EV company founder says petrol power is the future

Founder of the Rimac electric hypercar brand and CEO of Bugatti , Mate Rimac, has said the future of high-end supercars is not electric, with petrol-powered vehicles to remain in high demand even as mainstream models become increasingly electric.

Speaking to CNBC , the Rimac founder and Bugatti Rimac CEO suggested exotic supercars are entering a “Swiss watch phase”, where high-net-worth buyers are shunning the latest tech for more conventional mechanical and handcrafted models.

“For normal cars, normal people, the vast majority will be electric, [but] the upper segment, like sports cars and upwards, are going to stay combustion for a very long time, exactly like watches,” Mr Rimac told CNBC.

“Only like five per cent of watches are made in Switzerland, but that’s where 90 per cent of profits are made. An Apple Watch or any kind of smartwatch can do so many more things, but no one will pay $200,000 for it.”

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Ironically, Mr Rimac founded Rimac Automobili, an electric-only hypercar company, in 2009, with its first production model – the Rimac Concept One – one of the fastest electric vehicles (EVs) in the world at the time.

It was followed by the C_Two concept in 2018, which became the production-ready Nevera in 2021. The Nevera went on to set a number of EV performance records, including a production-EV top-speed record of 412km/h, and was priced at around €2 million (A$3.24 million).

In 2021, Rimac Automobili and Porsche formed the Bugatti Rimac joint venture, bringing together Rimac and the historic Bugatti brand – famous for making some of the fastest internal-combustion-powered cars in the world.

The Veyron, introduced in 2005, spawned the Super Sport that reached 431km/h in 2010, while the Chiron, introduced in 2016, saw the Super Sport 300+ reach 490.484km/h in 2019.

Yet Mr Rimac has no plans for a battery-electric Bugatti to follow the Chiron which, like the Veyron, used a quad-turbocharged 16-cylinder petrol engine configured in overlapping vees to form a ‘W16’.

Instead, the Chiron’s successor, the Tourbillon , will use a hybrid powertrain, combining an 8.3-litre V16 petrol engine making 746kW/900Nm with an additional 597kW kick from a trio of electric motors for a total system output of 1343kW.

“It’s kind of ironic that I’m now making the world’s biggest combustion engine,” Mr Rimac said.

“You have the crazy situation now at our facility in Croatia. On the same production line, you have the world’s most powerful electric car being built right next to the world’s biggest combustion engine. Life is strange sometimes.”

The comments come only months after iconic Italian supercar maker and Formula 1 mainstay Ferrari launched its first EV, the Luce .