Age of the Electric Hypercar is upon us.

The Lotus Evora, the Tesla Roadster, the Pininfarina Batista on this re Maxie to imminent all have almost 2000 brake horsepower.

All have for Dr Look low and lean and promise face melting acceleration.

But nobody's had a chance to experience that sort.

Until now.

It's good.

Let's add some facts to my incomprehensible squealing, Shall we?

Back in 2008 when we first saw, it remarked, gave us a spec sheet for the sea to, and it read like this.

A full carbon fibre mono cock four motors, one for each wheel, producing 1887 brake horsepower on £1696.

Feet of talk curb way of around two tons, naught to 60 miles an hour in 1.85 seconds, not to 100 in 4.3 north to 186 in 11.8 and a top speed of 258 miles.

Now that makes it one of the very fastest cars ever built.

It also has a came range of 330 miles, 550 kilometers on the W.

L.

T P cycle and can top up north to 80% of its 120 kilowatt hour battery in 30 minutes, thanks to a charging capacity of up to 300 kilowatts.

However, as you can see from the camera phones on this girl, this is a two year old Shoko.

This is a protect type off the full production machine beer bomb with them out for performance a lot.

So today is very much a taster over here.

You want to think about acceleration.

It's no quiet as explosive out the blocks.

As you might imagine that because this is an early prototype with a two speed gear box on the back axle from for production.

Car is gonna be a single speed, but this is locked in second gear because that's all they need for the processes this car needs to validate way it picks up, then it's smooth.

It's quick.

I'm heading up here to be fair, which looks acceleration anyway, once you get there is a lot for me, it doesn't feel quite naughty, overriding sense that with this is the feeling of solidity, it's noisy.

It's a prototype.

You're gonna get that, you're gonna get stones pinging off it, and you can hear the tires and a wind whistling around the April issue.

But through my bum three, my fingers, it feels absolutely keyed in.

So when you turn the wheel, it just moves.

There's no slack chassis whatsoever.

That's the garden fiber.

Monaco that's super super stiff Suspension is attached directly to the carbon Monica.

It's a fantastic basis for a very, very fast carpets because everything together I love about this car is the fact that Remark drives a V eight and five.

He's a petrol head.

He's just a bloke that loves cars.

He didn't make an electric hypercar because he wanted to save the planet or prove anything in particular.

Lever thought using batteries and monitors were simply a better way to make a fast car It doesn't have.

The Ranger doesn't have repeatability of performance.

I mean, we're gonna find out with finished product later on, but this evidence, then it was time to pick up a passenger who I let drive for a little bit considering is his car.

Thanks for having me, I think, especially as I've been told, I sound a little bit like Richard Hammond, so I don't have any flashbacks.

Don't worry.

We're not gonna go there.

Just don't get happy every time you sit on the real of this girl.

Yes, I do.

But I can never just drive.

I always watch a ll, the details and all the data and, like, try to hear if there's something wrong and so yeah.

So for me, it's like a test drive every time.

How would you describe your driving stomach?

Smooth.

Aggressive.

Like this balances that one man going then how much, Sim?

How much power does this prototype on as an early prototype?

Does it produce in the moment around 1000 kilowatts?

What's that?

1003 $100.

Okay, Why isn't limited?

Just tell me a bit about this approach type what stage of the process this comes from.

So every prototype has a different purpose.

This was actually the first running car did he produced almost a year ago.

Now, which means that it's basically based on 15 month old data.

So is the process is going on while you produce the card.

Yeah, and this was used to test the suspension and the battery.

And let's say the basics of the poetry.

So we didn't take care off the exterior interior.

So a lot of the stuff he was improvised duct tape.

So be printed.

Yeah, but used it.

Waas used for the suspension set up and saw.

And what he wanted to do first is to have a really good, uh, let's say, passive car meaning mechanical, great suspension, geometry, the kingdom antics of the suspension, the set up together with the tires because the tires are custom made for this car by bitterly and then add tort fracturing on top of it.

Because otherwise you might just be, you know, covering up deficiencies with talk.

Victor, you got.

You know, the chassis is okay, but that's what we don't want.

You want to have a really solid car without our director and then add the functionalities talk, fracturing on top way.

Want to have some kind of natural controlling the vehicle, like when you're in drift boat that you can really slide the car around and still feel like you're in control and have many more intervention, but still some kind of intervention because you don't want the tired to go to Columbia spell while the car's going 50 you just said it has drifted.

So that's that's one of the things in the Finnish car.

Right?

When we have the election systems over laid, Um, can you do the whole tank mode things spinning on the spot?

Because you could effectively turn wheels in different directions?

Yeah, theoretically, yes.

But it's not something you would give to our customers.

It's another dangerous, I think.

But it's a nice way of demonstrating just now you can have.

It's like, Thank you.

Okay, so we protect forward to the production car that we're going to see in Geneva.

How much of the suspects from the concept car two years ago have been carried over?

I've got I've got a checklist just to make sure we don't miss anything.

Civil four motors.

You still have them to speed gearbox because the concept just give up on the rear axle, right?

Yes, that's right.

This car still has them.

Yes, this was an early brother time.

But for production, we decided not to have to begin to go for a six speed gearbox in order to reduce the weight and the complexity and increase efficiency.

So this car still eyes to speak.

But we are just using second gear right now because that's closer to the production on how How can you maintain that 400 does not speak with just a single speaking.

It was a trick toe, really Increase the performance of the motors and inverters.

So we moved the motor speed from 12,000 rpm to 18,000 rpm on the torque at the same time from 700 meters to 900.

So that way we could have the same acceleration and same top speed without having to two years is that is the aim still 1900 horsepower.

I did not want us.

There is 1900 said, uh, on the range of 550 kilometres.

W ll be psychic.

Yes, TP Now I remember meeting you two years ago and you said the aim was to do too fast laps of the Nurburgring without a significant decrease in performance.

How close were you to that?

That stuff One.

We're still working on that next question.

Yeah, well, for the Polish train, it's doable.

It's not the problem.

The problem is the batteries which are heating up.

So the strategy of how you start the left and how you managed the power in the cooling during the lap.

That's something that we are really tuning doing.

Lots of simulations.

Can we do two laps today?

No, we can't without the rating, but I hope we'll get there.

On that note.

We swap seats so I could have another go this time under the watchful eye of Mr Rimac.

So I almost died twice, being the passenger in the best time.

So third time lucky I was I had to promise my girlfriend and I will never drive.

It's a messenger with somebody else in our prototypes again.

So be careful, Please.

Just to say what I did.

Turn up.

Matty said okay, Yeah, I'll do some driving with Jack in the passenger seat and then, yeah, he could just go off on his own.

And I know I want you in here.

Don't worry, I'm taking it easy.

I'm just I'm letting the car have been driving prototypes before.

Yeah, yeah, how much more power a car take?

I'll be honest in the top gear office when you first announced, See, too, and it was 1900 horsepower way were like This is such a leap from anything that we've known before.

Remember the mayor on being announced with £1000 just blowing on?

Why take this?

Our number is it.

This is Muchas four tires could take.

Could you Can you see a more powerful car in the future?

We'll struggle is not a digital switch, you know, So you don't have to use the full power all the time, but there's never too much power, I think even with those not horsepower tire can't take it until 120.

But above it, you could have more power.

No problem for you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I don't think that's the problem.

Well, you know, when the McClaren fom came out, everybody was like, Okay, that's it.

There will be no car with more power than that.

And today you have sedans and SUV's with that kind of power normal.

So today I would say 1000 100 horsepower is like, Why would you need more?

I don't know.

Let's speak again in a few years to summer.

Then the C two is already blisteringly quick to drive how fast it will be when a further 600 horse power is unleashed.

I can only imagine the steering brakes and refinement or need a fair bit of tuning.

But this is a six month old prototype, so we won't dwell on that too much.

What we can say is in the corners, it feels stiff on alert and super flat, half a ton lighter.

At least then it's two ton plus curb, weight suggests.

And here's the clincher.

Hasn't even had the infinite four wheel drive torque vectoring wizardry applied.

Yet when it does, the handling should be out of this world.

Oh, and because you'll have direct manual control over how you want the power distributed up to 100% to the rear axle in drift mode, it might be a hyper GT a heart, the sea, too.

But it's going to be a lot of fun on the track as well.

Okay, let's learn a bit more about the man and the company rewriting the book or not just hyper cars, but electric cars in general.

Okay, matter.

You must feel like we're surrounded by your baby's here.

That's the 2018 show car approach start.

We've been driving on the new final production model.

We're not gonna talk about that now until you demand the company the electric car landscape in general.

But before that first question, it's the one everyone wants to ask.

What's the secret to your bid?

Well, actually, no.

I started a company in one of those 20 years old, and what's strange enough to do it in Croatia?

You know, I needed a beard to look more serious so people would take you seriously in these big meetings.

Well, here Musk is thinking about growing one, so it helps.

It gets its reports.

So take us right back to the beginning.

Where did your fascination with electric cars begin?

I was crazy about cars all my life.

My parents told me I was crazy about them before I could walk or talk like I pretended my hand hurts so my father would put me my grandfather's folks Long Beetle, and then I'll forget about the hurting camp, and when I was in high school, I was doing stuff with electronics.

I was the creation champion for electronics and innovation, had two patents when I was 17 years old.

I want a bunch of awards all over the world, but I won't want to do something with cars all my life.

And as soon as I turned 18 I bought in 1984 BMW Tree serious that we call box in creation like because it's a boxy.

I started to raise it because I wanted to race, and that was the easiest way to start racing by an old car with real drive on.

Well, differential.

You have a few spare tires and you go, you know.

But the engine blew up just after two races, and then I decided to combine my two passions, electronics and cars.

Being from Croatia, I read a lot about Nikola.

Tesla was born here as well before Tesla Motors, and the whole thing was famous, you know, in creation.

We were very proud of him, and one of his inventions was the electric motor that we're using today.

The alternating current elected motor and that motor was so fascinating to me that it's so perfect and so superior compared to combustion engines.

So why is nobody using that to make cars fun and exciting?

So I decided when the engine on the be invaluable up make an electric race car to show that electric cars can be fostered exciting.

That's how it started and start from there.

And here we are, many years later, just remind people.

How old are you?

I'm sure that that noise you can hear is everyone watching this video sighing, wishing that worked harder at school.

I think, Well, you know, it starts with a dream, But then the dream often becomes a nightmare.

I mean, to get here from that garage to here.

It was not an easy journey.