Yahoo Autos Here's How the Rimac Nevera Accelerates Faster Than It Brakes
Rimac claims that the new 2025 Nevera R is the fastest-accelerating car in the world — a title it shares with the original Nevera, since the company has recorded a 0-60-mph time of 1.74 seconds for both. The base Nevera also holds a 0-60-0 record of 3.99 seconds, but as it turns out, the deceleration part may actually be more interesting — at least, according to company founder Mate Rimac. Because of the level of precise involvement the car's four-motor powertrain has in both acceleration and deceleration, Rimac (the man) thinks that the Nevera may be the only production car on Earth that gets going faster than it brakes.
As Rimac himself told Road & Track during a call about the Nevera R, both Nevera variants accomplish this because the four-motor system provide fine enough control under deceleration to reach the limits of tire-constrained possibility, in much the same way that the car is at its tires' limits under acceleration — and a simple fact of physics actually tips the advantage toward the latter.
"When you accelerate, the rear ducks and the front goes up like in a boat, so that means your center of gravity is shifting to the back and you then have more force on the rear," Rimac said. "So more grip, right — more weight and more grip on the rear wheels. So you can transfer more power."
"Basically, both the front and rear wheels are completely saturated with torque and with power until around 100 miles per hour, but the rear wheels can transmit double of the torque and power than compared to the front wheels. So even though the fronts are smaller, they are, let's say, overpowered."
"One interesting fact [about the Nevera] actually [comes from] that, because the rear tires are wider than the front, and we are... on their limit [all the time]," he said. "When you accelerate, we have four motors, and each one is sending torque to each wheel 100 times per second, very precisely — which is much more precise than mechanical brakes or hydraulic brakes."
"Hydraulic brakes with ABS, you know — when you push the pedal on a car and you feel ABS acting, that's how quickly the ABS is, actually. So what you feel under your pedal, under your foot, the pedal when it vibrates, it's actually the speed of actuation of the brake. That's a lot slower than what we can do with the electric motor control."
"So, what I want to say is the Nevera is the only car in the world that accelerates faster than it brakes, because it's on the limit of tires, both in acceleration and in braking. But it's slightly faster in acceleration up until like 100 mph because of the more precise control of the motors," Rimac said.
Clearly, tires remain a limitation for the Nevera R, which is clearly visible in the aforementioned fact that it accelerates to 60 mph in the same time as the less-powerful Nevera. But Rimac tells R&T his team is currently working with Michelin on further enhancements for another high-speed run — one that could break the car's existing records. Until then, Rimac will have to be content with its current (and vast) collection of EV and overall speed, acceleration, braking, and lap time records.
You Might Also Like
