In a rather comprehensive day's work, Rimac has broken more or less every relevant acceleration and braking record in the lofty world of hypercars, including rocketing from a standstill to 400 km/h (249 mph) and back to zero in less than 30 seconds.
Electrics can't yet take down gasoline-fired monsters like the SSC Tuatara in an outright top speed challenge, but you'd want to be rocking a pretty special combustion engine to pull up next to a Model S at a red light and lay down a challenge. Instant torque, lack of clutches, and insane levels of electronic precision in power delivery and traction control make for some pretty wild performance figures.
Rimac has established itself as the performance kingpin of the EV world. Its 1,914-horsepower (1,426-kW), 2,655 lb-ft (3,600-Nm) Nevera hypercar holds the top speed record for production EVs at 258 mph, and smashed the production car quarter mile by nearly a full second on debut. The Pininfarina Battista managed to break four of Rimac's acceleration records, but did so using a Rimac powertrain.
Now, Rimac has taken them all back – and more – in considerable style. In a single day at a German test track with 4.0-km (2.5-mile) straights, the Nevera bagged no less than 23 production car performance records, as independently verified by both Dewesoft and Racelogic, running Michelin Cup 2 R street-legal tires on non-prepped asphalt with a standard one-foot rollout.
According to Rimac's press release, "the Nevera now holds the title for most performance records broken in a single day. It effortlessly smashed existing benchmarks, running again and again under full throttle conditions without a single reliability issue or any significant loss of performance." Indeed, it even beat its own spec sheet, smashing the 0-60 mph mark in 1.74 seconds where Rimac had advertised 1.85 seconds.
Here's a list of the records broken:
"Growing up I always looked at the cars that made history moving the bar for performance, in awe of the kind of revolutionary technology they brought to the road," says founder and CEO Mate Rimac. "That is what is driving me from day one – to develop new technology that redefines what is possible. Today, I am proud to say that the car we’ve created can get to 400 km/h and back to 0 in less time than it took the McLaren F1 to accelerate up to 350 km/h. And not only that, but it can do it again and again, breaking every other performance record in the process. If you had a Nevera and access to a track, you could do it too."
He's not kidding, either. As you can see in the video embedded below, Rimac's test driver Goran Dr'ndak trusted the car's control systems so much that he was eating a frickin' ice cream cone as he passed the 300 km/h mark during one of the record runs.
The Nevera might be the reigning king of acceleration and braking, but at 2,300-odd kilograms (5,070 lb), much of that is its 120-kWh battery pack, it's a little lardy to make the same kind of statement on a track with corners.
That probably explains why Rimac hasn't taken it to the Nurburgring for a hot lap attempt as yet. Still, even if the outright production car record of 6:35.18, held by the hybrid Mercedes AMG One, is probably well out of reach, you'd think the Nevera would be in with a good chance to destroy the current production EV record, held by the Porsche Taycan Turbo S at 7:33.35.
We hope we get a chance to find out! Meanwhile, all eyes are now on the tiny McMurtry Spéirling, which has absolutely spanked the Nevera's acceleration times – in winter, on a cold, drying track, while speed limited to the point where it spent nearly half its quarter-mile run not accelerating – in a pre-production version that's probably not as fast as the production car. Mind you, the Spéirling does have an unfair advantage up its sleeve!
Source: Rimac