Mark your calendars with the date of May 17 because that's when Rimac Automobili showed Elon Musk's Tesla how to break out of the Roadster 2.0 vaporware realm and into the real world of posting 23 performance records in a single day!
That is right, the Tesla Roadster and many other EV supercars like the Lotus Evija now face an uphill battle to claim the throne of "the ultimate record-breaking hypercar," as the all-electric Rima Nevera has set the new benchmark for the 0-400-0 km/h (0-249-0 mph) acceleration and braking test along with 22 other acceleration and braking records!
Born in 2018 as the Rimac C_Two at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show, the successor of the Rimac Concept One was rechristened Nevera when it launched. It is twinned with the Pininfarina Battista EV performance hypercar, and both are based on the same architecture and share the production line at the Bugatti Rimac headquarters in Croatia.
No more than 150 units of the two-door electric butterfly-style coupe will be manufactured – making it even more exclusive than its corporate sibling Bugatti Chiron. Certainly, EV hypercars are not for everyone just yet. But that opinion is subject to change as Rimac takes its Nevera model to new heights. Sometimes, all in the span of just one day!
So, one fine day a special Rimac Nevera – liveried after the Rimac BMW e-M3, Mate Rimac's brainchild and the EV car that inspired the entire Rimac Automobili saga – was at the Automotive Testing Papenburg (ATP) facility in Germany to take advantage of its cool four km-long (2.49-mile) straights. Somehow, independent test teams from gurus like Dewesoft and RaceLogic were also present, and they all decided to fiddle around with the EV hypercar to see what would come out of it.
Joking aside, it turns out the Rimac Nevera outperformed its official specifications on numerous occasions, even as "all acceleration records were completed with a standard one-foot rollout and (the car was) equipped with road-legal Michelin Cup 2 R tires on non-prepped asphalt." Most importantly, the "ultimate test of hypercar straight line performance" was passed with flying colors, with the Rimac Nevera achieving the 0-400-0 kph (0-249-0 mph) record in a new all-time benchmark of 29.93 seconds, which is allegedly more than a second faster than the previous record holder.
Plus, among the 23 independently-verified performance records (now crowned as the most in a single day), which go nicely alongside the recent top speed record for production EVs, there were also highlights like the zero to 60 mph (96 kph) time of 1.74s instead of the official 1.85s, the quarter-mile ET of 8.25s, the standing mile in 20.59s, or the 62 mph (100 kph) to zero distance of 28.96 meters. That is pretty bonkers, right?
Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution. Full profile
Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?
Google News