As it emerges that Volkswagen’s terrifyingly fast ID R averaged the equivalent of 17mpg while crushing the Nurburgring lap record, the list of reasons to defend ICE has grown very thin indeed…

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There’s nothing quite like the organic noise of a wonderful petrol engine. Whether your dish du jour is a woofly twin-turbo V8, a furious N/A V10 or a melodious, soulful V12 – or any one of a dozen different particularly sonorous engine configurations – nothing can replace the sound of your favourite engines under load. My hand is up; I’m guilty as charged. At CT we do like to make a fuss about that. From the 4.7-litre Maserati V8 in the old GranCabrio to today’s bombastic blown 4.0-litre AMG flagship, I’ve not been shy about placing noise as the one reason why EVs can’t replace petrol-driven sports cars.

In wing-tastic Pikes Peak spec, the ID R smashed the course record

And yet… even to we most die-hard supporters of good ol’ suck-squeeze-bang-blow, the list of arguments in favour of turning liquidised ancient dead things into forward motion is growing bum-troublingly thin. Earlier this week we reported on how the Volkswagen ID R completed its bonkers 6m 05s lap of the Green Hell at an energy usage equivalent of 17mpg; about the same as what an M3 will give you on a quick blast to and from the shops. The more you think about it, the more amazing it becomes.

For a car as rampantly quick as the ID R to make a circuit of such a fuel-hungry track using so relatively little energy is a brutal uppercut to the jaw of internal combustion. All of a sudden we’re reaching a technological event horizon whereby electric power can give more real-world speed, with better refinement, in a way that’s (on the face of it) much kinder to the planet. Not just that, though: the key buzzword of the 2010s has been efficiency, and in that respect the ID R represents a quantum leap.