2022: Hoonigan Electrikhana, Las Vegas

Moment in drift history · Global

Ken Block in the Audi S1 Hoonitron: drift-adjacent cinema in an electric, all-wheel-drive purpose-built car. The genre opens its door to EVs while the culture is still arguing whether they belong inside.

Ken Block's Gymkhana films began with Gymkhana Practice in 2008 as a precision car-control format. By 2022 the format was fourteen years old and the petrol cars he had used were starting to feel like ancestors. The Electrikhana film was the deliberate next step: same camera language, same choreographed precision, but a purpose-built Audi S1 Hoonitron developed by Audi Sport at Neckarsulm.

The Hoonitron is a full-electric AWD car with two motor-generator units giving 500 kW (about 670 hp) in total, fed by four 14.4 kWh battery packs (57.6 kWh, 800 V) and styled after the Audi Sport quattro S1. Block drove it through the streets, casinos and parking garages of Las Vegas. The footage looks unmistakeably Gymkhana, even without combustion noise.

For drift culture, the film was the visible opening of the genre to EVs. The purists had been arguing whether silent electric drift could ever count. Electrikhana did not settle the argument; it just demonstrated, on the most cinematic platform available, that the visual language transfers without the engine note.