Almost immediately upon flying around the track in the Honda eGX Racing Kart Concept, my lingering bias against the idea of electric karting was fried like a bug in a zapper.

NASCAR is not the first motorsports organization to get into electric car racing. Formula E is an all-electric racing series that started a decade ago. But its fan base is far smaller than NASCAR’s.

The Formula E electric-vehicle racing series was conceived in 2011. Nearly a decade later, EVs are well on the way to mass commercialization. Airspeeder, ...