IEDEI

As I mentioned before, there are some very interesting sports car concepts coming around lately using electric drivetrains and future technologies—-I was admittedly sort of blown away when I saw pics of the Rimac Concept One.  I’d been aware of this company’s existence for a while, as I recall reading them testing their technologies on an E30 BMW for a while prior to actually venturing into building a car.   Now they’ve built a car….and just look at it!  The design reminds me of a modern-day DeTomaso resurrection for some reason—but the technology is all future.   By design standards, I think this is gloriously proportioned.  Yes the use of carbon fibre on the side panels is all a bit hippy-dippy-car-guy-cliche; but when it comes to supercars (or supercar-like cars), it’s difficult on where to draw the line between CF actually being functional and whether it’s there more for gimmick (i’m going to guess the 2nd option is more than likely on most supercars, even).

So how does Rimac going about selling their idea?  With this bold and slightly overconfident statement of intent:

“Even primitive (DC) electric motors can outperform any combustion engine in almost all fields. Efficiency, extremely fast response, wide power band, compact size, regenerative braking, high torque… Those are just some advantages of our new permanent magnet synchronous motor generation which we developed exclusively for the Concept_One. 
 
Our unique powertrain is divided into four sub-systems, each consisting of one motor, inverter and reduction gearbox. Each of those systems drives one wheel, completely independent one from the other. Sophisticated ECUs control each of those systems using the input of many precise sensors placed all over the car. This architecture allows a new approach to vehicle dynamics. We call it – All Wheel Torque Vectoring (AWTV). 
 
Each wheel can independently accelerate or decelerate hundreds of times per second, helping to achieve the desired (driver selectable) handling. Together with the very low center of gravity, extremely high torque available almost from zero RPM and the lack of shift interruptions, the Concept_One delivers a completely new driving experience.”

All I know is that it looks pretty great….remains to be seen if the car actually lives up to such great claims.   Oh, and I forgot to mention—–they say it has 1088hp.   *gasp*

Oh, and here are some videos.  It lives:

src:  Rimac