DIY: How to Track-Prep Your Tesla

A

B development. That’s Nardò. To a certain extent, it’s even more challenging than the Nürburgring. It’s a very high-speed place.” Okay, but the Ring is the standard. Southern Italy’s Nardò track, well, doesn’t carry the same cachet.

Ours was a brief adventure—just a few miles on roads above Palm Springs, California, and a couple of laps around the 2.68-mile desert road course at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway in a close-to-production prototype. Keep these impressions within that context before making a purchase decision.

Like a proper supercar, the doors don’t just open, they fly upward. The cockpit isn’t lavish or particularly luxurious; it’s stark in a tailored Armani way. The driver faces three flat-screen displays, the middle one an iPhone-sized speedometer. The steering wheel is thick rimmed and flattened at the top and bottom. In the footwell are beautiful cast-aluminum brake and accelerator pedals and a dead pedal to brace against. Much of the interior is finished in the raw carbon fiber that makes up the passenger tub.

The Battista’s interior lacks the insane detail of the Bugatti Chiron’s. And while it’s handsome overall, it’s not quite astonishing like a Lamborghini’s. For a car that wears the name of the company that drew so many beautiful cars for other brands, the Battista seems a bit generic. The gazillionaire hypercar market is specialized and small. Zany and daring aren’t necessarily character flaws when the production run only extends to 150 units.

Because there’s virtually no insulation between the carbon fiber and the driver’s body, the Battista has a true mechanical feel. Computers modulate everything—the torque-vectoring dance between the four motors, the steering assist, the brake feel, that sound—but Pininfarina engineers have decided to keep the Battista’s occupants fully aware of the physical sensations that all of that computing power is containing. The driver feels the Battista’s insane exploration of physical limits.

It’s unlikely the ultrarich owners will wait around for all 6960 lithium-ion cells to fully charge. Let the help worry about charging. The worker bees will appreciate the 310-mile claimed range under EU regulatory testing or 230 miles using

SPECIFICATIONS 2022 Pininfarina Battista

PRICE: $2.4 million

MOTORS: 4 electric motors

OUTPUT: 1877 hp 1696 lb-ft

TRANSMISSION: direct-drive

CURB WEIGHT: 4400 lb

0–60 MPH: 1.8 seconds

A. A rendering of Battista “Pinin” Farina’s signature on the steering wheel of the

Pininfarina Battista. B. The interior is sparse for weight savings, but what little upholster y there is demonstrates delightful attention to detail. C. The Battista’s dashboard is as high-tech as you’d expect in an

EV supercar, but there’s no getting around the fact that it looks like two tablets and a smar tphone. D. Of course this carbon-fiber supercar bears a strong resemblance to modern Ferraris:

Pininfarina was the supercar maker’s go-to styling house for more than half a centur y. U.S. EPA standards. According to Pininfarina, the Battista can replenish its batteries from 20 to 80 percent in 25 minutes on a 180-kW charger.

The driver won’t care about any of that because, dear God, does this thing entertain.

Climbing up and out of the city, chasing a Tesla pace car, the achievement here is steering feel. While some assist comes from the torquevectoring algorithm, the electric power steering is precisely mapped to counter any overboost. Credit also goes to the Rimac team that conjured up the drivetrain and developed the core controlling software. There’s a lot of Rimac Nevera in the Battista, and discovering how they differ in final character and performance will take prolonged exposure to both. Here’s hoping that happens soon.

Velocity arrives with blinding suddenness. Pininfarina claims a 1.8-second 0–60-mph time and a top speed of 217 mph. The Battista’s overwhelming torque has the driver involuntarily constricting their diaphragm to avoid drowning in pound-feet. Its thrust recurves spines. It is utterly astonishing. And terrifying. And intoxicating.

On this brief track exposure, the Battista’s limits seem out around Neptune. Maybe there’s a way to explore this car’s edge on a long track like Monza, but on a tight course like Chuckwalla, forget it. It has traction like a rocket-propelled salamander climbing an endless strip of flypaper. Pushed just right, the tail will wag like a happy husky’s, then tuck back in under the slightest correction. It’s as entertaining as hell’s own multiplex.

And yet, despite so many computers at work, it doesn’t feel like a moderated machine. A Ferrari V-12 makes more vivid sounds, a supercharged General Motors V-8 is more brutally engaging, and virtually any internal-combustion engine is more of a challenge (after all, gears are involved). But there’s a lot of fun to be had when the batteries are charged and the road ahead is worth dominating.

The Battista should be delivered to its first buyer early in 2022. How relevant, how cutting edge, how thrilling it will seem amid so many other supercars is open to speculation. Or daydreaming.