Yeah, an electric pump uses just a dummy pully so it doesn't matter if it actually spins or not. There are advantages to an electric pump. One, no parasitic loss from pumping the coolant around freeing up a few extra ponies. And when you're idling in traffic with no air flowing is when you need the rest of your cooling system to work more efficiently. At idle your mechanical H2O pump is pumping the least volume of water when you need the most. An electric pump will pump the max volume at all times regardless of engine speed. I have actually seen my temp gauge go down while sitting in the staging lanes. If you do go to the track you can also turn the pump and fan on while the engine is off and minimize cool down times from over an hour to literally about 15 minutes. You do need to bring an external battery or power source but you can do back to back runs without any heat soak. Anyways I don't think there are any downsides to running an electric pump, only some advantages. To me, it's a no brainer and have been running electric pumps on most of my race cars builds. Plus if your belt ever breaks you can still get around as long as your battery holds out without overheating. It has saved me in the past and have driven home 12 miles with no belt.