Porsche Buys 10 Percent Stake In Electric Supercar Maker Rimac

With Rimac and Porsche joining forces, just imagine what a fully electric 911 will be capable of.

Croatian company Rimac has quickly established itself as the leading developer of electric supercars. Established in 2009, company founder and CEO Mate Rimac began working on his vision to revolutionize the electric car industry in his garage. Rimac’s first supercar, the Concept_One, may be infamous for nearly killing Richard Hammond while filming for The Grand Tour, but the publicity the accident generated was invaluable for the company. Everyone now knows Rimac.

At this year’s Geneva Motor Show, Rimac shook up the auto industry with the C_Two, a 1,914-hp electric supercar capable of hitting 0-62 mph in 1.85 seconds, making it faster than the Tesla Roadster. Clearly, this incredible car caught the attention of Porsche, because the automaker has now bought a 10 percent stake in Rimac not long after naming its first EV, the Taycan. Porsche hasn’t specified any plans following the investment, but said it hopes to enter a "close collaboration" with Rimac in the future.

“By developing the purely electric two-seaters super sports cars, like the ‘Concept One’ or ‘C Two’, as well as core vehicle systems, Rimac has impressively demonstrated its credentials in the field of electromobility”, said Lutz Meschke, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board and Member of the Executive Board for Finance and IT at Porsche. "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.” The news may come as a surprise, but Rimac has worked with other automakers having developed battery technology for leading supercar makers such as Aston Martin and Koenigsegg.

It’s too early to tell how the two companies will collaborate, but it’s an exciting development for the EV world. With Porsche and Rimac joining forces, just imagine what a fully electric 911 will be capable of. “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”, company CEO Mate Rimac said.

BMW Expects EVs To Make Up 25 Percent Of Sales By 2025

But BMW admitted it has no idea how popular its EVs will be in the future.

As the technology evolves, automakers are starting to make some bold sales predictions for their upcoming EVs. Volvo, for example, wants fully electric cars to make up half the company’s sales, and now BMW has similar ambitions. The Bavarian automaker has big plans for electrification and will be rapidly expanding its EV line-up in the next few years. By 2025, BMW is aiming to launch 25 EV and hybrid models, but the automaker admitted it’s difficult to predict how popular they will be with the mass market.

“We assume that, by the year 2025, something between 15 and 25 percent of the cars we make will have electric drivetrains,” BMW’s board member for production Oliver Zipse said in an interview with Car and Driver. However, he admitted this is simply a guess as “it could be 40 percent or it could be only 10 percent.” This uncertainty around EVs explains why BMW is relying on its flexible “Fifth Generation” architecture. While many companies are developing bespoke platforms for electric vehicles, BMW’s Gen 5 platform will be used with conventional, hybrid and electric powertrains.

According to the report, there will be two versions of this platform: one will be for front-wheel drive models, while the other will be for rear-wheel drive vehicles. Both versions of the platform will accommodate an all-wheel drive system, however. This means all future BMW models will ride on a platform designed to accommodate a battery pack underneath the floor, even though most models won’t utilize this space as conventional powertrains are expected to remain popular. This could be problematic, as Car and Driver says future BMWs will be taller to accommodate the additional battery space.

The first model to ride on the new platform will be the flagship iNext SUV, which is due to arrive in 2021 to take on the Jaguar I-Pace and Audi e-tron. Other models will follow with electric variants that use 60 kWh, 90 kWh or 120 kWh battery packs. The latter battery pack is expected to have a range of around 435 miles. An all-electric version of the X3, called the iX3, will also be built in China and exported to other markets. Showcased in Beijing, the iX3 concept features a 70 kWh battery pack providing a range of 249 miles.

Eighty-Five Percent Of BMWs In 2030 Will Still Have A Combustion Engine

At least according to one current top executive.

Change is rapidly taking place in the auto industry. Not even a decade ago diesel-engined vehicles were still viewed as one answer to lowering C02 emissions, and traditional sedans still sold in high numbers. It’s amazing how much has changed. Given all of the recent and ongoing advancements in battery and autonomous technologies, take a moment and imagine the world in 2028. Will we still be driving cars with our hands? Will they all be battery-electric? Will internal combustion be a permanent thing of the past? For BMW, internal combustion technology isn’t going anywhere just yet.

Speaking with Go Auto, BMW’s R&D boss Klaus Froehlich was, on the one hand, optimistic that global markets will soon be adopting electric vehicles, but also fairly certain there’s still a place for diesel engines. However, chances are there will be fewer of them due to less demand. “Yes, four and six cylinders will remain in the market. And I will have at least four power derivatives on the diesels,” he said. “But I think the high-end diesels, for example M50d, it is a challenge to do anyway. It is a challenge to comply to future emissions and the market is small.” Remember, BMW is done with diesel in the US, but oil burners will remain on sale in other markets.

As for the percentage of electric, plug-in hybrids and straight up internal combustion, Froehlich had this to say about BMW in 12 years’ time: “A very optimistic scenario says 30 percent of BMWs will be pure electric or plug-in hybrids and seven percent will be combustion. If you assume that, from this 30 percent, half of them are plug-in hybrids – I have 85 percent in my portfolio in 2030 with a combustion engine.” Whatever may or may not happen, Froehlich confirmed BMW will be ready to meet electric mobility needs.

“We already purchased… cobalt and lithium from 2025-35. We already have the second life in place for consumers or for grid stabilization, we have built these battery farms. We are prepared to deliver.” But which countries, at least according to BMW, are likely to be the last to fully adopt electric vehicles and stick with internal combustion for the foreseeable future? The German automaker believes Russia and Australia, in particular, will be filling up at gas stations for years to come.

Eighty-Five Percent Of BMWs In 2030 Will Still Have A Combustion Engine

At least according to one current top executive.

Change is rapidly taking place in the auto industry. Not even a decade ago diesel-engined vehicles were still viewed as one answer to lowering C02 emissions, and traditional sedans still sold in high numbers. It’s amazing how much has changed. Given all of the recent and ongoing advancements in battery and autonomous technologies, take a moment and imagine the world in 2028. Will we still be driving cars with our hands? Will they all be battery-electric? Will internal combustion be a permanent thing of the past? For BMW, internal combustion technology isn’t going anywhere just yet.

Speaking with Go Auto, BMW’s R&D boss Klaus Froehlich was, on the one hand, optimistic that global markets will soon be adopting electric vehicles, but also fairly certain there’s still a place for diesel engines. However, chances are there will be fewer of them due to less demand. “Yes, four and six cylinders will remain in the market. And I will have at least four power derivatives on the diesels,” he said. “But I think the high-end diesels, for example M50d, it is a challenge to do anyway. It is a challenge to comply to future emissions and the market is small.” Remember, BMW is done with diesel in the US, but oil burners will remain on sale in other markets.

As for the percentage of electric, plug-in hybrids and straight up internal combustion, Froehlich had this to say about BMW in 12 years’ time: “A very optimistic scenario says 30 percent of BMWs will be pure electric or plug-in hybrids and seven percent will be combustion. If you assume that, from this 30 percent, half of them are plug-in hybrids – I have 85 percent in my portfolio in 2030 with a combustion engine.” Whatever may or may not happen, Froehlich confirmed BMW will be ready to meet electric mobility needs.

“We already purchased… cobalt and lithium from 2025-35. We already have the second life in place for consumers or for grid stabilization, we have built these battery farms. We are prepared to deliver.” But which countries, at least according to BMW, are likely to be the last to fully adopt electric vehicles and stick with internal combustion for the foreseeable future? The German automaker believes Russia and Australia, in particular, will be filling up at gas stations for years to come.

Eighty-Five Percent Of BMWs In 2030 Will Still Have A Combustion Engine

At least according to one current top executive.

Change is rapidly taking place in the auto industry. Not even a decade ago diesel-engined vehicles were still viewed as one answer to lowering C02 emissions, and traditional sedans still sold in high numbers. It’s amazing how much has changed. Given all of the recent and ongoing advancements in battery and autonomous technologies, take a moment and imagine the world in 2028. Will we still be driving cars with our hands? Will they all be battery-electric? Will internal combustion be a permanent thing of the past? For BMW, internal combustion technology isn’t going anywhere just yet.

Speaking with Go Auto, BMW’s R&D boss Klaus Froehlich was, on the one hand, optimistic that global markets will soon be adopting electric vehicles, but also fairly certain there’s still a place for diesel engines. However, chances are there will be fewer of them due to less demand. “Yes, four and six cylinders will remain in the market. And I will have at least four power derivatives on the diesels,” he said. “But I think the high-end diesels, for example M50d, it is a challenge to do anyway. It is a challenge to comply to future emissions and the market is small.” Remember, BMW is done with diesel in the US, but oil burners will remain on sale in other markets.

As for the percentage of electric, plug-in hybrids and straight up internal combustion, Froehlich had this to say about BMW in 12 years’ time: “A very optimistic scenario says 30 percent of BMWs will be pure electric or plug-in hybrids and seven percent will be combustion. If you assume that, from this 30 percent, half of them are plug-in hybrids – I have 85 percent in my portfolio in 2030 with a combustion engine.” Whatever may or may not happen, Froehlich confirmed BMW will be ready to meet electric mobility needs.

“We already purchased… cobalt and lithium from 2025-35. We already have the second life in place for consumers or for grid stabilization, we have built these battery farms. We are prepared to deliver.” But which countries, at least according to BMW, are likely to be the last to fully adopt electric vehicles and stick with internal combustion for the foreseeable future? The German automaker believes Russia and Australia, in particular, will be filling up at gas stations for years to come.