The Rimac name briefly pricked the pop culture zeitgeist in 2017 when former Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond threw the earlier Concept One electric hypercar (this one had only 1,224 hp) off the road while filming an episode of The Grand Tour. For the most part, though, it has flown under the radar, known only to a handful of engineers working at the cutting edge of high-performance electric vehicle design and development.
In high school in Croatia, Rimac studied computer, electronic, mechanical, and control engineering systems. He won regional and national championships for innovation and electronics design, and he says he held two patents by the time he was 17 years old. But … “I was always crazy about cars, so I wanted to race. As soon as I turned 18, I bought a 1984 3 Series BMW and started racing it.”
The BMW’s engine blew up after the second race. Rimac decided to replace it with an electric powertrain of his own design.
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“I had this idea of building an electric car for a long time,” Rimac says, “mostly because Nikola Tesla was born in Croatia, so I was always reading a lot about him.” One of Tesla’s inventions was the alternating current electric motor, and Rimac wondered why nobody was using it to make a high-performance electric car. “That was the trigger for me,” he says. “I wanted to prove that electric cars can be exciting and fun—and to beat gas-powered cars on the racetrack.”
And with that, teenage Rimac was on the way to starting his own car company.
Rimac Automobile was founded in 2009. After more than 10 years of experimentation and evolution—to the point where almost everything the company sells is designed, engineered, and made in-house—the company’s business model is simple: Make money supplying other automakers with unique, ultra-high-performance electric vehicle and hybrid technologies.
The Rimac C_Two hypercar?
Mate the Businessman jumps in: “We’ve had CEOs of companies with more revenue than Croatia’s GDP on our stand. If it wasn’t for the car, if we were just a battery and motor company, they would never have heard of us.”
But Mate the Enthusiast is never far away: “Of course I’m very passionate about helping other manufacturers build their cars. But if the shareholders decide it doesn’t make sense to produce our own cars, they we’ll have to find another CEO.”
To the manner born.
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