A car that is faster than time

This article is about a car manufactured by Automobili Pininfarina. For humans, see Battista Pininfarina.

Pininfarina Battista is an electric sports car manufactured by Automobili Pininfarina GmbH, which is headquartered in Munich, Germany, with its roots in the Italian design of Pininfarina SpA’s company cars and bodies. The name of Battista is a tribute to the founder of Pininfarina, Battista Farina. The car was publicly presented at the Geneva Motor Show in 2019.

Battista is powered by a 120 kW / h battery supplied by Rimac Automobili. The car has four separate engines mounted on each wheel, and they have a total output of 1,400 kW (1,893 hp; 1,877 hp) and 2,300 Nm (1,696 lb-ft) of torque.

The car has a carbon monocoque chassis with aluminum crash structures in the front and rear. Most body panels are also made of the same material, which results in low weight. The car has 21-inch wheels fitted with Pirelli P Zero Corsa tires.

An adjustable car suspension system will be tuned for maximum comfort on the road. The car has five driving modes, each of which changes the power generated by the transmission.

The car is equipped with 390 mm (15 in) carbon fiber ceramic brake discs front and rear and is equipped with six piston calipers front and rear. The active rear wing acts as an air brake to improve stopping power.

The interior of the car is customizable according to the customer’s specification. A carbon fiber steering wheel is flanked by two large screens on either side, displaying vital data to the driver. The interior is upholstered in leather. The car is claimed by the manufacturer to generate cabin driving sound using acoustics.

The battery pack is T-shaped and is placed as such that it lies in the central tunnel and behind the seats. Once fully charged, the battery pack allows the car to have a range of 451 km (280 miles)

The battery pack is T-shaped and is placed as such that it lies in the central tunnel and behind the seats. Once fully charged, the battery pack allows the car to have a range of 451 km (280 miles)Battista production will be limited to 150 units and will begin in 2020. Units will be equally distributed among potential buyers from North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Each car will be handcrafted at a special Pininfarina facility located in Cambiano, Italy. 40 percent of car production had already been reserved before the advent of the car. In June 2019, Automobili Pininfarina unveiled an updated version of the Battista sports car in Turin, Italy. New design elements appear as the model advances through the development program to the stages of modeling, wind tunnel and development. Design changes include a more aggressive front end and redesigned side mirrors with stems similar to La Ferrari

Some 14 years ago Bugatti reset the supercar benchmark with the 1,000 horsepower Veyron. Now the automotive industry is on the brink of doubling that output – the key difference now is that monstrous power is coming from a zero-emission electric car.

Making its public debut at the Geneva International Motor Show this week, the Pininfarina Battista is clearly gunning for a spot in the history of supercars as significant as the Veyron and McLaren F1 before it. Both married extreme power to a level of luxury and refinement not offered by their rivals; they demonstrated how a car could simultaneously be the world’s fastest, yet remain civilised enough for public roads.

This is the direction Automobili Pininfarina is taking with its first car. The company wants wealthy buyers – expect a cost in the region of €2 million before venturing into the options list – to make pan-European business trips and long-weekend jaunts in the Battista, alongside the occasional track visit.

But, while Pininfarina insists this is a luxury car, the Battista’s performance stats must surely take headline glory. So, let’s get to those frankly ridiculous numbers first.

That monstrous 1,900 horsepower output comes from a battery pack developed by Rimac (who also makes cells for Koenigsegg and the Aston Martin Valkyrie, among others), which is then fed to four electric motors. Let us put that another way: 475 horsepower – more than a new Porsche 911 Carrera S – is available from each wheel of the Battista.

While the power output alone is next level, the torque produced by those four electric motors is arguably even more impressive: 2,300nm, which is 700 more than a Bugatti Chiron and 1,400 more than a McLaren P1. This gives the fully electric Battista a claimed 0-62mph (100 km/h) time of “less than two seconds”, zero to 186mph (300 km/h) in under 12 seconds, and a top speed of “at least” 217mph, although we’re told it can technically go much faster.

Range is a claimed 280 miles (450km) if you are sensible with your right foot, and the car can be fast-charged at the Ionity network in Europe and Electrify America network in the US.

Instead of being fitted inside the floor, as on other electric cars like Teslas, the Battista’s 120kWh, 750kg battery pack is T-shaped. As such, it sits transversely at the rear, then longitudinally through the center of the car, between the two occupants and where the transmission tunnel would be on a conventional supercar. If the battery was in the floor, Pininfarina says, then the seats and roofline couldn’t be low enough to create the hallmark supercar stance.

As for those weekend jaunts, Pininfarina claims the car will be perfectly tame, even with so much power, and that the Battista is as comfortable and manageable at 30km/h as it is at 300km/h.

The reason for this is that Pininfarina says the Battista handles unlike any other hypercar because, instead of using standard traction and stability control systems, the car’s four motors deploy advanced torque vectoring. This shuffling of power between the four corners apparently offers another level of driving dynamics, and is how its cars will possess a feel unique to the brand.

Hoping to attract internal combustion engine purists who previously wouldn’t look twice at an EV, Pininfarina says it has the answer for an electric motor’s lack of acoustic histrionics. “The driver will be able to tailor the sound settings of the Battistia,” the company says.

You will likely know Pininfarina as the Italian design house responsible for the lines of much of Ferrari’s back catalogue, from the 250 of the Sixties, right up to the California T of 2014. But, through its 89-year history, Pininfarina never actually made its own car. Until now, as the Battista – named after the company’s founder – is the first with the Pininfarina logo.

Strictly speaking, the Battista is the work of a brand new company called Automobili Pininfarina, rather than the design house itself, which still operates – and works for others – under the Pininfarina SpA name. But technicalities aside, this is the first Pininfarina car – and there’s no denying the striking design.

Taking in the Battista’s aesthetic is akin to telling your brain to think of Ferrari generally, cueing up an amalgamation of greatest hits in your mind’s eye rather than one model. In the company’s house shade of Blu Iconica there is more than a passing resemblance to the Ferrari 488, while the teardrop-shaped canopy and rear deck bring to mind the McLaren 720S.

That said, there is plenty here to make the Battista stand out from the crowd. The large three-element rear air brake is altogether more interesting than McLaren’s barn door offering, while the dashboard displays, positioned to be within reach of your fingertips while holding the wheel, feel a generation ahead of Ferrari’s current, but rather dated, two-screen system.

Overall, the Battista feels familiar somehow, as if you have seen it before. It also almost feels conservative compared to the brutalist lines of something like a McLaren Senna – and there’s good reason for sticking to a classic recipe.

“It looks reassuring,” says Luca Borgogno, the head of design at Automobili Pininfarina. “The good thing is there is a lot of inspiration from the other cars we have designed, of course, but the character is there… We didn’t want to go too crazy, because we want a future classic that will still be beautiful in 30 years’ time.”

Some of the Battista’s design language will be shared by future models, with Automobili Pininfarina saying it has “three or four” in the pipeline, all fitting in below the flagship.

One would suspect that, when a supercar maker announces a limited run of high-performance exotica with a circa-€2m price tag, the same bunch of billionaire car enthusiasts appear on every waiting list. But with the electric, environmentally conscious Battista, the list apparently reads a little differently.

“In the US, there were a lot of people coming from technology companies, who would never have expected to buy a hypercar,” Borgogno says. “They drive Priuses, or something like that. We have one client – he’s a billionaire, of course – and he is not interested in cars. But [this is] a guilt-free hypercar, so he went for it straight away without even thinking about it.”

Pininfarina plans to make 150 examples of the Battista, with 50 assigned to the US, 50 for Europe, and 50 for Asia and the Middle East.

Step inside, and the Battista’s cabin is a typically luxurious place to be, with leather covering most surfaces and ambient lighting in use. Instead of a central display, a pair of large touchscreens sit either side of the steering wheel, positioned so that the driver can touch them with outstretched fingertips while holding the wheel.

Car information such as driving mode and battery level are on the left, with navigation, media and phone on the right. Although many controls are accessed via touchscreen, Pininfarina wanted to strike a balance between touch and tactility, so the gearbox, media volume, windows and other elements are controlled with traditional buttons and knobs.

As impressive as the Battista’s headline figures are, it isn’t hugely difficult to draw obscene power (and acceleration stats) from an electric motor – just ask Tesla. Instead, the greatest challenge makers of electric sport-, super- and hypercars face is making them engaging at legal speeds.