Meet Italy's 'most powerful road-legal car'

We take a look at the Italian electric hypercar that will cost you a seven figure sum...

Mike Duff

5 March 2019

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The Pininfarina Battista EV hypercar, unveiled in full at this year’s Geneva show, will be the most powerful road-legal car ever produced in Italy, according to its makers.

Unveiled on the eve of the first day of the 2019 Geneva motor show, the hypercar will have separate motors for each wheel that, collectively, deliver up to 1900bhp and 1696lb ft. Pininfarina says that will be good enough for a sub-2 second 0-62mph time, 0-186mph in under 12sec and a top speed of around 217mph.

It will be the most powerful road-legal car ever produced in Italy, according to its makers. Let's take a closer look:
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It's related to the Rimac C_Two

The powertrain is mostly shared with the Rimac C_Two, but Automobili Pininfarina CEO Michael Pershcke was keen to emphasise the technical differences between the two.
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But they're not identical...

“I wouldn’t compare it to something like an Audi R8 and a Lamborghini Huracan. They are technically identical,” he said.
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It will have Italian blood

“We will share probably 40-50% of the pure technical components. There is a raw skeleton of the drivetrain, but how it has been tuned - the acceleration amplitude, the drive mode characteristics – these all come from us and are very different.”
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Competition is rife in this area

Perschke describes Pininfarina’s relationship with Rimac – the Croatian EV specialist partially owned by Porsche – as being that of “frenemies”, both competing and collaborating.
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But collaboration often means success...

“We are Mate [Rimac]’s biggest single customer,” he said. “From an operational day-to-day point of view, we are more relevant to him that Porsche is.”
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Interest is high in the US

Pininfarina plans to build 150 Battistas, with sales split almost equally between Europe, the US and the rest of the world. Perschke said interest in the US has been slightly stronger.
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Going fast

“We have a good 30-plus down payments in the bank,” he said. “In the US, we have over 65% of the cars we intend to deliver already allocated and reserved by clients.”
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The first of triplets

The Battista is the first car from Pininfarina Automobili and the Mahindra-owned company plans to launch three EVs in the three years after its introduction. Perschke hinted two will be crossovers to rival the Bentley Bentayga and Lamborghini Urus.
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Seven figure price tag

These will be much less expensive than the seven-figure Battista, although Perschke said: “We will probably not get down to a five-digit price tag”. The firm’s ambition is to sell between 8000 and 10,000 cars a year within five years.
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Strong team

Pininfarina has made several big hires, the most recent Rene Wollmann, previously project leader on the Mercedes-AMG Project One. Wollmann will work alongside technical boss Christian Jung, who joined from Porsche last year, and former Bugatti engineer Peter Tutzler.
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Concept doesn't always make reality

The Battista’s design was lead by Pininfarina Automobili styling boss Luca Borgogno, who admits his team had a battle to get the original concept through to production reality. The finished car will be homologated for sale in both Europe and the US.
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Pop up head lights? Not quite...

The original proposal for pop-up headlamp covers didn’t make production. Borgogno said: “That was a kind of dream for us to bring those back to the market, but sadly the car is for worldwide homologation and it was too difficult to do that.”
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Change doesn't always mean different...

Despite its radically different powerplant and low-mounted battery pack, the Battista has kept the proportions of a classic mid-engined supercar.
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Familiar feel

“We wanted the car still to be perceived as a hypercar – and the normal proportion is with the cabin pushed forward and the rear flank very strong,” said Borgogno. “Technically, it is the right solution as well.

For weight distribution, we wanted to put the most part of the car between the wheelbase, and the batteries are more or less where the IC (internal combustion) engine sits in a normal car.”
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Start saving

Customer deliveries will start by the end of 2020 in Europe, with sales in the US and Asia following in 2021.
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Battista

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