I’m 40 feet from the Jaguar, mint chocolate chip ice cream dripping down the cone onto my fingers, when I hear the purring from under the hood. Strange, I think. First off, the car is parked. Second, it doesn’t have an engine. It’s only after a moment that I realize the sound is the car defending itself against the brutality of a summer day in Southern California’s Coachella Valley. The fast charger I’ve plugged into the car is ramming in electrons, heating up the battery pack. Add 100-degree weather on top of that, and you see why the fan is running at full pelt. It’s making sure the I-Pace, Jaguar’s first all-electric car and a serious challenger to Tesla’s EV dominance, remains a cool cat.

After wiping the remnants of my own heat-defense mechanism off my hands, I disconnect the charger, note how long the car’s been plugged in and how much power I’ve added, and climb inside the small SUV. I press the chromed start button and watch the screens in the middle of the dash and behind the steering wheel spring into life with a cat motif. Then—at the point when a conventional car gets loud—the I-Pace quiets down. I pull out of the mall parking lot and onto the freeway in silence.

Near silence, anyway. When I put my foot down, I can’t suppress a giggle as the I-Pace rushes up the freeway on-ramp.

I’m halfway through a road trip from LA to Palm Springs in this all-new EV, one of the first cars to rival Elon’s Musk-mobiles in terms of range, performance, technology, and luxury. Deliveries in the US start later this year, with a price tag from $69,500. For that, buyers get a car that runs from nought to 60 mph in 4.5 seconds. (That feels especially quick in the small, high-seated vehicle.) The two motors send 394 horsepower and 512 pound-feet of torque to all four wheels. No wonder the automotive press corps has bestowed glowing early reviews on the new Jag.

But it was a given this car was going to be quick. All high-end electric cars are, to the point where the specs are getting a touch outrageous: Zero to 60 mph times under two seconds are increasingly common, as are four-digit horsepower figures. “We have a bubble right now between the premium brands, around torque and things,” says Chelsea Sexton, a longtime EV advocate. “It’s a bit of a manhood measuring contest.”

As the auto industry moves into the electric age, then, we need new ways to evaluate these vehicles, focusing on factors that are much more useful in everyday life. It might mean relearning a few new terms you’ve forgotten from high school physics, but it’ll make any decision to go all-in on EVs a lot clearer.

So while I will allow myself the occasional heavy-footed launch in the I-Pace, I’m going to be looking at how day-to-day drivers will use their electric cars. Not just how far can you go without plugging in, but how fast you can refill the battery.