The Rimac Nevera has been nearly five years in the making and, in its lifetime, the Croatian company’s rapid rise has seen them move from one to three production facilities. The first electric hypercar is soon to be delivered to customers at last, and Autoproducts are proud to have played a part in its remarkable journey.
34-year-old Croatian entrepreneur Mate Rimac has long been dubbed the European Elon Musk, but with the 2022 release of the Rimac Nevera there is substantial evidence to suggest this ‘game-changing’ vehicle is about to shock the entire vehicle market. And we’re not just talking electric vehicles (EVs) either.
If you want the headline figures, then the Nevera is capable of a top speed of 258 mph. It can achieve 0-60mph in 1.85 seconds and 0-100mph in 4.3 seconds. The four wheels combined can produce 1427 kW and 2360 Nm of torque. These are stats which have been described as “mindboggling” by performance car experts, and would have been deemed unthinkable for the EV sector even five years ago.
Developing a game-changing hypercar
The Nevera has involved around 1000 people in its research and development over the last four and a half years, which started life at Rimac’s original headquarters at Sveta Nedelja in Croatia. The company’s success in EV manufacture and then buying-out Bugatti and supplying engine drives and battery technology to the likes of Renault, Jaguar, Aston Martin and SEAT, meant that they quickly outgrew that facility and started work on a lavish new headquarters just outside Zagreb. This is an eye-watering refurbishment of an abandoned castle, and will be the biggest single facility in Croatia when it’s finished.
But it isn’t quite ready yet, so much of the R&D on the Nevera has taken place at a temporary facility; a refurbished shopping centre in Zagreb that had been empty for ten years but now houses over 500 Rimac employees.
At this facility Rimac engineers have spent years tinkering with Nevera prototypes and undertaking a detailed programme of computer simulations, crash testing, track testing, wind tunnel testing, winter testing and durability testing; attempting to simulate the whole lifetime of the car squeezed into just a few months. Rimac can produce every single component of the vehicle in-house at this facility; even the copper for the batteries, the upholstery for the seats, the gearboxes, the power electrics, the IPUs, the infotainment and the battery systems.
Vehicle protection covers for the very best
The end result is a quite incredible feat of engineering, which of course looks amazing, but is also capable of faster acceleration than any internal combustion engine vehicle.
Autoproducts were able to supply tailorede and bespoke bodywork protection for the Rimac Nevera, which were used throughout the prolonged testing and development of this first electric hypercar, and we were very honoured to do so. Just 150 vehicles will be produced, the first ones are rolling off the assembly lines now and will be with customers before the end of 2022.
When you see the Nevera, it is not hard to agree that this is a game-changing moment for EV technology and for vehicle technology generally, and it’s incredibly exciting that Autoproducts played a small part in this industry-defining shift in vehicle capability.
