Brandon
(CNN) At full speed, the Rimac Concept_One is little more than a cherry red blur, flashing from one corner of the horizon to the other in the blink of an eye.
If its projected performance figures prove to be true, this radical electric concept car -- the brainchild of an award-winning young Croatian designer -- could accelerate faster than all but two of the fastest supercars on earth.
The Rimac Concept_One's figures are impressive. Not just for an electric car, but for traditional petrol-engine cars as well. For years electric vehicles have been regarded as the frumpy inner-city siblings of their hardier countryside 4x4 brethren or zippier track-friendly supercar sisters. Electric vehicles have tended to have names like Leaf, Buddy or Spark as opposed to Vanquish, Venom or Phantom. All this may be set to change when Rimac goes into production. First unveiled at Frankfurt Motor Show in September, 2011, the Concept One is an electric vehicle that aims to be even faster than the Bugatti Veyron. Its precocious 25-year-old inventor, Mate Rimac, says that the car produces 1018 horsepower, can accelerate from 0 to 100 kph (62 mph) in just 2.8 seconds, has a top speed of 305 kph (190 mph), and can travel 600 kilometers (372 miles) on a single charge.
Mate Rimac says that he has always been motivated by the desire to demonstrate the superiority of electric over petrol-powered cars: "I have two passions; cars and technology," Rimac says. "Technology because Nikola Tesla was born in Croatia, and he invented the electric motor that is used in so many applications today. And I knew simply by theory that this motor is so much better to drive a car -- even a sports car.
"I decided to combine my two passions, technology and cars and make an electric car that can prove the electric motor is much better even on the racetrack. Not just city cars for boring stuff, but to show people that the future will be interesting -- that one day when petrol is gone and you...