Pininfarina steps up Battista development
With 90th celebrations looming at Geneva, the firm reports on progress made with its 1,900hp hypercar
It's been a little while since we last checked in with the Pininfarina Battista, nearly a year in fact. With the race for hyper-EV supremacy very much on, though, and the likes of the Lotus Evija hot on their heels, it's no surprise that Pininfarina's engineers have had their heads down for the past twelve months. After all, it's no use creating "the world's first fully electric luxury hypercar" if someone else beats you to the punch. Now they've resurfaced, just in time for another Geneva show, to reveal the results of their continuing graft.
With Pininfarina celebrating its 90th anniversary at the event, and production of the first hand-built customer vehicles set to begin later this year, it's certainly a good time to finally be able to show their creation on the move. That's exactly what this new footage does, the Battista seen undergoing the first stages of an extensive testing and development phase.
The schedule for that programme is led by former Mercedes-AMG man Rene Wollmann, with ex-F1 driver Nick Heidfeld behind the wheel. Speaking about what they've seen so far, Wollmann revealed the incredible performance potential that cars like the Battista hold: "The mule vehicles running the chassis and powertrain concepts for Battista have already achieved 80 per cent of their performance capability without issue.
"This means that our EV performance is already equal to the most powerful combustion engine-powered hypercar currently in the world. And in the simulation and wind tunnel testing phase, by fine tuning the aero packaging, we've already seen a significant increase in the potential range of Battista versus our original prediction.
"In the next six months we will progress to delivering a thrilling pure-electric hypercar that seamlessly produces 1,900hp and 2,300Nm (1,700lb ft) of torque across a range of driving modes to suit varying environments."
With just days until Geneva and only months before the first cars are due to be handed over to customers, Automobili Pininfarina's engineers will now get stuck in to the exhaustive rapid development programme which we see the beginning of here. If their work continues to render the kind of results it has thus far, those owners ought to be in for quite the automotive experience.
In fact, I know just the place we can sell them
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVvcD4Czx4Y
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff