First Drive: Rimac Nevera—the World’s Fastest Electric Hypercar
Good news, speed freaks with money to burn: The Rimac Nevera, the world’s quickest all-electric hypercar, is here to provide you with a slick fix for your velocity jones in the form of a 1,914-horsepower adrenaline boost that's street legal—albeit costly. You’ll need $2.2 million for the vehicle, not including the remarkable lawyer or separate nest egg earmarked for inevitable speeding fines.
The Croatian hypercar explodes to 60 in a mere 1.74 seconds. Another blink, you’re close to 100. Blink again and you’re north of 120. At that shocking clip, you’re covering one football field every two seconds. Your eyes better be open wide.
At Pebble Beach’s Car Week, we drove the Nevera—the etymology is an homage to a sudden, powerful, and lightning-filled storm atop the Mediterranean Sea. Here are six wild notions we couldn’t stop mentally chewing on during our hour with the vehicular embodiment of violent lightning.
The Rimac Nevera Is Ridiculously Quick
The Nevera is powered by four electric motors—a dedicated motor for each wheel—that produce a combined output of 1,914 horsepower and 1,741 lb-ft of yank. Energy comes from a 120 kWh battery pack that can charge up to 80 percent in about 20 minutes. That powertrain provides more than ample juice to set world records for acceleration and speed. In a single day in May 2023, the Nevera achieved 23 such titles.
Depress the accelerator a quarter of the way to the carbon-fiber floor and you’re rewarded with a hint of what lurks behind a full send. The Nevera barrels forward, like a loosed tiger that’s been fed a steady diet of amphetamines.
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Then you do a race launch—mash the brake, floor the accelerator, release the brake, and hang the hell on to put nearly a quarter mile of California’s Big Sur highway behind you in eight-ish seconds. It’s dizzyingly fast, pinning you to the seat, warping your sense of speed.
That promise of unadulterated, blistering propulsion is the precise appeal. Other supercar and megacar owners hop in the Nevera for test drives, quipping that nothing’s faster than, say, their Ferrari SF90 Stradale. Wrong. They admit as such on the first hard launch, too. And, given these owners likely have a fleet of a dozen of the globe’s top automotive marques and nameplates, that thrill of acceleration is something they can’t live without.
The Rimac Is Juiced for Multiple Launches
With a full battery, the Nevera is able to launch from a dead stop to 100 miles an hour—20 times in a row. During those 20 blasts, you’ll get the full 1,914 horsepower, each a deliriously ludicrous affair. After you’ve hit 20 reps, and your passenger and/or stomach have tapped out, you can still launch the car, but the battery power is reduced, bringing down the horsepower with it.
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The Rimac Provides Insane Traction Control
The highest performing drive mode is Track, which enables torque vectoring at each individual wheel. The electronic wizardry in play here is proprietary to Rimac—and it obviously needed to be as fast as the Nevera itself. Computers are analyzing whether each wheel is slipping more than 100 times per second, and adjusting accordingly.
Track mode lets the car move around ever so slightly, so you get a soupçon of wheel spin when launching, but by the time your brain even registers that wiggling sensation, the Nevera has already clocked it, hooked up, and you’re doing 80-plus miles an hour.
This is important because when you have a nearly 2,000-horsepower car, drivability, and the accompanying assurance, are vital to long-term ownership. Similarly potent hypercars—hybrids or combustion-only—such as the Bugatti Chiron or the McLaren P1, have stability control systems that struggle to keep up with the wheels, because after the engine makes all that power, upon your command, the brakes and the system then have to somehow manage it.
The Rimac smartly understands how much grip is available and only sends each motor as much power as the traction can handle. There will be no Ford Mustang leaving Cars & Coffee-type crashes in the Nevera.
The Rimac's Hard-Won Steering Is Perfect
The Nevera’s chief test driver reportedly harangued all the engineers because the steering wasn’t quite there. After countless hours of development and testing, the goal—emulation of the steering feel in the Porsche 911 GT3—wasn’t right. But that’s a lofty benchmark, given that the GT3 weighs some 1,700 pounds less than the 5,100-pound Nevera.
Yet, through that test driver’s resilience, they achieved it. It feels light and agile while responsive and providing ample road feedback. The low center of gravity, due to the battery pack, helps give you better feedback from the chassis too—and the communication from the wheel is unreal. Find your line, then simply point and shoot.
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The Rimac Offers Seamless Braking
With electric cars, the motors are responsible for a chunk of the braking to help with regenerating the battery. However, there’s a 15-inch carbon ceramic rotor with six pistons on each wheel, and, for the Nevera, that hydraulic system steps in when the braking load is 0.5 Gs. The handover between the motors and those hydraulic stoppers has been tricky for many hypercars to make seamless. There’s typically a shudder, a hesitation, or a lurch when the hydraulics finally arrive.
Not in the Nevera. It’s supremely linear, to the point where you have no idea which system is doing the braking. It’s just buttery smooth; a proper accomplishment.
Of course, there’s modes for regenerative braking, in case you wish to pilot the Nevera like a regular electric car, striving for maximum energy efficiency. One mode will see you coasting freely upon accelerator liftoff with absolutely no resistance, while another emulates the engine braking you’d feel when lifting off the throttle in a combustion car. Yet another two modes see that regenerative mode strengthen, and the car appreciably slows when you lift.
The Rimac Hits 256—With a Catch
With the issued Michelin Pilot Sport 4S shoes, the Nevera can travel up to 217 mph without worry. However, if you want to sample the car’s full top speed—256 mph—you’ll need to call Rimac.
They’ll organize a day wherein they bring technicians and Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2Rs to bolt on your vehicle—setting up the tires to the proper pressure and temperatures. The reason? The Cup 2Rs are structurally stronger, and you want all that strength when flying at those speeds. After tire fitment and final checks, only then will the technicians physically enable the car’s full potential. Sensical, since you really don’t need to—or logistically can’t—hit 256 mph on public roads.
Frankly, you don’t even need to hit 217 mph. Flinging the coupe to a multiple of the posted speed limit, even in short bursts, supplies ample hits of adrenaline. It’s a sedate and comfortable daily driver too, evidenced during patches of heavy traffic. No annoying jerkiness at low speeds in this beast.
In short, the Nevera can flawlessly comply with any driver’s mission, whether you’re a casual cruiser, or a speed freak who wants to experience the closest thing to rocket propulsion on the road.
