Rimac storms to world record

The Rimac Nevera is officially the fastest accelerating production vehicle.

SORRY Teslarati, the Plaid never stood a chance.

News to wake up today is that the Rimac Nevera, a $3 million-plus supercar from Croatia named after a storm, has officially established as the fastest accelerating production vehicle in the world.

While on its way to participate in the Pebble Beach celebrations weekend, the electric hypercar went to Famoso Raceway in McFarland, California, where it managed to set a production car record quarter-mile time of 8.582 seconds at 269.58kmh, according to Rimac.

That was fast enough to beat the company’s own unofficial record of 8.62 seconds, which it set in Croatia back in June. Unlike that previous attempt, Rimac utilized a drag-friendly, VHT-prepped surface this time around.

The effort was undertaken with DragTimes, with an employee of of that publication/website, Brooks Weisblat, at the wheel. He also brought along Tesla’s fastest product, a Model S Plaid, for comparison. That car is often cited as being the barometer for this sort of thing. You can watch the video to see how that works out and also how he reacts to the brutality of such intense acceleration.

 The Rimac was on its standard Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres and, on the day of the feat, the air temperature was 37C and track temperature at 65oC.

With its Launch Control engaged – that’s done by simply putting your left foot on the brake and flooring the accelerator – the Nevera prepared to unleash the full force of its 1427kW powertrain through four separate electric motors. Having lifted a foot off the brake, the Nevera’s advanced control systems, including Rimac All-Wheel Torque Vectoring 2, constantly monitored which wheels had the most grip, portioning out the power to minimise wheelspin and maximise acceleration as it launched down the strip.

And in just a blink of an eye, the Nevera set the ¼-mile in a production car world record time of 8.582 seconds. The run was the 11th of the day in quick succession, without any performance degradation between the runs, Rimac says.

Nevera’s previous unofficial world record quarter-mile time for a production car was set at 8.62 seconds earlier this year during testing in Croatia on an unprepared airstrip. Rimac has now beaten its own record and produced times that can be independently verified by third parties – with lots of performance still to be unlocked through over-the-air software updates.