A crop of multi-million-dollar electric hypercars is emerging from the industry’s fantasyland and creeping towards production. Pininfarina announced its 1,900-horsepower Battista has successfully completed its first round of high-speed testing, which is like boot camp for prototypes, on the Nardò track located in Italy.
Although technology has become mind-bogglingly advanced, and it’s possible to test a powertrain without building it, Pininfarina explained there is no substitute for real-world evaluations. Instead of putting test pilots in a prototype cobbled together with various odds and ends, it assigned them a fully assembled model equipped with roughly the same set of features that buyers will receive when deliveries begin. Going through the trouble of making a finished car is a good way to test even basic features, like the power windows and the speakers.
Engineers learned a lot while lapping Nardò. The data they harvested will allow them to program the carbon ceramic brakes to work seamlessly with the aerobrake and the energy recuperation system, for example. They also tweaked the torque vectoring system and the suspension. Many of the components under the carbon fiber body are shared with the Rimac C_Two, which is also undergoing validation testing, but they’re tuned in-house.
Surprisingly, the Battista’s specifications sheet hasn’t changed significantly since its unveiling. It’s still built on top of a mammoth 120-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack that channels the electricity it stores to four electric motors. The system develops 1,900 horsepower and 1,700 pound-feet of torque, and it’s capable of distributing power between the four wheels as needed. Pininfarina promises a zero-to-60-mph time of less than 2 seconds.
Next, the designer-turned-carmaker will put the Battista through more validations tests on and off the road. Pininfarina notably needs to fine-tune and homologate the chassis. Deliveries are still scheduled to begin before the end of 2021, and production is limited to 150 examples worldwide. Pricing starts at approximately $2.2 million before options and delivery, but collectors with more to spend can order the $2.8-million Anniversario model. It’s limited to five examples, so it’s a limited-edition version of a limited-edition car, and it takes three weeks to paint.
Though 1,900 horsepower is a dazzling figure, the Battista isn’t the most powerful electric car in the pipeline. That honor currently goes to the 2,000-horsepower Lotus Evija, though the list grows on a shockingly regular basis.