Porsche Now Owns A Piece Of Rimac
With the motoring industry changing at a rapid pace, it’s all the rage to use joint ventures to soften the blow of R&D costs. BMW and Toyota’s sports car collaboration is a prominent example, and yesterday it was announced that Ford and VW would be forming a “strategic alliance” to develop a “range of commercial vehicles” and “much more.”
Now, Porsche is getting in on the act. It’s already working with multiple manufacturers including Mercedes and Ford to create a new rapid charging network, but to bolster the electric car side of proceedings a little further, Stuttgart has taken a 10 per cent stake in Croatian hypercar company Rimac.
Lutz Meschke, Porsche’s Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board and Member of the Executive Board for Finance and IT (impressively long job title, no?), has this to say about the tie-up: “We feel that Rimac’s ideas and approaches are extremely promising, which is why we hope to enter into close collaboration with the company in the form of a development partnership.”
This almost certainly means that Rimac-developed tech will end up on future Porsche electric vehicles like the Taycan. You can hardly blame Stuttgart: the setup of the incoming C_Two is astonishing, with a powertrain that consists of a quartet of electric motors with independent gearboxes and carbon clutches. In total, the system develops 1888bhp.
Commenting on the news, company CEO Mate Rimac said: “This partnership now is an important step for Rimac on our way to become a component and system supplier of choice for the industry in electrification, connectivity and the exciting field of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems.”
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