Lucas Bell 
Muscle cars and drag racing are as intertwined in American culture as apple pie. A simple mention of one will almost certainly conjure up images of the other, complete with a mental soundtrack of smokey burnouts and lopey V8 engines. However the world is changing, and our proclivities towards thirsty, fire breathing motors are shifting. In order to prove that drag racing will be here to stay in the electrified future, Ford have just rolled out the new Mustang Cobra Jet 1400. And it runs 8-second quarter mile times.
By comparison, the Hemi-powered Mopar Drag Pak puts down 7-second times, and is relatively affordable for a race car. Just throwing that out there. Ford won’t disclose how much the one-of-one Cobra Jet 1400 cost.
But let’s not get bogged down in the details here. Because what’s going on here is still an incredible feat, and the all-electric Ford Mustang Cobra Jet 1400 is the latest example of the Blue Oval flexing their EV development capabilities. The muscle car is an all-out drag racing machine, not unlike the Cobra Jets that compete in the NHRA Sportsman Class. However, this particular Mustang is fitted with a motor-inverter package consisting of four PN-250-DZR inverters mated to a pair of DS-250-115s. The system is run at 800 volts and up to 700 amps, with a maximum output of 350kW at each motor. That’s enough juice for the Mustang Cobra Jet 1400 to produce 1,502 peak horsepower at the wheels. And because it is electric, that power is available from a dead stop.
What that means in terms of performance is staggering. The electric Ford Mustang Cobra Jet 1400 will rip off the 1/4 in just 8.27 seconds at 168 miles per hour. For comparison, the oh-so-fast Shelby GT500 needs 11.5 seconds to chew through the 1320-mark. The battery-powered Cobra Jet is so fast in fact that AEM-EV and Ford Performance had to design an entirely new electronic control architecture for the car. The chassis tuning was also a challenge with 1,502 horsepower to work with, so Ford called in help from their partners in mLE and Watson.
There is no denying the performance capability of electric vehicles like the Mustang Cobra Jet 1400. With over three times the horsepower of a Mustang GT, we would expect it to be fast. However, there’s something still unsatisfying about watching such a killer run happen in mostly silence. You can tune in to the NHRA U.S. Nationals this weekend to watch the EV muscle car take on a gasoline powered Cobra Jet, though we think we know how that race is going to end up.
