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  • Theo.

  • Age of the Electric Hypercar is upon us.

  • The Lotus Evora, the Tesla Roadster, the Pininfarina Batista on this re Maxie to imminent all have almost 2000 brake horsepower.

  • All have for Dr Look low and lean and promise face melting acceleration.

  • But nobody's had a chance to experience that sort.

  • Until now.

  • It's good.

  • Let's add some facts to my incomprehensible squealing, Shall we?

  • Back in 2008 when we first saw, it remarked, gave us a spec sheet for the sea to, and it read like this.

  • A full carbon fibre mono cock four motors, one for each wheel, producing 1887 brake horsepower on £1696.

  • Feet of talk curb way of around two tons, naught to 60 miles an hour in 1.85 seconds, not to 100 in 4.3 north to 186 in 11.8 and a top speed of 258 miles.

  • Now that makes it one of the very fastest cars ever built.

  • It also has a came range of 330 miles, 550 kilometers on the W.

  • L.

  • T P cycle and can top up north to 80% of its 120 kilowatt hour battery in 30 minutes, thanks to a charging capacity of up to 300 kilowatts.

  • However, as you can see from the camera phones on this girl, this is a two year old Shoko.

  • This is a protect type off the full production machine beer bomb with them out for performance a lot.

  • So today is very much a taster over here.

  • You want to think about acceleration.

  • It's no quiet as explosive out the blocks.

  • As you might imagine that because this is an early prototype with a two speed gear box on the back axle from for production.

  • Car is gonna be a single speed, but this is locked in second gear because that's all they need for the processes this car needs to validate way it picks up, then it's smooth.

  • It's quick.

  • I'm heading up here to be fair, which looks acceleration anyway, once you get there is a lot for me, it doesn't feel quite naughty, overriding sense that with this is the feeling of solidity, it's noisy.

  • It's a prototype.

  • You're gonna get that, you're gonna get stones pinging off it, and you can hear the tires and a wind whistling around the April issue.

  • But through my bum three, my fingers, it feels absolutely keyed in.

  • So when you turn the wheel, it just moves.

  • There's no slack chassis whatsoever.

  • That's the garden fiber.

  • Monaco that's super super stiff Suspension is attached directly to the carbon Monica.

  • It's a fantastic basis for a very, very fast carpets because everything together I love about this car is the fact that Remark drives a V eight and five.

  • He's a petrol head.

  • He's just a bloke that loves cars.

  • He didn't make an electric hypercar because he wanted to save the planet or prove anything in particular.

  • Lever thought using batteries and monitors were simply a better way to make a fast car It doesn't have.

  • The Ranger doesn't have repeatability of performance.

  • I mean, we're gonna find out with finished product later on, but this evidence, then it was time to pick up a passenger who I let drive for a little bit considering is his car.

  • Thanks for having me, I think, especially as I've been told, I sound a little bit like Richard Hammond, so I don't have any flashbacks.

  • Don't worry.

  • We're not gonna go there.

  • Just don't get happy every time you sit on the real of this girl.

  • Yes, I do.

  • But I can never just drive.

  • I always watch a ll, the details and all the data and, like, try to hear if there's something wrong and so yeah.

  • So for me, it's like a test drive every time.

  • How would you describe your driving stomach?

  • Smooth.

  • Aggressive.

  • Like this balances that one man going then how much, Sim?

  • How much power does this prototype on as an early prototype?

  • Does it produce in the moment around 1000 kilowatts?

  • What's that?

  • 1003 $100.

  • Okay, Why isn't limited?

  • Just tell me a bit about this approach type what stage of the process this comes from.

  • So every prototype has a different purpose.

  • This was actually the first running car did he produced almost a year ago.

  • Now, which means that it's basically based on 15 month old data.

  • So is the process is going on while you produce the card.

  • Yeah, and this was used to test the suspension and the battery.

  • And let's say the basics of the poetry.

  • So we didn't take care off the exterior interior.

  • So a lot of the stuff he was improvised duct tape.

  • So be printed.

  • Yeah, but used it.

  • Waas used for the suspension set up and saw.

  • And what he wanted to do first is to have a really good, uh, let's say, passive car meaning mechanical, great suspension, geometry, the kingdom antics of the suspension, the set up together with the tires because the tires are custom made for this car by bitterly and then add tort fracturing on top of it.

  • Because otherwise you might just be, you know, covering up deficiencies with talk.

  • Victor, you got.

  • You know, the chassis is okay, but that's what we don't want.

  • You want to have a really solid car without our director and then add the functionalities talk, fracturing on top way.

  • Want to have some kind of natural controlling the vehicle, like when you're in drift boat that you can really slide the car around and still feel like you're in control and have many more intervention, but still some kind of intervention because you don't want the tired to go to Columbia spell while the car's going 50 you just said it has drifted.

  • So that's that's one of the things in the Finnish car.

  • Right?

  • When we have the election systems over laid, Um, can you do the whole tank mode things spinning on the spot?

  • Because you could effectively turn wheels in different directions?

  • Yeah, theoretically, yes.

  • But it's not something you would give to our customers.

  • It's another dangerous, I think.

  • But it's a nice way of demonstrating just now you can have.

  • It's like, Thank you.

  • Okay, so we protect forward to the production car that we're going to see in Geneva.

  • How much of the suspects from the concept car two years ago have been carried over?

  • I've got I've got a checklist just to make sure we don't miss anything.

  • Civil four motors.

  • You still have them to speed gearbox because the concept just give up on the rear axle, right?

  • Yes, that's right.

  • This car still has them.

  • Yes, this was an early brother time.

  • But for production, we decided not to have to begin to go for a six speed gearbox in order to reduce the weight and the complexity and increase efficiency.

  • So this car still eyes to speak.

  • But we are just using second gear right now because that's closer to the production on how How can you maintain that 400 does not speak with just a single speaking.

  • It was a trick toe, really Increase the performance of the motors and inverters.

  • So we moved the motor speed from 12,000 rpm to 18,000 rpm on the torque at the same time from 700 meters to 900.

  • So that way we could have the same acceleration and same top speed without having to two years is that is the aim still 1900 horsepower.

  • I did not want us.

  • There is 1900 said, uh, on the range of 550 kilometres.

  • W ll be psychic.

  • Yes, TP Now I remember meeting you two years ago and you said the aim was to do too fast laps of the Nurburgring without a significant decrease in performance.

  • How close were you to that?

  • That stuff One.

  • We're still working on that next question.

  • Yeah, well, for the Polish train, it's doable.

  • It's not the problem.

  • The problem is the batteries which are heating up.

  • So the strategy of how you start the left and how you managed the power in the cooling during the lap.

  • That's something that we are really tuning doing.

  • Lots of simulations.

  • Can we do two laps today?

  • No, we can't without the rating, but I hope we'll get there.

  • On that note.

  • We swap seats so I could have another go this time under the watchful eye of Mr Rimac.

  • So I almost died twice, being the passenger in the best time.

  • So third time lucky I was I had to promise my girlfriend and I will never drive.

  • It's a messenger with somebody else in our prototypes again.

  • So be careful, Please.

  • Just to say what I did.

  • Turn up.

  • Matty said okay, Yeah, I'll do some driving with Jack in the passenger seat and then, yeah, he could just go off on his own.

  • And I know I want you in here.

  • Don't worry, I'm taking it easy.

  • I'm just I'm letting the car have been driving prototypes before.

  • Yeah, yeah, how much more power a car take?

  • I'll be honest in the top gear office when you first announced, See, too, and it was 1900 horsepower way were like This is such a leap from anything that we've known before.

  • Remember the mayor on being announced with £1000 just blowing on?

  • Why take this?

  • Our number is it.

  • This is Muchas four tires could take.

  • Could you Can you see a more powerful car in the future?

  • We'll struggle is not a digital switch, you know, So you don't have to use the full power all the time, but there's never too much power, I think even with those not horsepower tire can't take it until 120.

  • But above it, you could have more power.

  • No problem for you.

  • Yeah.

  • Yeah.

  • So I don't think that's the problem.

  • Well, you know, when the McClaren fom came out, everybody was like, Okay, that's it.

  • There will be no car with more power than that.

  • And today you have sedans and SUV's with that kind of power normal.

  • So today I would say 1000 100 horsepower is like, Why would you need more?

  • I don't know.

  • Let's speak again in a few years to summer.

  • Then the C two is already blisteringly quick to drive how fast it will be when a further 600 horse power is unleashed.

  • I can only imagine the steering brakes and refinement or need a fair bit of tuning.

  • But this is a six month old prototype, so we won't dwell on that too much.

  • What we can say is in the corners, it feels stiff on alert and super flat, half a ton lighter.

  • At least then it's two ton plus curb, weight suggests.

  • And here's the clincher.

  • Hasn't even had the infinite four wheel drive torque vectoring wizardry applied.

  • Yet when it does, the handling should be out of this world.

  • Oh, and because you'll have direct manual control over how you want the power distributed up to 100% to the rear axle in drift mode, it might be a hyper GT a heart, the sea, too.

  • But it's going to be a lot of fun on the track as well.

  • Okay, let's learn a bit more about the man and the company rewriting the book or not just hyper cars, but electric cars in general.

  • Okay, matter.

  • You must feel like we're surrounded by your baby's here.

  • That's the 2018 show car approach start.

  • We've been driving on the new final production model.

  • We're not gonna talk about that now until you demand the company the electric car landscape in general.

  • But before that first question, it's the one everyone wants to ask.

  • What's the secret to your bid?

  • Well, actually, no.

  • I started a company in one of those 20 years old, and what's strange enough to do it in Croatia?

  • You know, I needed a beard to look more serious so people would take you seriously in these big meetings.

  • Well, here Musk is thinking about growing one, so it helps.

  • It gets its reports.

  • So take us right back to the beginning.

  • Where did your fascination with electric cars begin?

  • I was crazy about cars all my life.

  • My parents told me I was crazy about them before I could walk or talk like I pretended my hand hurts so my father would put me my grandfather's folks Long Beetle, and then I'll forget about the hurting camp, and when I was in high school, I was doing stuff with electronics.

  • I was the creation champion for electronics and innovation, had two patents when I was 17 years old.

  • I want a bunch of awards all over the world, but I won't want to do something with cars all my life.

  • And as soon as I turned 18 I bought in 1984 BMW Tree serious that we call box in creation like because it's a boxy.

  • I started to raise it because I wanted to race, and that was the easiest way to start racing by an old car with real drive on.

  • Well, differential.

  • You have a few spare tires and you go, you know.

  • But the engine blew up just after two races, and then I decided to combine my two passions, electronics and cars.

  • Being from Croatia, I read a lot about Nikola.

  • Tesla was born here as well before Tesla Motors, and the whole thing was famous, you know, in creation.

  • We were very proud of him, and one of his inventions was the electric motor that we're using today.

  • The alternating current elected motor and that motor was so fascinating to me that it's so perfect and so superior compared to combustion engines.

  • So why is nobody using that to make cars fun and exciting?

  • So I decided when the engine on the be invaluable up make an electric race car to show that electric cars can be fostered exciting.

  • That's how it started and start from there.

  • And here we are, many years later, just remind people.

  • How old are you?

  • I'm sure that that noise you can hear is everyone watching this video sighing, wishing that worked harder at school.

  • I think, Well, you know, it starts with a dream, But then the dream often becomes a nightmare.

  • I mean, to get here from that garage to here.

  • It was not an easy journey.

  • Let's say it was worrying about making payroll, not being able to pay the rent and the facility.

  • And so it was really, really hard to get this company of the ground and, like, 90% of the work is not fun.

  • But then in the end, when you look at the results, you know, we never actually look back and say, Wow, look at what we have achieved.

  • It's always like, you know, when I look at the car, I still see a 1,000,000 things that we need to get done to ship the first cars to customers, you know, to make delivery on time to do the congregation and so on.

  • It's never like we've done it, you know?

  • So is is we make a car company or a technology company.

  • We want to be both.

  • We want to bake the best electric hyper cars in the world and to show what's possible and to push the bar on the other side, we want to help the industry to go electric and help other car companies like Porsche hyun die Good exactly, asked Martin and many others to make hybrid electric cars that are exciting and fun for use of the cars or the technology that fascinates you more.

  • But, you know, ends of finality builds rolled cars, too, will be able to race.

  • Uh, I'm I kind of started doing technology because I couldn't find investors for for the super car business.

  • And then the technology business kept the car thing going.

  • Now it's different, you know?

  • You know, I was crazy about cars on my life, like many of the guys probably watching this video and going at car shows as the kids.

  • You're always wondering what's behind the curtains, what's going to be a field and stuff like that.

  • And now we are shaping what's behind the curtains and many waste, you know, in many companies and so on.

  • So it's super exciting going around Geneva now in a couple of days, on having the curtains around the 40 and feeling, and I know what's under it off many of them.

  • So you know, it feels like we have become really important part of the industry on I think that's great, like shaping the future in a way.

  • And, of course, we're seeing back three electric technology being used to enhance these big petrol engines as well.

  • So you had the 9 18 Laferrari generation of hybrid cars.

  • But now the estimate on Valkyrie, which I know that remark works with that's got the hybrid assistance built into the gearbox.

  • So it's people using this electric power to enhance these petrol engines towards the end of their life.

  • Yeah, it's about making the cars better.

  • Not only electric hybrid for the sake of making collector hybrid, but to use the potential power train to really push the limits and make them better vehicles.

  • And that's the thing also with us.

  • We didn't do this to save the planet or to save Seo to admissions with a couple of 100 cars that will produce in the next years.

  • It's not going to move the needle, but it's really about pushing the limits and to show that electrification and the future will not be boring.

  • For, you know, there is a fun future for guys like us that love cars.

  • And you talked about batteries there, this 120 kilowatt batch in this.

  • Where does the next big leap in battery technology come from?

  • And are we not in danger of creating a generation of electric cars now that in 10 years is just gonna be out date too heavy to full of precious metals exception?

  • Well, I have my notebook where I wrote down everything when I started, and I printed out everything.

  • And, you know, there were some certain batteries coming on the market at that time.

  • And if you look at the battery cells themselves in the chemistry's, what was state of the art back then, in terms of energy density and energy per kilogram, it's today still pretty much the same.

  • So it's like 10% improvement over 10 years.

  • What has happened is that prices have come down massively, like 80 or 90%.

  • But in reality, you know, people were sending me links all the time.

  • Like, Why don't you use this new battery technology, that new battery technology work?

  • You have press releases all the time and people announcing stuff, but it never came to the market.

  • So I don't really believe that there will be big leap in battery technology in the next few years.

  • It's incremental improvement.

  • We are working really hard around the chemistry, so we are working with cell manufactures to optimize the chemistry and two.

  • But then our work really starts on the module level, like to cool the batteries toe, pack them as densely as possible to make it safe and so on.

  • That's where we are good at.

  • But the fundamentals.

  • I don't think there will be this huge leap, like with lithium air batteries or solid state.

  • Some state might come soon, but I don't think it's going to have an impact for performance vehicles because because when it does arrive, if and when it arrives, the prices going straight back up to the top again, Yeah, but it so.

  • The state batteries are Mauritania to reduce the cost and to have a good energy density.

  • But power density will be at the beginning, quite bad.

  • So it's not for performance vehicles.

  • It's really more for, let's say, family and more reasonable equals.

  • So how is the business changed since you started on supplying manufacturers?

  • Can you keep up your growing too fast?

  • When we started, it was a very different world.

  • It was the world when you had the G was that was the electric car in people's minds.

  • When you when you said electric car, you know, like small, ugly and boxy.

  • So the world has changed, and now everybody's coming from they want our stuff in their vehicles and so on.

  • It's hard to keep up with, you know, a very small company working with a very big company.

  • So you know, he and I is, for example, a shareholder, and they have four times more revenue than creations GDP.

  • So all of creation companies combined with the economy, is four times weaker than you and I just one company.

  • So they some massive companies and you know we are than a little wheel in their huge organizations, and it's tough to be on their level because they're doing it for 100 years but we're getting there.

  • It's it's a transition.

  • And, you know, basically, it's something that's very, very few people have done to create a company in the garage and just in 10 years, be supplier of key components.

  • You know that our safety critical and that our defining the DNA of the vehicle to major car manufacturers.

  • And that's where a lot of the grey hair comes from.

  • So it's no, it's not just the hi performs Cos you're Working with You are working with other three M's on Maur Mass.

  • Market electric vehicles and helping them to develop those.

  • I think it would be very mellitus Stick to do this just for hyper cars, and that's not something I would like to do.

  • Of course, hyper cars are beautiful, nice, and you'll love them.

  • But it would be really nice if this technology trickles down to more mess market vehicles and you will see something also in your nightstand in this Geneva Uh, so the point is that we take what we have here in the two million euros Hypercar, which it will become more affordable in cars like Unite.

  • So that's why you know, we don't want to go against the car industry.

  • We want to go with the car industry.

  • We see what does the whole difficulties to ramp up, how much money and people it takes, billions and billions and tens of thousands of the best people in the world to compete against the car companies because it's such a hard business.

  • I don't think there's any harder business than then cars with them.

  • We can bring this technology to a wider audience.

  • That's what you want.

  • We would like that too much wider audience has access to a fun electric cars.

  • All right, so let's assume you have a seat to in your garret.

  • That's that Sorted.

  • What else would be in your dream?

  • Luxury carriage?

  • Oh, I have a long, long list.

  • So it's all right.

  • We got some time.

  • Yeah, I actually have a list of things that I would like the way.

  • Yeah, we'll be very long.

  • Uh, first I wanted, like all the cars where we have our components, and but that's going to be very difficult.

  • A smart will carry Grygera.

  • You know it's going to be quite expensive to dead people fighting about this time.

  • These kind of cars that they're very expensive cars.

  • But then, you know, currently my garage would be mostly commercial engine cars, E 30 entry air cooled Porsche's maybe some of the new portions in the GT three Rs or duress.

  • So I would like this like, night area, nineties era, eighties kind of cars.

  • And, you know, I read somewhere that the markets for these pre war Eric cars is dropping off.

  • And I was wondering why?

  • And guy told me the story that, you know, you are fascinated by certain cars when you are young, and then when you are late, too successful in life, you buy the cars that you liked when you were young.

  • Um, and so for me, that's the eighties and nineties.

  • That's the kind.

  • Of course that would love maybe a Correggio t you know, with the Crazy 10 Sound or XLR.

  • I know it has a terrible gearbox, but it was a car that I had, you know, in my wall.

  • So cars like that, that's that's your ear.

  • That's the matter.

  • You're gonna need a bigger carriage.

  • Oh, yeah, definitely.

  • Well, you know, I have everything in the company, so I don't You know what they say paper rich cash Poor s.

  • Oh, that's not a priority for me, for me to priorities that the company successful.

Theo.

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