Sports cars are supposed to be light; electric cars are heavy. Changing regulations have chimed the slow death of exclusively internal-combustion engine-powered machines, and the first casualties are those marvels of engineering that prioritize performance above all else: supercars.

If you’re a company like McLaren, it’s in your best interest to keep making cars; pivoting to something else after 60 years is hard, and Bruce McLaren seemed to have few other hobbies besides driving, wrenching and water-skiing. To continue selling them, McLaren needed to introduce batteries and an electric motor. Of course, that presented a dilemma — one that the engineering team behind the new McLaren Artura was determined to solve from the beginning.

See, the 94-horsepower axial-flux electric motor and 7.4 kWh of batteries, plus all the ancillary equipment to support the Artura’s electrical system, weighs 284 pounds. McLaren could’ve turned up with a 3,500-pound supercar, but that’s not really something it or many of its customers want. Instead, it went on a tear, eliminating as much mass as possible from the front to the back of its first comprehensively new car in 12 years.

The campaign touched every system — from the chassis to the powertrain, the suspension and even the seats. In isolation, none of the gains are earth-shattering. Together, they’re dramatic. The Artura weighs only about 100 more pounds than the 570S it replaces in the marque’s lineup.