Bevis looks back at one of our favourite EVs to emerge this year: Rimac’s Concept_S (in case its first hypercar, the Concept_One, wasn’t quite hyper enough for you…)
Rimac’s Concept_One has been doing the rounds for a few years now, the self-styled ‘world’s first electric supercar’ acting as a rather forthright showcase of the Croatian firm’s ambitions. While a handful have already been produced, the manufacturer presented a production-ready example at this year’s Geneva Motor Show, and the figures make for compelling reading – its Veyron-baiting 1,088bhp (800kW) output allows it to whisper through the 0-62mph run in just 2.6 seconds. It’s a sumptuously appointed and gorgeously styled thing too – wholly worthy of the supercar moniker. It even has a drift mode.
So the next logical step is to, er, make it faster. Well, why not eh? The new Concept_S is gleefully referred to by Rimac as the Concept-One’s evil twin; they’ve thrown in an additional 296bhp, taking the total up to a Koenigsegg-irritating 1,384bhp, as well as stripping out 50kg of weight and ramping up the aero package. This all serves to highlight the agility of the brand’s All-Wheel Torque Vectoring system, which uses all sorts of clever maths to calculate optimal torque to each wheel’s individual electric motor, one hundred times every second. This knocks 0.1 second off the Concept_One’s 0-62mph time, and enables the Concept_S to accelerate from 0-186mph in 13.1 seconds. Which is insane, frankly. Oh, and this one also has drift mode – just picture yourself doing that. It’s terrifying.
