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Written by Rowan Horncastle
With Ludicrous Mode" engaged, the Tesla Model S P90D has 762bhp and 713lb ft of toque. Which, in most people"s books, is adequate. But what happens if you were to double the horsepower and crank up the instantaneous torque to 1,327lb ft? The answer is that silent, yet slippery thing above: the Rimac Concept_S.First of all, no car should have an underscore in it like an old Hotmail address, so let"s just call it the Concept S. Silly punctuation aside, it is a very, very serious bit of kit.It"s the bigger, more racy brother to the Rimac Concept Underscore One. And before you shoot it down for being unrealistic vapourware, the Croatian firm has form in making electric cars and proven its technology works. Last year at the Pikes Peak, King of the Hill Nobuhiro Monster" Tajima"s drove a Rimac prototype to the finish line quicker than all of the combustion engine powered cars. That"s right, the fastest car at last year"s 12.4-mile ascent up a mountain was powered by batteries. Welcome to the future, y"all.The Concept S is basically the evolution of that race car. And the performance is so far beyond Tesla"s Insane" and Ludicrous" modes, we"re actually struggling to think of a suitable superlative. So, why don"t you have a go below?You need a word that encompasses the possibility of going from standstill to 62mph in 2.5-seconds, then onto 124mph in 5.6. That"s nearly a second quicker than Bugatti claims for its new bonkers Chiron. The electric car has the big Bug pipped to 186mph, too. Getting there in just 13.1 seconds, where the Chiron takes half a second longer. Top speed is another big number: 227mph. Sheesh.Power gets to the road thanks to an all-wheel torque vectoring system that sends the power to each wheel independently. It"s controlled by a two-speed, dual-clutch gearbox connected to each of the independently-driven rear wheels in order to help achieve maximum traction.There"s also lots of downforce. Thanks to that lippy front splitter, air pushes the front wheels to the ground before being fed into the seven cooling systems to keep the batteries functioning. It"s then fired back out down the side skirts before being sucked into the rear diffuser just to make sure the car velcros itself to the tarmac.Though 50kg has been stripped out compared to the Concept One, it"s still a hefty thing tipping the scales at 1,800kg. Still, with that monstrous power number, the S has a power-to-weight ratio of 768bhp/ton more than LaFerrari, the McLaren P1 and Porsche 918.So, if this is the future of the hypercar, are you scared? We"re not.
Date written: 7 Mar 2016
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 2473
With Ludicrous Mode" engaged, the Tesla Model S P90D has 762bhp and 713lb ft of toque. Which, in most people"s books, is adequate. But what happens if you were to double the horsepower and crank up the instantaneous torque to 1,327lb ft? The answer is that silent, yet slippery thing above: the Rimac Concept_S.First of all, no car should have an underscore in it like an old Hotmail address, so let"s just call it the Concept S. Silly punctuation aside, it is a very, very serious bit of kit.It"s the bigger, more racy brother to the Rimac Concept Underscore One. And before you shoot it down for being unrealistic vapourware, the Croatian firm has form in making electric cars and proven its technology works. Last year at the Pikes Peak, King of the Hill Nobuhiro Monster" Tajima"s drove a Rimac prototype to the finish line quicker than all of the combustion engine powered cars. That"s right, the fastest car at last year"s 12.4-mile ascent up a mountain was powered by batteries. Welcome to the future, y"all.The Concept S is basically the evolution of that race car. And the performance is so far beyond Tesla"s Insane" and Ludicrous" modes, we"re actually struggling to think of a suitable superlative. So, why don"t you have a go below?You need a word that encompasses the possibility of going from standstill to 62mph in 2.5-seconds, then onto 124mph in 5.6. That"s nearly a second quicker than Bugatti claims for its new bonkers Chiron. The electric car has the big Bug pipped to 186mph, too. Getting there in just 13.1 seconds, where the Chiron takes half a second longer. Top speed is another big number: 227mph. Sheesh.Power gets to the road thanks to an all-wheel torque vectoring system that sends the power to each wheel independently. It"s controlled by a two-speed, dual-clutch gearbox connected to each of the independently-driven rear wheels in order to help achieve maximum traction.There"s also lots of downforce. Thanks to that lippy front splitter, air pushes the front wheels to the ground before being fed into the seven cooling systems to keep the batteries functioning. It"s then fired back out down the side skirts before being sucked into the rear diffuser just to make sure the car velcros itself to the tarmac.Though 50kg has been stripped out compared to the Concept One, it"s still a hefty thing tipping the scales at 1,800kg. Still, with that monstrous power number, the S has a power-to-weight ratio of 768bhp/ton more than LaFerrari, the McLaren P1 and Porsche 918.So, if this is the future of the hypercar, are you scared? We"re not.
Date written: 7 Mar 2016
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 2473
