It is a well-known fact that electric vehicles and their wealth of instant torque are powerful weapons in drag races. But can Ford’s fastest EV take on its most powerful V8?

Edmunds decided to find out by pitting the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 against the Mustang Mach-E GT Performance. The two performance-focused cars with the Mustang name at the height of modern technology are actually closer on paper than you might imagine.

In Edmunds testing, the Shelby is only 0.1 seconds faster to 60 mph (96 km/h) than the Mach-E, with the former reaching highway speed in 3.7 seconds and the latter in 3.8 seconds.

Read Also: The 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E GT Performance Limits… Performance After 80mph

Since the ICE-powered Mustang Shelby GT500 has to funnel all of its power to the rear wheels, it’s a handful to launch, especially when you’re on an unprepared surface, as the hosts find in this video. That means that the AWD Mustang Mach-E GT Performance actually gets off the line much faster than its competitor.

As others have also discovered, though, what the Mustang Mach-E GT Performance gains off the line, it loses a little farther down the track. Edmunds’ Ryan Zummallen complains that, with only five seconds at full power, the EV tops out much faster than V8-powered Shelby.

As they cross the line in the first race, the GT500 manages to tap into its high-end power and just beat the Mustang Mach-E GT Performance, which leads Zummallen to try and race more tactically.

“You know, I guess getting five seconds of full power only, I guess I could try to game it a little bit, maybe go a little bit lighter right off the line because I’m gonna get a gap either way and then try and hit it,” he said.

This proves not to be wise and in the second race, the GT500 beats the Mustang Mach-E GT handily.

Still, the initial result is an impressive one for the Mach-E, which proves itself to be almost as fast as a Shelby GT500 in a drag race. That’s not a result I would have likely believed without witnessing it, but as is often the case with EVs, seeing is believing.

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