Q&A with Rimac Electric Hypercar and Verne Autonomous Vehicle Visionary Mate Rimac

Mate Rimac: The big change will be no ownership, no driving. And that could be a few years further in the future or a few years earlier. But it will happen. Why? Because it is just a more effective way. How many people care about spending their second-most valuable item, like so much money and so much time owning a car, to service it and park and so on. To worry about the whole thing. I just think when you have a clean solution like this, many people will choose something else.

Mate Rimac: It is not only the car, it is the stuff around it: the app, making sure that the car is always clean, the infrastructure behind that. The people, once they use it, they will understand this is something else.

This is not owning a car. You know, ‘I had the best experience, just paying [for] a ride. I had the best possible car like I would have my own private chauffeur in a luxury car and I only paid a small fee for that. Why would I have my second car, for example. That’s why it is something you want to tackle first. Not to get rid of ownership, but maybe the second or third car in the family.

Mate Rimac: We will have both models. It will be pay-as-you-go and also subscription model. You can imagine having something where the car is more connected to you so it is a blend between ride-hailing and ownership.

Mate Rimac: ‘Toasters’ are great on Excel. They look like you can cram more people in it. And more people pay for the rides, therefore the economics are better. But people are not numbers in Excel. Do you want to drive [facing] the opposite direction? Do you want to sit sideways? Do you want to sit on a plastic bench with somebody next to you [who] you don’t know?

Of course, that’s what people do in buses and public transport, but it’s not something that you prefer to do. So, we just thought about the user experience. How to do this the best possible way, and that is what we have imagined.

Mate Rimac: There should be many versions. This is the first one. You saw the ‘skateboard’ and the body on top. You can make different bodies. Maybe one more catered to disabled people. Maybe you have a four-seater. Maybe one day you will have an inter-city car, where you go between cities and you can sleep for a couple of hours. So, there will be different versions, long term.  First, we need to get this to work and build it out.

Mate Rimac: AI development is really progressing rapidly. We see already that you can now in a very short time by using these new advancements come so far. Others have spent decades and hundreds of millions to get there. Maybe not decades, but years. I think that will enable an exponential [development].

So, large language models, ChatGPT and stuff like that, was language. That will lead into other things like video creation, imaging, and so on. Then the next step is robotization. Most of the systems you see today are still based more on the previous development. While I think now, in the next couple of years, we will see the next generation of systems that are developed less rule-based and more purely AI.

Mate Rimac: I think that it is really interesting to combine functions in a central unit that has a high computing power. Because for the AI, you need a lot of compute power. Then, for the other stuff, you need less. You have an intermediate step that is like the infotainment system, where you need intermediate performance. You can combine all of that.

But in our case, because it is so safety-critical and separate, for safety reasons you separate the autonomous driving system from the rest of the car. Also because of cyber-security, so nobody can access it remotely. Infotainment is of course connected to the internet but for the autonomous driving system you want to have firewalls in between. So it is theoretically possible and there are some certain improvements you can do there. But we’d rather invest more to have a really safe system than optimizing the last bit out of it, especially initially.

Mate Rimac: I arrived at Bugatti; Bugatti didn’t produce one single part. It was all done by suppliers and then assembled. In that way, they could be more flexible and produce high volumes of cars and have specialists working in different areas. Now, with the Tourbillon, I see how beautiful it is; everyone who is the best expert in a certain field does their thing.

So, Cosworth doing the engine has been a beautiful experience! Rimac doing the battery and the electric powertrain and the electronics; perfect. They knew what they were doing. Michelin for the tires, Brembo for the brakes, everyone does what they are best at. We do have a high level of our own content in the car, but not in areas where it just doesn’t make sense.

With this car [the Verne], we are doing a service. And we are building the car ourselves but in the end, who builds it doesn’t make a difference for the end customer. If there was a more economic situation where we could just give the design to somebody and build it, we might do that. To BYD or any of the Chinese or European car manufacturers like Stellantis. We wouldn’t really mind if somebody else produced the car. But we will start producing our own but it is low volume. So you have a car that is more utilitarian, not a hypercar, but you produce in low volumes and you don’t have synergies with other models so you are at a disadvantage. You can make it work with the business model, it also is stressing the business model.

Mate Rimac: I arrived at Bugatti; Bugatti didn’t produce one single part. It was all done by suppliers and then assembled. In that way, they could be more flexible and produce high volumes of cars and have specialists working in different areas. Now, with the Tourbillon, I see how beautiful it is; everyone who is the best expert in a certain field does their thing.

So, Cosworth doing the engine has been a beautiful experience! Rimac doing the battery and the electric powertrain and the electronics; perfect. They knew what they were doing. Michelin for the tires, Brembo for the brakes, everyone does what they are best at. We do have a high level of our own content in the car, but not in areas where it just doesn’t make sense.

With this car [the Verne], we are doing a service. And we are building the car ourselves but in the end, who builds it doesn’t make a difference for the end customer. If there was a more economic situation where we could just give the design to somebody and build it, we might do that. To BYD or any of the Chinese or European car manufacturers like Stellantis. We wouldn’t really mind if somebody else produced the car. But we will start producing our own but it is low volume. So you have a car that is more utilitarian, not a hypercar, but you produce in low volumes and you don’t have synergies with other models so you are at a disadvantage. You can make it work with the business model, it also is stressing the business model.