NASCAR CEO Reveals One OEM Already Shot Down an All-Electric Racing Series

What’s Happening?

One week after the NASCAR world thought the sport’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Series could be headed down an electric path, NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell revealed that NASCAR previously presented a manufacturer with a concept for an “electric series,” an opportunity that the manufacturer turned down.

One of the most viral stories of the 2026 NASCAR season so far (albeit short-lived) was talk that the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series could become an electric Crossover Utility body style racing series.

This discussion sparked via an interview between newly minted NASCAR President of NASCAR Event Management John Probst, then the Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Development Officer, and Adam Stern of Sports Business Journal.

In this report, fans and some industry members initially took away that NASCAR had discussed utilizing their CUV bodied EV as the official race car of the NASCAR OAP Series in the future from this line, “Probst said NASCAR is evaluating the potential of one day using its crossover utility vehicle EV in the second-tier O’Reilly Auto Parts series to give that division a better brand identity.”

In the days after this report, NASCAR officials across the board clarified that Probst meant the CUV body style and not converting the OAP Series to an EV Series.

Still, the discussion of future electrification is ongoing, something that the sport’s new CEO, Steve O’Donnell, spoke on during a recent interview with former driver and analyst Kenny Wallace.

When asked about the confusion around a potential electric overhaul of the series, O’Donnell said that NASCAR had previously pitched this to manufacturers that had asked for a future electric conversion, but, when presented with it, shot the idea down.

“Say, five years ago, one of our OEMs said, ‘If you are not hybrid, within the next two years, we are out of NASCAR.’ Oh, okay, so we’re gonna better start looking at that. Within a year, they said, ‘If you are not electric, we are out of NASCAR.’ So then we didn’t say we’re going all electric, but we said we’d put a car together. That same group, then, when we presented the potential for an electric series, said, ‘Well that seems really dumb, that’s not NASCAR, that’s not entertaining.’ We said, ‘We agree.'” — Steve O’Donnell

While he did not disclose who this manufacturer was, fans have their own theories, though most of them have held little weight or reason.

O’Donnell went on to allude to the fact that this discussion was part of the origin of the electric CUV that NASCAR has demonstrated at several tracks over the past few seasons.

“So what we did was we put that technology in place just to showcase that we could, depending on where the world goes, you got to be ready,” O’Donnell said.

As of press time, NASCAR has not announced any formal plans to change the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series or create an all-electric racing series with their CUV or any other vehicle type.

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