that it will be the "fastest production car ever made, period" seem more than a little hyperbolic from where I'm sitting.

You see, we're entering another one of those automotive arms races, where engineers and designers attempt to outdo each other in the performance stakes with ever-more extreme hypercars. Tesla will not be the only game in town. In fact, it's only just getting ready to take to the pitch.

Supercars are passé; it's all about the hypercar now

Supercars like the McLaren F1 and Ferrari Enzo used to be the last word in four-wheeled performance until a reborn Bugatti came along and rewrote the rules. The Veyron, which arrived in 2005, boasted an 8.0L W16 engine, 987hp (736kW), and a 253mph (407km/h) top speed. The supercar was dethroned, and the hypercar became king. But achieving massive power and bonkers performance from an internal combustion engine is old hat—even if Bugatti is sticking to the formula with the Chiron.

Pure electric performance

The next evolution of the hypercar added electric power to the mix, exemplified by cars like the Porsche 918 Spyder McLaren P1 , and Ferrari LaFerrari. These borrowed concepts from Formula 1 and Le Mans to advance the art form, which is now progressing to even more extreme hybrids like the Ariel HIPERCAR McLaren BP23 , and Mercedes-AMG Project ONE

But those are hybrids, and the Tesla Roadster is a battery electric vehicle, something that most Ars readers agree is the real future for road cars. But as noted above, other outfits are already playing in this space. For example, Rimac Automobili is responsible for the EV technology that powers "Monster" Tajima's Pikes Peak hill climb racer, Koenigsegg's Regera hybrid hypercar, and the aforementioned Aston Martin Valkyrie. Last year, the company's 1,072hp (800kW), 1,180ft-lbs (1,600Nm) Concept_One EV hypercar was already embarrassing cars like the LaFerrari in drag races, and its forthcoming Concept Two promises even more extreme power and torque.

Then there's NextEV's Nio EP9 Ev hypercar, which packs 1,341hp/1MW and 1,091ft-lbs/1,480Nm. This one recently set a scarcely believable Nürburgring lap time of just 6:45.9 earlier this year. Like Rimac, Nio should be taken seriously. The company just raised $1 billion of investment ahead of the launch of its electric SUV, which is due out next month. Other contenders include the six-motor, 1,250hp (932kW) 3,650ft-lbs (4,948Nm) RAESR Tachyon Speed and the Vanda Dendrobium, although I'm less certain either of those will deliver upon their claims. Even Lucid's Air deserves a mention. Although it's a sedan, not a hypercar, it still boasts 1,000hp (736kW), and Lucid has already shown that the Air is fast: in testing earlier this year it reached 235.4mph (378km/h).

(Speaking of statistics, I'm not entirely sure what to make of Musk's claims that the three-motor Roadster will have 7,376ft-lbs/10,000Nm of torque. If that number is measured at the wheels, then we need to account for gearing, in which case it's really only about 10 percent more than the Model S P100D.)

Still, we'd be wise not to discount the Roadster. A price of $200,000 is an awful lot cheaper than any of these other hypercars outside the hybrid Ariel. And its claimed acceleration would put it straight to the head of the pack; even Jonny Smith's wonderfully mad Flux Capacitor—the world's fastest street-legal EV—needs 9.87 seconds to do the quarter-mile. Finally, even if mass production remains an ongoing challenge for Tesla, it has proven more than capable of building tens of thousands of EVs, something no other automotive startup can claim.

One thing is certain for now: this hypercar performance war is going to be fascinating to watch—particularly if I get a chance to drive some of these outrageous EVs.