The Pininfarina Battista

The Pininfarina Battista is named after the company's founder, Battista Farina, and it delivers the kind of performance (and price!) that would make its namesake happy. The Battista is a fully electric car that produces 1,827 horsepower and was unveiled at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show. If a regular supercar's 0-60 time sounds too slow for you, the Battista will get you there in under 2.0 seconds, according to the firm. Pininfarina intends to construct 150 Battistas at a cost of $2.5 million each.

It produces 1,874 hp and 1,696 lb-ft of torque. It will reach 60 miles per hour in 1.9 seconds, 100 miles per hour in 4.3 seconds, and 186 miles per hour in 11.8 seconds. What's a quarter mile? In 9.1 seconds, he was gone. What's your top speed? A blistering 218 mph on the autobahn. There isn't a single turbocharger, camshaft, or piston in sight. Welcome to the hypercar's terrifying future. Welcome to the Pininfarina Battista, one of this year's Geneva auto show's standout vehicles.

The name has a long and illustrious history. In Turin, Italy, Battista 'Pinin' Farina launched his namesake coachbuilding enterprise in 1930. His 1947 Cisitalia 202 coupe was the first car to be included to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Pininfarina has also designed and constructed automobiles for Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Peugeot, and Cadillac (remember the Allante?). The Battista, on the other hand, is a hypercar for the digital age, blending traditional Italian design and workmanship with financial and technological resources that were simply not available ten years ago.

Pininfarina SpA, which will produce the Battista in Italy, is currently majority owned by Mahindra, an Indian manufacturer best known in the United States for its tractors and the Roxor off-roader, a decades-old CJ Jeep clone. Automobili Pininfarina, which created the Battista idea and will sell the car, is 100 percent owned by Mahindra and staffed by highly experienced executives and engineers who have worked for Porsche, Pagani, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Alfa Romeo, and Audi, among others.

Rimac Automobili's electric-powered Concept One and C Two hypercars are fast enough to scare a Bugatti Chiron, and their electric-powered Concept One and C Two hypercars are fast enough to scare a Bugatti Chiron. When former Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond threw a Concept One off the road while recording an episode of The Grand Tour in 2017, Rimac pricked the pop-culture zeitgeist. Rimac, on the other hand, has caught the attention of acknowledged car industry heavyweights, with Porsche quietly taking a 10% share in the company last year. Rimac is also supplying high-performance hybrid battery systems to Aston Martin and Koenigsegg for their upcoming Valkyrie and Regera models.

The Battista, designed by Pininfarina SpA, appears to be a modified Ferrari 488 at first appearance. Even though the requirement for the Battista came from Automobili Pininfarina design director Luca Borgogno, who previously worked at Lamborghini's Turin studio on the Urus SUV, the Ferrari vibe is maybe logical considering the company's long history with Maranello. Insiders at Automobili Pininfarina insist that the carbon-iber monocoque and body panels are entirely new and one-of-a-kind, a claim backed up by doors that are carved into and hinged at the roof, swinging forward and upward like those on a McLaren 720S.

The Battista's proportions and posture are basic mid-engine supercar proportions—the lack of exhaust pipes being the only hint to the e-powertrain underneath—which some may consider a squandered opportunity. But, like a tuxedo, a classic formula can only be tweaked and teased so many times until it starts to appear weird. The Battista is a traditional beauty, with a few skillfully crafted lines defining its shape. The most essential of these fold in toward the center of the automobile as they rise over the rear wheels, defining the inner edge of surfaces that appear to float over the back of the car. The lines—and surfaces—don't quite meet, giving the Battista the appearance of a split rear wing.

Borgogno, the design director, remarks, "I love the wing." "It appears to be two distinct fins. When the rear wing of other supercars is lifted, it leaves an unsightly, dead hollow space, but the Battista's wing is so thin that it just leaves a shallow indentation, the floor of which we've perforated so you can look into the back airflow section."

Similar to the McLaren 720S, the lines also define air channels that run along each side of the glasshouse. Although the Battista does not require oxygen to generate all of its power and torque, five radiators are strategically placed throughout the vehicle to help regulate the temperatures of the T-shaped, 120-kW-hr lithium-manganese-nickel battery pack and the four liquid-cooled Rimac synchronous permanent magnet e-motors.

Pininfarina promises a range of up to 280 miles between charges, though your mileage may vary as with any internal combustion engine vehicle. The battery pack, according to Rimac, has enough electricity and thermal stability to propel the C Two concept for two full-power laps of the 12.9-mile Nürburgring Nordschleife with no performance loss. The Battista should be able to do the same.

And they should be blazingly fast laps. Despite the large battery pack, the Battista's overall weight should be approximately 4,500 pounds because to carbon-fiber construction. Carbon-ceramic brakes are standard, with front rotors measuring 15.4 inches and rear rotors measuring 15.0 inches, each clamped by six-piston monobloc calipers. The Battista will have endlessly variable torque vectoring capacity at each corner of the car, thanks to an e-motor powering each wheel (two motors share a single casing in the center of the car at each axle).

Nick Heidfeld, a former F1 and Le Mans 24 racer who now works as a research driver for the Mahindra Formula E team, is helping to fine-tune the Battista's characteristics. Peter Tutzer, who began his career at Porsche and eventually became chief engineer for the company's race vehicle program, is working alongside Heidfeld. He then worked at Pagani on the Zonda before joining Bugatti, where he was instrumental in the engineering and development of the Veyron. There's no scarcity of trustworthiness there.

The Battista's interior is at once high tech and luxurious, with state-of-the-moment infotainment interfaces and a wide range of available trim colors. Both sides of the steering wheel have a screen, with the left controlling dynamics and performance and the right controlling media and navigation. On a compact, centrally positioned screen, all critical information is shown right in front of the driver. The drive mode settings are controlled by a rotary controller positioned on the door, and the transmission control is on the right. Drivers will also be able to customize their sound settings, which will range from silence to "a characteristic Battista sound," according to Automobili Pininfarina.

Only 150 Battistas will be produced by Automobili Pininfarina, with a third of them going to the United States. The first automobiles will be delivered in 2020, just in time for Pininfarina's 90th anniversary.