There were high hopes for that Rimac refrigerator When it went into production, even the hypercar’s inventor couldn’t imagine why the world’s fastest electric vehicle (EV) would struggle to increase sales.
Croatia-based Rimac launched the Nevera in 2021 as a production version of its C_Two concept and plans to build 150 examples of the electric hypercar.
As part of its marketing campaign, numerous records were set, including the highest top speed of an electric vehicle (412 km/h), the fastest time for an electric vehicle on the Nürburgring Nordschleife (7:05:298) and even the Guinness World Record for reversing (275 .74 km/h). H).
However, according to company founder Mate Rimac, barely more than 50 examples of the 1,427 kW, 2 million euro ($3.26 million) electric hypercar were sold.
Autocar Speaking at the Financial Times’ Future of the Car conference, Mr Rimac reportedly attributed the battle to oust Neveras to high-end customers turning away from electric vehicles as battery power becomes mainstream.
“At that time [when the C_Two concept was unveiled] We thought that in a few years electric cars would be cool – the best cars, or with the highest performance and so on,” Mr Rimac said at the conference.
“We notice 1715302209 As electrification becomes more mainstream, industry leaders are looking to differentiate themselves.
“The regulators and some OEMs [manufacturers] Press it [EVs] so much so that the narrative has changed. They force things on us that we don’t want, so people are a little repulsed by the whole forced application
“I am always against it. I think everything has to be based on performance. So the product must be better.
“An Apple Watch can do everything better [than an analogue watch]. It can do 1000 things more, it’s much more precise and can measure your heart rate. But no one would pay $200,000 for an Apple Watch.”
Mr. Rimac’s belief that gasoline-powered super sports cars are still at the cutting edge also applies to the Bugatti brand, which is majority owned by Rimac.
Bugatti previously announced that the successor to its quad-turbo W16-powered Chiron hypercar will use a V16 engine instead of an electric drivetrain, as some had expected.
Autocar He reportedly added: “If we had made an electric Bugatti, I’m sure we would have sold a lot of it because of the brand,” although it would be “nowhere near” as popular as the V16-powered model.
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MORE: Rimac Nevera electric hypercar sets new Nürburgring record