Tesla Motors proved EVs can be more than overgrown golf cars with pretensions and showed "green" and "performance" can be synonymous. A Swiss outfit hopes to underscore the point with a 270-horsepower electric roadster that draws its styling from the wonderful Porsche 550.

The Spyder is an electric performance car built by BRUSA Elektronik, which wants to show EVs don't have to be the utilitarian, even boring, vehicles many people picture when they hear the term. To do that, Brusa stripped the Spyder to the essential, fun bits.

The result is a car that could give the Tesla Roadster a run for the money. Should it see production, of course.

The Spyder sports two 100 kilowatt electric motors, each driving one rear wheel through its own controller. The setup eliminates the need for a differential and allows a great variety of driving dynamics configured by torque vectoring. Think of it as traction control with higher degree of freedom. The rear axle drive configuration bestows the pure driving fun of using your right foot to tell the back end where to go.

Brusa says the Spyder produces 270 horsepower and 324 foot-pounds of torque. It claims the car, which weighs about 2,000 pounds, will do zero to 62 in less than 5 seconds. Not as quick as the Tesla, mind you, but still fun.

The electronics reside under the front deck lid, where you'll find the synchronous controller, the batteries and charger and an on-board converter. Juice comes from a 16 kilowatt-hour lithium-polymer battery that Brusa says is good for "more than 100 kilometers." The company claims the battery recharges in four hours when plugged in to a 16-amp 220-volt line.

Brusa makes all the major components itself. The car's efficiency is quite impressive. Energy use for 100 km is said to be below 15kWh, less than the equivalent of 1.5 liters of gasoline. No word on when the car might see production or what it might cost.

OK guys. You've built the car. Now lets see you go up against a Tesla. Better yet, launch a race series and let us in on the fun.

Main photo by Brusa. Hat tip to Ivar Kvadsheim at MC24.com for the rest. He spotted the Brusa at EVs24, the big battery, EV and fuel cell symposium in Stavanger, Norway, and passed along the info and pics.