LIGHTNING BOLT

THE CROATIAN-MADE RIMAC NEVERA ALL-ELECTRIC HYPERCAR IS A FORCE LIKE NO OTHER

BY HOWARD WALKER

There’s a moment in pretty much every Star Trek episode when Captain Kirk calls on his trusty helmsman, Lieutenant Sulu, to engage warp speed. Then, in the blink of an eye, streaks of incandescent light tunnel ahead and there’s a surge of unrelenting forward momentum.

This is precisely the same sensation you get from standing on the accelerator of an all-electric Rimac Nevera and feeling the insane 1,914-horsepower thrust. Only, add to it the mild discomfort of your eyeballs being squeezed back into their sockets and your internal organs compressing against your ribcage.

If you could get your fearless passenger to activate the stopwatch feature on your iPhone, you’d see that zero to 60 mph is 1.85 seconds. That’s quicker than a Formula One racecar. Keep your right foot planted and you’ll pass the 100-mph mark in 4.3 seconds. If you are feeling really brave, you’ll keep going until the speedo is showing 258 mph, the official top speed of this Croatian-built cruise missile, making it the world’s fastest production electric hypercar. At this point you must be thinking that this is some weird, one-off, thinly disguised racecar. Not so. Walk into your neighborhood Rimac showroom—there’s one in West Palm Beach and another in Naples— write a check for roughly $2,450,000, and you could be experiencing the kind of adrenaline rush normally reserved for riders of Daytona Beach’s Vomatron. But don’t dally: Rimac is building just 150 Neveras with more than a third already sold.

Rimac is the creation of Croatian visionary Mate Rimac. From humble beginnings, the 35-year-old now supplies electric propulsion know-how to the likes of Aston Martin, Jaguar, Koenigsegg, Pininfarina, and Porsche, which owns 24 percent of the company. The millennial engineer is so cash-rich that last year he bought Bugatti from the Volkswagen Group.

The flagship of his fast-evolving brand is this astonishing Nevera electric hypercar, which I spent an equally astonishing morning piloting around West Palm. If you were driving along State Road 710 a few weeks back and saw a flash of white soaring by at hugely illegal speeds, that was me. Apologies.

For the Nevera, Rimac has designed, developed, and engineered everything in-house at his campus on the outskirts of Zagreb, Croatia. That includes the I-beam-stiff carbon-fiber monococque body structure, 120-kWh battery pack, quartet of electric motors, and mind-numbingly complex software that runs it all.

Despite its amazing performance and technical wonderment, the Nevera was always intended to be an “everyday” hypercar you could drive to work or take to dinner—not that you’d want to hand the keys to the kid working the valet.

Pop the switch to open the high-lifting butterfly doors with their cutouts in the roof and then lower yourself into the hip-hugging bucket seat. The cabin is more functional than fancy, with acres of black carbon fiber everywhere. Instrumentation is minimal too, with the touch screen on the center console looking like something out of a Best Buy open-box sale. Three big rotary dials navigate the major controls, including the multitude of drive modes, gear selections,

Power File

PRICE: FROM $2,450,000 ENGINE: FOUR ELECTRIC and torque distribution settings.

MOTORS POWER: 1,914 HP TORQUE: 1,714 LB-FT RANGE: 287 MILES EPA 0-60: 1.85 SECONDS TOP SPEED: 258 MPH LENGTH/WIDTH: 187/78 INCHES WEIGHT: 4,378 POUNDS WHY WE LOVE IT: BECAUSE IT HAS THE POWER TO MAKE YOUR FERRARI FEEL PEDESTRIAN.

As we slice through the cut and thrust of mid-morning traffic, I feel bursts of that outrageous 1,714 pound-feet of torque on the freeway on-ramp. But what is staggering here is how docile, smooth, refined, and, yes, relaxed the Nevera can feel. The steering is light and precise, the ride is positively Lexus-like, and the one-pedal braking is a joy.

We ease onto 710 and an empty stretch of four-lane blacktop opens ahead. We slow to a walking pace, dial up Track mode, and then hit it. There, in an instant, is that Star Trek warp speed courtesy of nigh on 2,000 horsepower. Every Nevera should come with a warning sticker on the dash: Remember to breathe. «