Acceleration, top speed and stopping distance. Three records broken in the space of a few days by an increasingly record-breaking electric powertrain, a true benchmark for battery-powered production cars. First it was the turn of Rimac Nevera, capable of establishing a new speed record for a production electric car, reaching 412 km/h. Less than a week later, Pininfarina Battista, equipped with the same powertrain as its Croatian cousin, rewrote all the acceleration references for battery-powered cars at the Dubai racetrack, snapping from 0 to 100 km/h in 1.86 seconds and covering the 0-200 km/h in 4.79 seconds. Not happy, the hypercar from Cambiano has established the new braking record, stopping from 100 km/h in just 31 metres. The three dynamic records become even more sensational if the weights of Nevera and Battista are taken into consideration, both in the order of 2150 kg, placing further emphasis on the potential of a propulsion system without equal.
Both creatures by Rimac and Pininfarina are equipped with a powertrain at the center of which resides a generous battery 120 kWh, shaped in the shape of a T and distributed longitudinally along the central axis of the platform. The accumulator boasts a nominal voltage of 730 Volts, thanks to 6960 liquid-cooled lithium-manganese-nickel cylindrical cells. Nevera and Pininfarina also enjoy a all-wheel drive thanks to four power moduleseach including a permanent magnet motor, 800 Volt inverter and transmission, which by individually actuating the wheels allow the implementation of torque vectoring and traction control algorithms. The rear modules are oversized in comparison with the front ones, going in search of a better steering ability but above all of a greater availability of power at the rear, where the transfer of weight under acceleration ensures that there is maximum availability of grip on the ground. The two rear motor generators, which, like the front ones, are oil-cooled and encapsulated in a composite material jacket, each boast 900 Nm and 450 kW of maximum power, while the individual motors on the front axle are characterized by 270 Nm and 226 kW each. The overall power of Nevera and Battista thus reaches 1400 kW, the equivalent of approx 1900 horsepowerhowever not sufficient to guarantee a power-weight ratio from the first in the category, which with 0.88 hp/kg remains less than unity. The specific couple in the neighborhood of 1.1Nm/kg it is instead more indicative for the purposes of the recently broken records, thanks to a total amount of 2340Nm.
However, Rimac and Pininfarina do not only have the powertrain in common, but also the chassis. Both hypercars are built around a monocoque made up of 2,200 carbon fiber skins and over 200 aluminum inserts, weighing 200 kg and torsional stiffness of 70,000 Nm/degree. Battista and Nevera even share the same Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres, also available in the 2R model exclusively for the Cambiano hypercar, thus making it difficult to identify the differences underlying the different performances. In fact, the Croatian car boasts more than that 70km/h more top speed compared to its Italian cousin, which in turn enjoys a sprint from 0 to 100 km/h about 0.1 seconds faster, equivalent to 5%, in comparison with Rimac. Also indicative is the different range declared on the WLTP cycle, with a mileage of 490 km for Nevera and 476 km for Battista, despite a battery of the same capacity.
As always in such circumstances, weight is the first suspect, but although Pininfarina has never officially released numbers, the information gathered tells of minimal differences between the masses of the two hypercars. Battista’s top speed of 350 km/h, considerably lower than Nevera’s 412 km/h, however leads us to suspect a possible different software and thermal management of the powertrain, but even more so a different aerodynamic cure. Rimac’s creature has a Cx penetration coefficient of 0.3 in a low load configuration, while no direct numbers can be found for Battista. However, the different performances lead us to think that Pininfarina’s studies have developed an aerodynamic look with greater load, a surprising result in some respects if we consider that the Turin house, by its very nature, tends to enhance the aesthetic aspect of design in the his eternal compromise with performance. Another small clue is provided by the different length of the two cars with the same wheelbase, with 4750 mm for Nevera and 4912 mm for Battista, thus underlining how Pininfarina was able to enjoy more surface area from the underbody to generate downforce. The vertical thrust is also the basis of the braking record of the Cambiano car which, like its Croatian counterpart, is equipped with brakes Bremboespecially with 390 mm diameter carbon ceramic discs and six-piston calipers on both axles.
Rimac and Pininfarina have thus interpreted in different declinations a powertrain that is a point of reference for electric hypercars. The sharing of the records between Nevera and Battista highlights how prohibitive it is for the same car to specialize in every single area of performance, an even more probative challenge for battery propulsion. All we have to do is wait to see who and how will rewrite the records set in the last week by a powertrain that is already an icon.
#Battista #Nevera #interpretations #recordbreaking #powertrain #FormulaPassion.it
