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Whether or not electric cars actually help the environment is a subject of debate these days. One recent study concluded that a person driving an electric car who used energy produced by a coal-fired power plant is actually doing more damage to the environment than they would if they drove a conventional gasoline-powered vehicle.

Some of the more recent developments in the technology used to manufacture electric cars is allowing some manufacturers to build electric cars that are much more powerful than ever before. There are also more models that could be considered luxury vehicles, making electric cars a more tempting choice for people that are accustomed to expensive things. This list of the most expensive electric cars is interesting.

1. Rimac Concept One

It’s obvious from this first entry that many of these ultra-expensive electric automobiles will have names that are not at all familiar to those of us that don’t own our own island or luxury yacht. That may be just as well since this exotic electric hotrod’s price tag could trigger a fatal attack of “sticker shock!” It’s retail price is listed at $980,000, which is only $20,000 shy of a million dollars! For that price, buyers could reasonably expect to get something pretty special in return, and if you consider that this is the fastest electric car in the world, that would probably do the trick for many potential customers. This electric rocket on wheels can reach speeds of up to 310 miles per hour (500 kmh). When fully-charged the Rimac Concept One will take you about 370 miles, and do so very quickly if you desire.

2. Mercedes Benz SLS AMG Electric Drive

The name Mercedes Benz is certainly not unfamiliar to most people and is recognized worldwide as being synonymous with luxury automobiles. This limited edition sports machine is the electric equivalent to the German auto maker’s gasoline-powered SLS AMG and it carries a very hefty $544,236 price tag. Even though it has four electric motors on board, its top speed of 155 miles per hour (250 kmh) pales in comparison to some of the other electric speed demons on this list.

3. Lightning GT

British auto maker Lightning is now in the electric car business and the Lightning GT is the first all-electric automobile they have offered. The car is expected to retail for somewhere around $300,000 and their current plans involve offering just 20 models for sale, so competition among would-be buyers could be pretty fierce. This electric car is reportedly capable of going from 0 to 60 miles per hour in five seconds and it’s top speed is 130 miles per hour (209 kmh).

4. Eliica

An electric car is a pretty unique concept to begin with but the engineers and designers at Keio University in Tokyo have definitely taken it to a whole new level with the introduction of the Eliica. Their 8-wheeled car looks more like something that might be seen in a 1960s science fiction movie! It’s extremely unique appearance sets it apart from the other sleek-looking models on this list and frankly, this car borders on downright ugly. The designers appear to be betting heavily that wealthy individuals will be willing to part with $225,000 to own one of these bizarre-looking automobiles. Despite it’s clunky appearance, the Eliica can get up and move out when it wants to. It has a top speed of 230 miles per hour which is more than sufficient to leave most stock gasoline-powered cars in the dust. There’s no question that driving down the street in one of these oddly retro-futuristic automobiles will turn a lot of heads.

5. Audi R8 e-tron

This is probably not the electric car the buyer with a serious need for speed will be interested in. It’s the slowest car on the list with a top speed of 125 miles per hour (200 kmh) and it can go from a standstill to 62 miles per hour in 4.2 seconds. The Audi R8 e-tron is powered by four electric motors that each output 140 kW of power. Audi decided to produce only a small number of these automobiles that are priced in the $150,000 vicinity. This electric sports car was definitely designed to look more like a racing car than most of the other entries on this list.

6. Tesla Roadster Model S

Unlike the Rimac or Eliica, the Tesla brand is likely to be familiar to a lot more people even if they don’t have any plans to by an electric car. It’s only a select few, however, that will have any serious intention of getting a Roadster Model S of their own since they are priced at $119,720 for the top-of-the-line model. Even so, it is a heck of a lot less than you would have to pay for a Rimac Concept One. The Tesla won’t get you to your destination as fast as the Rimac, in fact its top speed of 130 miles per hour (209 kmh) is less than half that of the Concept One. Still, driving a Tesla is likely to impress your friends, and by most accounts, they are pretty cool cars.

The topic of death is one that will never cease to generate interest, and no one is more interesting than the man who is sanctioned by the state to administer death. He is put into such a unique position; a killer of killers, a righter-of-wrongs so to speak.

How does someone reconcile their duties with what they know in their heart? Are these men really servants of justice, or are they no better than the men they send on to the next life? Like so much of humanity, the answer often lies somewhere between two of the extremes. What follows is the story of ten executioners who struggled to cope (or didn’t) with the massive burden of responsibility that executioners carry.

10. Edwin Davis

As civilization has moved ever forward, we have shed many of the barbaric practices of the past. Practices such as killing undesirables by brutally hanging them. Instead, we started brutally killing them with electricity. Hanging is far from pleasant, instead of the intended broken neck, convicts often would asphyxiate—a slow and painful process that could take up to half an hour.

The state of New York saw its first execution by electrocution on August 6, 1890. Edwin Davis was the executioner charged with ending the life of William Kemmler, a convicted murder. Both men understood the significance of the event, and Kemmler is reported as hamming up his fifteen minutes of fame with a wild stage bow.

The thing about new technology is that it doesn’t always work on the first try. The first pull of the switch administered a supposedly lethal surge lasting 17 seconds. When the circuit was broken, Kemmler was still alive and trying to breathe. Not to be discouraged, Davis again pulled the switch, though the second shock went on for more than a few minutes. Apparently, the effects of the electrocution were so horrible that a reporter who was present fainted, and witnesses gagged at the smell of Kemmler’s charred flesh.

After a 24 year career, Davis retired in 1914. From his time as a ‘prison electrician’ (a misleadingly mundane job title by today’s standards) Davis administered lethal doses of electricity to more than 300 people in multiple states. While some men who dealt death to convicts had trouble sleeping at night, Davis was a different sort of man. He boasted about his work and was even the builder of the first electric chair back in 1890.

9. John Hulbert

Edwin Davis was an accomplished executioner with a hefty resume of over 300 electrocutions, and he was boastful until the end. His protégé, a man named John W. Hulbert Jr., was less enamored with the grisly business of killing people. Hulbert took over for Davis when he retired, and retired himself in 1926.

During his career he was responsible for the deaths of over 140 convicts, but he never shared his mentor’s enthusiasm. When asked about his retirement, Hulbert said “I got tired of killing people.” The stress associated with his job was more than he bargained for, and his fears got the best of him.

When he went out, Hulbert was armed with a gun for fear of reprisals from friends or relatives of the convicts he had executed—remember there were more than 140. He built up a routine to protect himself in other ways too. After he performed his obligation to the state and to justice he would dine at the same restaurant. He would always order the same meal and he relied on one single waiter who was generously compensated. Hulbert lived in constant fear that his food would be poisoned as a retribution for a death caused at his hands.

In the end, it turned out that he had nothing to fear from strangers. It was the stress of his grim profession and perhaps some imbalance within in him that ended John Hulbert’s life. In 1929, he went down into his basement and took his own life with a gun.

8. Robert Elliott

Next in the line of executioner succession is a man named Robert Elliott. Like his predecessor, Elliott was a private and worried man who attempted to conceal his identity for fear of the repercussions associated with being a state sanctioned killer. Despite his attempts, his name became public less than a year after he began his career and he became the recipient of a host of threatening letters. The worst of these was a bomb hurled at his house. While the front porch was destroyed Elliott was unharmed.

Topping the career of Edwin Davis he successfully executed 386 convicts on behalf of the state and of justice. While he was officially employed in New York, he also carried out executions in several other states. While Hulbert’s career slowly ate away at his insides and began to unravel his psyche, Elliot was apparently unfazed by the tremendous weight of his position. It wasn’t until he eventually penned his memoirs that people learned his true feelings on the topic of capital punishment.

Elliott went to church every Sunday, and his spirituality can be found in his assessment of the death penalty. Elliott firmly believed that justice and revenge should be carried out by God, not by men. The way Elliott saw things, he carried out his duties to ensure that at the very least the condemned men whose lives he took did not suffer.

7. Joseph Francel

Like Elliott and Hulbert before him, Joseph Francel resisted the scrutiny of the public eye as an executioner. He worked in Sing Sing from 1939 to 1953, and try as he might, his involvement in the sentences of several high profile convicts.

Described as a soft spoken man from the Catskill Mountains, a rural and mountainous region in upstate New York, Francel was responsible for the executions of 137 convicted men and women. Several famous mobsters met their end when he pulled the switch, two of whom were the Rosenbergs. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg met the electric chair through a conviction that they were stealing atomic secrets for sale to the Soviets. While the execution of Julius Rosenberg went smoothly, his wife required a second dose of electricity. This raised eyebrows, and concerns were raised that she died inside the Jewish Sabbath.

Citing poor pay and friction with prison administration, Francel resigned. Records indicate that his compensation per execution was competitive: he was paid $150 per electrocuted convict.

6. James Van Hise

While the first electrocution occurred in New York in the year 1890, it wasn’t until 1907 that the first state sanctioned execution involving an electric chair occurred in New Jersey. It was turn of the century execution heavy hitter Edwin Davis that pulled the switch both times. Davis’ execution in the Trenton state prison was the first of many, but in other parts of New Jersey, the state retained a sour veteran hangman by the name of James Van Hise.

After hanging 250 convicts throughout the course of his career, Van Hise was sitting in the hot seat (so to speak) for replacement. The modern world was looking down on the barbarism that accompanied hanging and instead sought the clean and humane approach of death by electrocution. More electrocutions meant less hangings, and while Edwin Davis would go on to make more money, Van Hise was facing replacement.

To remedy the often unreliable and grotesquely inhumane act of hanging—and to prevent his trade from fading into history—Van Hise decided that a counter weight that would pull upwards on the victim’s neck was a more reliable method that relying on gravity and the drop to break a convict’s neck.

The first time Van Hise was afforded an opportunity to test out his new invention he was in one of his characteristically unpleasant moods. He hurried convicted wife-killer Edwin Tapley onto the gallows and cut his last words short with the traditional black execution hood. The weighted system was an unmitigated failure. It took nearly fifteen minutes for Tapley to expire, and Van Hise never lived down his backfired attempt to build a better mouse trap.