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Another Electric Bugatti Killer Shows Its Forms for the First Time

If the mass-market electric car market is struggling at the time, that of super-power hypercars appears to be striving for some bizarre reason. We're beginning to lose count of all the startup companies that are announcing vehicles with 1,000-plus horsepower and price tags that don't shy away from six zeros.
NextEV electric hypercar 39 photos
Photo: NextEV
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As strange as this trend might seem, it's nothing more than a reflection of what Tesla did with the Roadster, only aligned to the requirements of the present moment. As a company with no history and virtually zero credentials, you lack the financial power to build a high-volume mass-market product and the credibility to sell it.

Those two can be taken care by first breaking the ice with an expensive electric hypercar. And when we say "expensive," we mean "are you kidding me, I could buy a whole country with that money" kind of expensive. It's what the Croatian manufacturer called Rimac is doing - to name just one of those in line to produce cars that promise fantastic performances and prices to match - and it's what Chinese enterprise NextEV looks set to reproduce.

The company's name will immediately sound familiar to those who bother watching the Formula E electric racing series, since NextEV is one of the teams involved, but outside of that very restricted circle, it is almost unknown. But if this image turns out to be accurate, that will surely change.

The company's first car design sketch surfaced on Chinese social media websites, but then Electrek caught eye of it and had since been able to confirm the authenticity of the picture and its contents. Wich is a very good thing because our Chinese is a little bit rusty. There isn't that much that can be said about the car other than it looks very well sorted. It seems to have gullwing doors, which should justify some of that exorbitant price, but it's what backs the rest of it that sounds even more exciting.

The same website managed to grab a few info on the vehicle's specs, and it's unsurprisingly impressive. The exact motor configuration is unknown, but the total output is expected to go over 1,000 kW (1,360 hp), which should grant it ground shattering acceleration performances. We're talking scraping the limits of the laws of physics kind of quick.

Of course, getting excited over a designer's sketch is as smart as looking through a cooking magazine with pictures when you're starving. But given everything that's happened so far (NextEV managed to rais $500 million from its investors) and the fact the company isn't exactly invisible given its involvement in Formula E, we're willing to bet the yet unnamed hypercar will enter production. But we've been wrong before.
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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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