The Rimac C_Two electric hypercar claims it can reach 60 miles per hour in 1.85 seconds and has a range of up to 400 miles before it needs to be recharged. It also will set you back $2.1 million.
Unveiled on the second press day of the New York International Auto Show last month, the Rimac C_Two with full carbon fiber unibody construction is unlike any road-going electric car that’s come before it. Very expensive, but lighter and stronger than steel, carbon fiber is the kind of futuristic material that most carmakers can afford only to use as trim.
A visual reference point might be the $600,000 Jaguar XJ220, the hypercar of its time (1992-’94), with only 275 produced. The C_Two’s two-seat interior is a work of art, too, and uses carbon-fiber effectively as a design element. There’s no key fob—entry is via facial recognition.
Rimac Automobili is based in Croatia, which isn’t known for world-class automobiles, but it’s no smoke-and-mirrors operation. Known as an engineering company with clients that include Jaguar Land Rover, Aston Martin, fellow hypercar builder Koenigsegg and Renault, Rimac and its founder, Mate Rimac, want to build electric cars. The company’s first entry, the 1,224-horsepower Concept_One, was quite credible, though only eight were built between 2013 and 2014.
Against that company, the new C_Two is going mass market—150 will be built, at $2.1 million each, starting in 2020.
The factory outside Zagreb is gearing up to produce four cars per month. “Cars are meant to be fun, so this one will do the work for you,” says sales head Kreso Coric, “Nobody wants to spend 15 minutes adjusting the suspension, so you just jump in and go.”
Level four autonomous technology will be built into the C_Two. Level four means the cars could drive themselves as long as the weather isn’t too lousy, or the environment too challenging. While current driving laws haven’t legalized full autonomy, some carmakers (including Tesla) are adding the technology for when they do.
There’s a 120-kilowatt-hour lithium-manganese-nickel battery pack, and an electric motor at each corner, which gives the car built-in all-wheel drive. Peak torque is 1,696 pound-feet, so hopefully Rimac has come up with tires that will keep the car on the ground.
The C_Two is a road car, but many owners will be tempted to take it on the track, and plans include a “Drive Coach” built into the heads-up display that shows the ideal route and braking points at specific ovals or road courses. One of the gripes about electric race cars is that they don’t make enough noise, but Coric said Rimac uses special flat gears in the transmissions to make the C_Two “noisy as hell.”
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