Why the world's fastest EV is a slow seller

There were high hopes for the Rimac Nevera when it entered production, but not even the hypercar’s creator could have envisaged why the world’s fastest electric vehicle (EV) would struggle to notch up sales.

Croatian-based Rimac launched the Nevera in 2021 as the production version of its C_Two concept, with plans to build 150 examples of the electric hypercar.

Its marketing campaign included setting numerous records, including the highest EV top speed (412km/h), the fastest time for an EV around the Nürburgring Nordschleife (7:05:298) and even the Guinness World Record for reversing (hitting 275.74km/h).

However, little more than 50 examples of the 1427kW and €2 million ($3.26 million) electric hypercar have been sold, according to company founder Mate Rimac.

Autocar reports Mr Rimac, speaking at the Financial Times ‘Future of the Car’ conference, has attributed the struggle to shift Neveras down to high-end clients turning away from EVs as battery power becomes mainstream.

“At that time [when the C_Two concept was unveiled] we were thinking electric cars would be cool in a few years – the best cars, or with the highest performance and so on,” Mr Rimac told the conference.

“We notice [now] that as electrification is becoming mainstream, people at the top end of the sector want to differentiate themselves.

“The regulators and some OEMs [manufacturers] push it [EVs] so much that the narrative has changed. They’re pushing stuff on us that we don’t want, so people get a little bit repulsed by it, this whole forced application

“I’m always against it. I think everything has to be based on merit. So the product has to be better.

“An Apple Watch can do everything better [than an analogue watch]. It can do 1000 more things, it’s a lot more precise, it can measure your heart rate. But nobody would pay $200,000 for an Apple Watch.”

Mr Rimac’s belief that petrol-powered supercars still reign supreme extends to the Bugatti brand which is majority-owned by Rimac.

Bugatti has previously teased the successor to its quad-turbo, W16-powered Chiron hypercar will use a V16 engine, rather than an electric powertrain as some had expected.

Autocar reports he added “if we did an electric Bugatti, we would have sold an amount of them, for sure, because of the brand”, however it would be “nowhere near” as popular as the V16-powered model.

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