VW Offloads Bugatti To Rimac To Form New EV Company Bugatti-Rimac (techcrunch.com) 51
According to the Financial Times, Croatian electric supercar startup Rimac Automobili is taking over Bugatti. Rimac will own a controlling 55% share in the new company, Bugatti-Rimac, with VW's Porsche owning the remaining 45%. TechCrunch reports: "Rimac and Bugatti are a perfect match in terms of what we each bring to the table," said founder and CEO of Rimac, Mate Rimac, in a statement. "As a young, agile and fast-paced automotive and technology company, we have established ourselves as an industry pioneer in electric technologies. With the Nevera, we have also proven that we can develop and manufacture outstanding hypercars, that are not only fast but also exciting and high-quality. Bugatti, with over a century of experience in engineering excellence, also possesses one of the most exceptional heritage of any car company in history." The company recently unveiled the Nevera, a hypercar powered by a 120kWh battery pack and four motors to achieve a staggering 1.4MW of power, which is about 1,914 horsepower. It can go from 0 to 60 mph in 1.85 seconds and has a top speed of 258 mph. The Nevera is expected to be the fastest sports car, a spot previously held by the Bugatti Chiron's.
Rimac's meteoric rise from bootstrapping in a garage in 2009 to building supercars with one of the most desirable and well-known car brands demonstrates how electric vehicles are beginning to take over the luxury and sports car market. It's not just about doing what's right for the environment -- it's about pioneering speed in the future of automobiles. Along with this announcement, Rimac said it would separate the development, production and supply of battery systems, drivetrains and other EV components into a new entity owned by Rimac Group called Rimac Technology, which will work independently with other global car manufacturers.
Rimac's meteoric rise from bootstrapping in a garage in 2009 to building supercars with one of the most desirable and well-known car brands demonstrates how electric vehicles are beginning to take over the luxury and sports car market. It's not just about doing what's right for the environment -- it's about pioneering speed in the future of automobiles. Along with this announcement, Rimac said it would separate the development, production and supply of battery systems, drivetrains and other EV components into a new entity owned by Rimac Group called Rimac Technology, which will work independently with other global car manufacturers.
Wow (Score:1)
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Porsche and Hyundai are investors according to the original article linked in TFA
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No, You'll find that it is mostly stock swaps, not cash
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Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)
Bugatti loses money on every Veyron they sell. They really get you on the $20k set of tires and $50k maintenance jobs.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
This really is a match made in heaven, though.
Bugatti has an epic reputation for making hypercars... powered by a drivetrain technology that's being obsoleted. Rimac also makes crazy-expensive hypercars, but they're focused on electric powertrains. The combined entity mixes Bugatti's cachet and experience with Rimac's electric powertrain experience.
Also, one of the things about being in the hypercar business, when it comes to electrification, is... you get to cheat. If someone buys, say, a Tesla, they expect to get 10-15 years on the battery pack and motors. But if someone buys a $2,4M hypercar, they really don't care. Rimac could include an annual battery and motor swap in the price tag if they wanted to. And how much mileage will owners really put on them anyway? So Rimac can drive everything really hard and ignore all issues of maintaining longevity. Then you add that to the normal hypercar advantages of handbuilding everything out of unobtanium so that the whole car weighs about as much as a labrador...
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Bugatti has an epic reputation for making hypercars... powered by a drivetrain technology that's being obsoleted. Rimac also makes crazy-expensive hypercars, but they're focused on electric powertrains. The combined entity mixes Bugatti's cachet and experience with Rimac's electric powertrain experience.
In the world of exotic cars, the ICE drivetrain will never be obsoleted, anymore so than digital watches obsoleted mechanical ones. The most well engineered electric motor will never have the cachet of a hand built sixteen cylinder engine. It is certainly possible that combustion engines will be relegated to wealthier audiences though, much like Breguets and such.
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It is certainly possible that combustion engines will be relegated to wealthier audiences though, much like Breguets and such.
For the most part, they won't bother, and it'll be hobbyists with the ICEs.
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I don't think the wealthy will give up their appreciation for finer things.
Right, that's why they're going to want to be driven in smooth, quiet EVs.
Quite likely every single rich person who buys a Rimac already has multiple ICE powered exotics in their stable.
And doesn't drive any of them. They're investments. They may well not know how to drive, they don't need to.
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Right, that's why they're going to want to be driven in smooth, quiet EVs.
Sure. They are well suited to the limousine type.
And doesn't drive any of them. They're investments. They may well not know how to drive, they don't need to.
Even in my small city I see occasional Ferraris, Lambos, Aston Martins etc. being driven, presumably by their owners. Sure, that '62 250 GTO is an investment that sits in a garage, but I'll bet a large percentage of Veyrons actually get driven.
People who buy new ICE exotics to not drive will likely buy EV exotics to not drive as well. No real reason to drive one and not the other.
Re: Wow (Score:2)
Exotic cars, sure. High ends watches had to move away from marketing on precision and technology though, they are almost pure art objects now with a hint of ludditism.
High end ICE cars will have to start being marketed on tradition rather than performance.
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" It is certainly possible that combustion engines will be relegated to wealthier audiences though..."
Yes, on their way out the door entirely. When gasoline disappears, so will the devices that require it. It will take time, but it will happen.
Also, watches are a terrible analogy. No one needs a watch any more, they are purely fashion, not "technology". Also, a car is not merely an engine, so whether an electric motor has the "cachet" is largely irrelevant. How many "hand built sixteen cylinder" engine
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If you wish to be vitriolic, you could at least be accurate. It's certainly true that watches have less utility in a world of smartphones and smart watches, but it is no more true that "no one needs a watch any more" than it is that "no one needs a pager any more". There are edge cases where your assumptions are not correct.
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I don't know that I see gasoline disappearing. Certainly we may get to a point where gas stations being everywhere is a thing of the past, but the wealthy will probably still be able to get personal supplies good enough to drive their fancy cars around.
And watches aren't a bad analogy. ICE cars will *also* become purely fashion, since no one will need one anymore, but some people will still like them. And as they get rarer, and become more of a specialty item, they will get more expensive. And eventuall
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When gasoline disappears, so will the devices that require it. It will take time, but it will happen.
We will be using fossil fuels for many things for many generations to come. Making gasoline is a trivial part of the fractional distillation process. It will be there for people who want it. It may even be cheaper as a byproduct than as a primary target.
Also, watches are a terrible analogy. No one needs a watch any more, they are purely fashion, not "technology".
You sound like a teenager. Yes, they are fashion. So are phones. Mechanical watches represent craftsmanship, not technology. Hundreds or thousands of person hours go into them (like those hand built engines). Even me being only middle class appreci
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Bugatti is not really there to make money, it's there to develop new technology that eventually filters down to more affordable cars. It's a lot like motorsport, the manufacturers don't expect to turn a profit from the cars they develop for Le Mans or F1.
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Bugatti is not really there to make money, it's there to develop new technology that eventually filters down to more affordable cars.
Except that's not a thing any more, and it was never a common thing. Disc brakes for example come from airplanes, they didn't come from race cars. That's just where they first appeared on cars. And now a high performance automobile is an EV, and frankly the tech needed to build one of those appears in miniature in every R/C car. They "all" (the most basic toys aside) do regenerative and anti-lock braking, for example, and it's now common to have a "gyro" equipped receiver that provides ESP-type features lik
So long Tesla (Score:1)
The interesting thing is that as we move to more autonomous vehicles, we should have faster travel, higher speed limits, and indeed faster cars. OTOH, how fast can we safely travel
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Ah yes I recall the last car an eastern European country tried to sell in the states...
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The problem for them, they will be running face first into China, India and Indonesia. Let alone Japan, Korea and probably Brazil will finally get it's shite together. If your domestic market is not big enough to subsidise the export market, you will not survive in future.
supercars are of course becoming quite distasteful only for the crude and genetically genitally disadv
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PS just so you know, the dividing line east to west - Serbia not Croatia, confused think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and they are Roman Catholic, there were part of the border force to keep those others out of the west, the orthodox Christians, get it west and east, Rome (west) and Constantinople (east). Which the Muslims stole killing most of the Christians. Southern European came from the racism and prejudice of White Anglo Saxon Protestant, they used those same slang words for Arabs et al. Greek is
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Assuming it's even true that they can make a faster/better car than Tesla, it would be on the far high end and price compete with the Model S. It won't compete with Tesla's biggest seller by far -- the Model 3. The Model 3 sells a hundred times more than the Model S. Tesla sold 2,000 Model S last quarter and 200,000 Model 3s. To compete with Model 3, you need advanced mass manufacturing capability -- something that takes years and billions of investment to do. By the time Rimac/Bugatti makes a Model 3 equiv
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Why on earth would Rimac/Bugatti move from luxury/sports/gt territory down to commuter cars? You are frankly insane.
Re:So long Tesla (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, I'm sure Tesla is terrified of losing the market of customers who buy $2,4M cars.
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While Tesla has three factories with 1 million cars / year, with two more coming in.
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...and in ten years real car companies can buy those abandoned production lines for cheap.
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Aside from the fact that the original comment was barely intelligible, they do have a point in that Tesla's poised to lose a LOT of market share VERY quickly over the next 10 years.
Let's face it, they don't make reliable cars, they are priced very high for what they offer. They aren't comfortable or nice places to be in as a driver, and they likely lose money on every unit sold, and are only able to turn a profit by selling green energy credits or crypto.
JD power did a reliability survey and Tesla was down
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Said every Tesla opponent, every year, ever.
Top of the Whatcar reliability survey. No problems with mine or any of my friends' cars whatsoever.
They offer the best stats-to-money ratio on the market, particularly in the US (in the EU they'r
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"Said every Tesla opponent, every year, ever."
Utterly not true, and interesting that you suggest there are "Tesla opponents". Laughable, and coming from a fanboy.
"Top of the Whatcar reliability survey. No problems with mine or any of my friends' cars whatsoever."
LOL what's that, and the mere fact that you would suggest they are problem-free disqualifies you, as though we don't know that already. Tesla is the worst quality car sold today, and it always will be until they go under (or are bought by a seriou
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An outright lie. Tesla sells billions of dollars of credits a year, it is a PURE government subsidy that produces 100% profit
Incorrect. Tesla is not receiving a government subsidy. The money from the sale of green energy credits is coming from other car companies, not from any government. It is not tax dollars. And it's 7% of revenue. I wouldn't call that tiny, but I do call it insignificant.
Not the OP, but I'm a Tesla stockholder and I'm perfectly happy with Tesla spending very nearly every dime they make expanding the business. They're building three factories on three continents simultaneously. They carefully rigged the
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They are terrified of anyone taking their bragging rights, so much so that they have resorted to absolutely lying about performance, just as they do with pricing. Furthermore, they do care about "customers who buy $2,4M cars", you think Jay Leno isn't one of those customers? Who has been pushing recent Tesla performance claims? One of those customers, literally.
Also, they are, or at least should be, terrified of Hyundai who is likely to destroy them. Tesla doesn't compete with any luxury brand except on
Check your Logic (Score:2)
"how many rich people are there to buy a Tesla vs. Bugatti"
- Bugatti roughly 20x more expensive
- How many cars does Bugatti produce vs. Tesla
(don't have the numbers but the ratio difference is much more than 20 times from the price tag)
So you want Bugatti to kill Tesla while Tesla has managed to attract so many buyers, while Bugatti just sells so few cars.
Again: check your logic, it's broken.
VW in contrast with it's ID-ev Line is a real competitor and threat to Tesla, especially when Tesla continues on it's
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The people that buy a Bugatti or Rimac are not in the market for Tesla - not even for the Model S Ludicrous MegaSpeed edition (which, by the way, is pretty indistinguishable from the Tesla Model S Cheap edition).
Really? (Score:2)
"Bugatti, with over a century of experience in engineering excellence"
Those people are long dead, this is VW-Bugatti, the fraudster firm who flew in whores from Brazil to bribe Union bosses and who paid billions of fines and send managers to prison.
Also, they never made a single dime with that brand, all sold at a loss.
Just Nazis shuffling their assets... (Score:1)
BTW, bith are failed programs with brand name as only value.
Bugatti has nothing new to show. Same with Rimac.
It has basically the same or WORSE 0-60 time as Tesla Plaid.
For friggin 20x the money.
Nazis are practiocally owning that South & East EU area, so they've decided to pool their two programs into one.
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Check your calendar, it's not the year 1939.
Trivial clickbait (Score:3)
The word "Bugatti" puts eyes on adverts. Otherwise this could not matter less.