Interest in electric super sports is rapidly waning. They’re not cool anymore, Rimac admits

The Rimac brand pays for the top in the field of electric cars, which is also evidenced by the records of the Nevera supersport. The development of the Croatian car company, which cooperates with big players in the automotive industry, even took on such a dimension that in 2021 it took over the legendary Bugatti.

Now founder Mate Rimac admits that even though electric cars are gaining ground quickly in the mass market, interest is waning in the super sports segment. Speaking at the Financial Times Future of the Car Summit in London this week, he noted that a lot has changed since Rimac started developing the Nevera around 2017.

Better but not as exclusive

Even though electric car sales are slowing down, customers around the world have access to much more affordable and capable electric cars than they did just a few years ago.

“Regulators and some manufacturers are pushing EVs so much that the story has changed,” he said.

Nevera was developed in part as a demonstration of what could be achieved with electric motors and batteries at a time when the technology was still in its infancy and had yet to be fully adopted and marketed by major manufacturers.

“At the time, we thought electric cars would be cool in a few years – the best cars or the highest performance and so on. Now we’re starting to see that as electrification becomes mainstream, people buying high-end cars want to differentiate themselves.”

This is mainly reflected in the desire for analog technology and combustion drives, Rimac said, using the analogy that high-end analog watches cost several times more than more capable and popular smartwatches.

“Apple Watch does everything better. They can do 1000 other things, they are much more accurate, they can measure your heart rate. But nobody would pay $200,000 for an Apple Watch,” he said. “We have a market for the Nevera – and it’s the best-selling electric hypersport. We have already delivered more than 50 cars out of a total of 150,” said Rimac, adding that it was a different story for Bugatti. “If we made an electric bugatti, we would certainly sell a lot because of the brand, but not nearly as much as the V16 engine in the Chiron successor will sell,” he said.