Hyundai teams with Rimac for electric N-Sport supercar
Rimac is chiefly known for making the electric hypercar that almost killed former ‘Top Gear’ and current ‘The Grand Tour’ presenter Richard Hammond in a fiery tumble down a Swiss hillside.
While the Concept One Car, with its Bugatti-baiting all-electric performance (Rimac claims a 0-100km/h time of just 2.5secs) is it’s calling card, the Croatian company is better known in the motor industry for its battery expertise.
That expertise has attracted the attention of Hyundai, which has just announced an investment of €80 million in the fledgling company.
“Rimac is an innovative company with outstanding capabilities in high-performance electric vehicles,” said Euisun Chung, Executive Vice Chairman of Hyundai Motor Group. “Its startup roots and abundant experience collaborating with automakers combined with technological prowess makes Rimac the ideal partner for us. We look forward to collaborating with Rimac on our road to clean mobility.”
Clean mobility also apparently means rapid mobility. Hyundai has confirmed that, as part of its collaboration with Rimac, the two will work on a new, standalone, mid-engined all-electric sports car for Hyundai’s N-Sport high performance brand.
It’s a model that Hyundai has long promised, a ‘halo’ model designed to amplify the efforts of its N-branded hot hatches and the Hyundai World Rally Championship team. The two companies will also work on a high-performance hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
Thomas Schemera, Hyundai’s Head of High Performance vehicles and its motorsport division, previously confirmed to The Cork Independent that “my ambition is to make the brand great. To establish a high performance brand, we cannot do it overnight, even though we know what we have to do.
“We need a halo car that showcases the technology, and looks to the future, and shows off what we can do with N-Sport and N-Lines and everything else, and which makes the public aware of our competency, and our future vision. It will be a unique, standalone car.”
Founder and Chief Executive of Rimac Automobili, Mate Rimac said: “We are very impressed by the Hyundai Motor Group’s vision and prompt and decisive initiative. We believe that this technology partnership will create maximum value for our companies and their customers.
“Rimac is still a young and relatively small but fast-growing company. We see a strong investor and technology partner in Hyundai Motor Group and believe that this collaboration will charge the company’s position as a ‘tier-one’ electrification components supplier to the industry.”
Hyundai is not the only major investor which Rimac has attracted in recent years. Asia’s largest battery maker, Camel Group, owns a stake, while none other than Porsche took a ten per cent holding in Rimac last year. Rimac has also signed research and development deals with Aston Martin, Jaguar Land Rover, and Swedish HyperCard maker Koenigsegg. Not bad for a company that got its start when Rimac himself blew the engine on his 1984 BMW 3 Series and decided to replace it with a 600hp electric powertrain. That car, eventually called The Green Monster, set set five FIA-sanctioned acceleration records in April 2011, giving Rimac a suitably explosive, highly public, start in life.