► New Rimac Nevera special edition
► Celebrates rocket-like 15-year rise
► Will be on show at Goodwood FOS
‘To celebrate 15 years of achieving the impossible’ – that’s how Rimac explains the purpose of the Nevera 15th Anniversary Edition. The latest version of this astonishing electric car is heavy on the copper and congratulatory graphics (and why not, all things considered), just nine examples will be built. Each priced from 2,350,000 Euros.
That’s just shy of £2m at current exchange rates. But while it’s sometime hard to care about these mega-money machines that may never even see a public road, the Rimac Nevera does feel like something worth celebrating.
The Rimac Nevera is surely not 15 year old…
The anniversary in question is not the car. It’s not even the car company. Rather it references the point in time when Mate Rimac decided to rebuild his E30 BMW 3-series with electric power.
In 15 short years since that moment, the resulting Rimac Group has risen to the point where it’s tied up with Porsche and Bugatti, and will be assisting BMW with the creation of its next-generation EV batteries. The continuing development of Rimac’s electric drivetrain technology has made it one of the most influential automotive brands in the world.
‘Honestly, when I started to tinker with my first car in a garage, I couldn’t have even dreamt of being where we are 15 years later,’ says CEO Rimac. ‘There were so many times in the early years that we really thought the company wouldn’t make it, so reaching the 15-year milestone felt like it was worthy of a celebration.’
He continues: ‘The 15th Anniversary Edition Nevera is the car that marks our progress, revelling [sic] just how far we’ve come. From garage to global; from worrying about keeping the lights on to a 2bn EUR valuation; from converted BMW 3-series to the world’s fastest accelerating production car and from hypercar maker to Tier 1 EV tech supplier and energy storage pioneers. All achieved in a country where all of this would have sounded like science fiction at the time of founding the company.’
So what’s special about the Nevera 15th Anniversary Edition?
Well, aside from being a variant of ‘the most powerful production car in the world’ – developed from the Rimac C_Two concept, the four-motor four-wheel drive system beneath that slinky body produces 1888bhp and 1725lb ft – it’s got a lot of copper going on.
From the special paint on the outside to the anodised copper switch gear on the inside, this is all a deliberate reference to the importance of this metal in electric connections.
The outside also gets a new visible carbonfibre splitter, two-tone wheels, Rimac circuit-board patterning and 15 Years Anniversary badging. On the inside, buyers can choose between black or white finishing, depending on how they prefer to set-off the copper accenting, plus 2009-2024 script on the centre armrest and 15 embossed into the headrests.
The £2m price includes ‘all options’ and a set of matched luggage.
The first customer car will be at the 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed, where it will take to the hill – presumably not in too much anger…
Rimac Nevera electric hypercar key stats
All that power would be useless without control, and the Nevera has what the company describes as a ‘supercomputer’ managing all its in-house designed control units and the 1MegaWatt inverter that makes the huge power distribution to each wheel possible. Rimac labels the whole thing Rimac All-Wheel Torque Vectoring 2.
The Nevera has set 27 performance records – including the fastest ever reversing speed – and does 0-62mph in 1.81sec, 0-186mph in 9.22sec, and a top speed of 256mph. That makes it the fastest EV on sale. It also holds the Goodwood Festival of Speed production car record, completing the hillclimb in 49.32 seconds.
The battery pack is 120kWh capacity, and the driving range is a claimed 300 miles per charge. Though presumably not if you’re in a hurry. Charging speeds of up to 500kW are possible – which means 10-80 per cent in 19 minutes – but the fastest routinely available chargers are 350kW, which means you’ll need about 25 minutes for the same.
Or just get the butler to pick it up in the truck when you’re juiced out. What a thing.