The Battista, which is limited to 150 units, is the first model introduced by car manufacturer Pininfarina. The supercar, which costs up to 2.4 million euros per unit, comes with an electric motor on each wheel. Note! When you turn on Rage Mode, you'll have 1400 kilowatts of horror power.
It's impressive, but it doesn't seem as rough as you might think, but it seems a lot wilder than you can hold. This should be the short answer to the first question you want to ask. We immediately conducted an in-depth study in detail on whether an electric vehicle with 1900 horsepower can be legally and compliantly put on the road. First, just a few basic facts: In 2015, India's Mahindra Group acquired Pininfarina's S.p.A. design firm. Three years later, Pininfarina GmbH, an electric vehicle manufacturing plant, was established in Munich. Each 2.2-tonne carbon fiber car is handmade within 10 days by a factory in Cambiano, Italy. The body structure, 4 electric motors and 800-volt battery technology are all derived from the Rimac Nevera.
The Battista is officially defined as a Super GT (Hyper-GT) model by Pininfarina, and its liquid-cooled battery is housed in the bottom of the body, and the battery has a carbon fiber safety cage, which weighs more than 700 kg of the overall component. It has a charging power of up to 250 kW and a total battery capacity of 115 kWh. The Battista is one of the vehicles with the largest battery capacity in the industry today. According to WLTP's simulations, its range can reach 500 kilometers, at least for its energy-saving mode "Calma".
The highlights are now on: go into Rage Mode "Furiosa" and experience 1900 hp and 2300 Nm. However, the first thing we experience is not the impression of gravitational acceleration g-value. When Pininfarina development driver (former F1 driver) Nick Heidefeld showed me the dry Tazio Nuvolari track, I had a hard time getting my head in place on my own. And when you personally control the steering wheel, this feeling does not seem obvious, because when you accelerate autonomously, it will completely obey your orders, and suddenly it seems to become very serious, and even make you extremely unaccustomed.
Not getting used to it is sometimes a good thing, as it results in a much lower repeatability when it comes to fully electric doors. When should I lift the electric door pedal? And how fast is it at the moment? Our brains alone can only come up with very subjective judgments, such as "don't know" or "how much" and so on. If our brains are similar to task managers, able to calculate and issue a cancellation command in time, then thank goodness. Because, when you are not careful, a false positive will rush through at a speed of 15 or even 20 km / h that exceeds the maximum speed limit of the speed belt. When you have a chill on your back, the dashboard still shows a speed of 250, and it will feel very ... Worst.
Violent through the wall (air wall)
Looking at the data sheet provided by the manufacturer, this may help us map our imagination to reality: from 100 to 200 kilometers per hour it takes only 4 seconds, and then click 6 clicks, the speed is already 300 kilometers per hour! To better categorize, we found the 11th issue of this journal, 2018, which turned to 68 pages and had acceleration measurements of the McLaren 720S. It has a 720 hp power output and V8 engine, and the overall vehicle has a total mass of only 1428 kg, and its unparalleled acceleration is awe-inspiring. It takes 0.6 seconds more time to go from 100 to 200 km/h than Pininfarina's Super GT. The British car took 11.8 seconds to sprint from 200 to 300, almost 6 seconds more than the Battista.
A comparison of the two sets of data shows that Battista first offset its extra 700 kilograms of body weight by 2.6 times more power than the 720S. In addition, the Battista, as an electric vehicle, is born with a faster response speed, although the acceleration pedal is smoothed for better linear distribution. Whenever needed, Battista would sparkle and sweep aside the wall of air resistance that would occur at speeds of more than 200 kilometers per hour.
Zero-hundred acceleration could theoretically be completed in less than two seconds, although this was limited to the use of Michelin ultra-stick Pilot Sport Cup 2R semi-hot melt tires. Today, the Pilot Sport 4S is used, a summer tire that leans more towards sportiness. However, the initial torque at the start felt strange, and it didn't seem as strong as the Porsche Taycan Turbo S, which also had road tires and 761 horsepower.
Back on the track, you have to be extra careful when driving the few Battista prototypes around, after all, it is more valuable to engineers than the production cars behind, which will start at a staggering 2.4 million euros and scrapped as many as 4 for crash testing. Even if you can feel that there is still some room for its limits, you can still perceive that battista relies on a low center of gravity and drive torque distribution (torque vector distribution) to disguise its actual weight.
Although it can't travel briskly and agilely like many lighter internal combustion engine supercars, it reacts very quickly to steering commands and makes real-time corrections in curves. The huge exterior mirrors almost certainly affect your line of sight when you turn left. Another thing that impresses you with this Super GT is its very sharp but very precisely tuned steering. Equally exciting is its chassis tuning, where the body is in stiffer suspension mode, where the vibration stroke is limited to a shorter and tighter range without dragging mud and water.
In cold tires, the Battista's front tires start to slip relatively early, and when the tire temperature rises to a certain level, it tends to be slightly understeered on all four tires. This feature makes it easier to control and in line with the vehicle developer's design goal of keeping the vehicle as stable as possible. In addition, when you press the brake deeply, the Brembo carbon fiber ceramic braking system is very strong in deceleration performance, and there are often more obvious steering corrections. You need to get used to how it reacts when it comes to braking, because the electronic brake booster doesn't send any feedback to the pedal at all, which results in the exact same feeling of resistance to the foot.
Sophisticated attitude control software
Due to the high priority of driving stability, this means that Pininfarina does not currently have a drift mode like Remac Nevara. From a technical point of view, this will be a new experience, as the electric motor on each wheel can react at electro-flint-like speeds, which opens up new possibilities for torque vectoring. At the exit of a national highway, the system impressed me with how it performs in sharp turns. A diagonal fit between the front and rear wheels in a diagonal manner that can be felt and heard produces an exceptionally dexterous steering effect.
This, of course, involves quite complex control algorithms, which have not yet been finalized 6 months before the first real delivery. For example, the prototype is currently unable to combine torque vectoring with ESP. When the traction control system is deactivated, the ESP is activated and the torque vectoring is automatically turned off.
When the prototype automatically switched to "Calma" mode (capped at 407 horsepower) for the fourth time on the track without prompting, the engineers checked almost all the settings. However, the same happened on the next lap, we had to stop, turn off the entire vehicle system, then restart, and screw the mode selector from "Calma" to "Furiosa" via "Pura" (1013 hp) and "Energica" (1360 hp), and then continue.
Torque vectoring is generally not particularly effective in circular tracks, and it has been turned off at the moment, so we noticed a slight decrease in steering accuracy. Not only that, but depending on the situation, the understeer through the driving force intervention can sometimes become a sudden tail side slip, but fortunately, with esp support, it can be easily adjusted back.
In addition to these subtleties in terms of dynamic driving, Battista also offers something exotic. The carbon-fiber textured body with its delicate 3D taillights, scissor doors and three screens facing the driver is not bad, but not high. Since the large screens on the left and right sides are obscured a lot by the steering wheel, the smaller one behind the steering wheel is easier to read. In addition, the driver's seat is very low, while the dashboard panel is unusually high and extends into the interior of the car. In addition, there seems to be some kind of stationary noise on the outside of the car all the time, which sounds like a roar in the open.
However, Pininfarina LLC is not particularly concerned about the feeling of electric supercars. What will appear next on the line is the SUV model they call the LUV: a more productive luxury utility car that costs around 300,000 euros. That's the short answer pinnifalina gave when asked what they planned to do next.
summary
Battista offered us a 1900-horsepower ride, and its extreme acceleration experience made it impossible to adapt quickly. The supercar has a nice lateral dynamic, but the price of 2.4 million euros is doomed to be the stuff of some super-rich people.
Pininfarina Battista
bodywork
Two-seater sports car,
Length 4912 mm, width 2036 mm, height 1214 mm,
Wheelbase 2745 mm, curb weight 2200 kg
dynamical system
4 permanent magnet synchronous motors,
Power 2×250 kW, rear 2×450 kW,
System power 1400 kW (1904 PS),
System torque 2360 Nm,
Lithium-ion battery pack with a battery capacity of 120kWh
Drivetrain
All-wheel drive, fixed gear ratio gearbox
Chassis suspension
Front and rear double wishbones, shock absorbing struts, front and rear ceramic disc brakes,
Tire sizes: front 275/35 R20, rear 315/35 R20
Driving performance
Acceleration time from 0 to 100 km/h < 2 s
Maximum speed > 350 km/h
Cruising range 500 km
Base price
Pininfarina Battista
2.4 million euros