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The Pininfarina Battista is more than a Rimac Nevara in a wig

Credit: Pininfarina

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The Pininfarina Battista electric hypercar is more than a simple remix of the Rimac Nevara.

Pininfarina’s Battista has been circulating in the news for over three years. Still, with more recent information about the vehicle now being manufactured and it being reviewed by Top Gear and Edmunds, perhaps it deserves one more look. It could show the future of electric hypercars, not just from Pininfarina but from the market as a whole.

Pininfarina is an Italian auto design firm that has worked with many automotive brands on improving the aesthetic design of their vehicles for decades now. Most notably, the brand has worked with Alfa Romeo on their Stradale in the ’60s, countless Ferraris, including the 348 and 360 from the ’80s and ’90s, and now they are introducing a vehicle of their own based on the carbon tub and powertrain from a Rimac Nevera.

Universally, the Pininfarina Battista has been adored for its hypercar performance. With a quad motor setup that puts 1,874 horsepower and 1,726 pound-feet of torque, it will make your head spin as you rocket from 0-60 in under 2 seconds. And if you are willing to keep your foot off the floor, the vehicle will even take you 300 miles, with 100% complimentary lifetime charging.

Much like other electric vehicles, the vehicle is far from featherweight. In Top Gear’s video in the rain, the hypercar handled more like the Saturn 5 rocket than a road-going vehicle. However, this gets to the point of the Battista; character and charm.

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While Top Gear calls the Rimac Nevara the “nerd’s wet dream,” the Pininfarina offers a classic supercar feel. Its gorgeous Italian body lines are contrary to the Rimac and evoke thoughts of a Ferrari Dino, 360, or F50 brought to the modern era.

Pininfarina’s pursuit of character continues in the cockpit, where you are greeted by traditional leatherwork, expected strange Italian UI choices (a screen on either side of the driver, instead of in front of them), and a large drive setting knob letting you chose from; calma, pura, energica, and furiosa. The drive modes, in particular, is where Edmunds finds much of the car’s character resides; “give the knob a turn…” suggests Edmunds, “and you instantly feel everything in the car tighten up.”

Credit: Pininfarina

More minor details are present to help create a unique driving experience as well. The vehicle is given a distinctive noise via interior and exterior speakers, while active aero and electronically controlled dampers change the vehicle’s driving dynamics and appearance.

Pininfarina’s Battista shows the new challenge sports car manufacturers face; how do you create a passionate experience in an item that removes many traditional characteristics? Hopefully, the character and enjoyment brought to so many by supercars will not go the way of the dinosaur with electric powertrains, but manufacturers will undoubtedly have to change how they affect the driving experience in the electrified world.

What do you think of the article? Do you have any comments, questions, or concerns? Shoot me an email at william@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @WilliamWritin. If you have news tips, email us at tips@teslarati.com!

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Will is an auto enthusiast, a gear head, and an EV enthusiast above all. From racing, to industry data, to the most advanced EV tech on earth, he now covers it at Teslarati.

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Elon Musk

SpaceX Starship Flight 10: What to expect

SpaceX implemented hardware and operational changes aimed at improving Starship’s reliability.

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Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX is preparing to launch the tenth test flight of its Starship vehicle as early as Sunday, August 24, with the launch window opening at 6:30 p.m. CT. 

The mission follows investigations into anomalies from earlier flights, including the loss of Starship on its ninth test and a Ship 36 static fire issue. SpaceX has since implemented hardware and operational changes aimed at improving Starship’s reliability.

Booster landing burns and flight experiments

The upcoming Starship Flight 10 will expand Super Heavy’s flight envelope with multiple landing burn trials. Following stage separation, the booster will attempt a controlled flip and boostback burn before heading to an offshore splashdown in the Gulf of America. One of the three center engines typically used for landing will be intentionally disabled, allowing engineers to evaluate whether a backup engine can complete the maneuver, according to a post from SpaceX.

The booster will also transition to a two-engine configuration for the final phase, hovering briefly above the water before shutdown and drop. These experiments are designed to simulate off-nominal scenarios and generate real-world data on performance under varying conditions, while maximizing propellant use during ascent to enable heavier payloads.

Starship upper stage reentry tests

The Starship upper stage will attempt multiple in-space objectives, including deployment of eight Starlink simulators and a planned Raptor engine relight. SpaceX will also continue testing reentry systems with several modifications. A section of thermal protection tiles has been removed to expose vulnerable areas, while new metallic tile designs, including one with active cooling, will be trialed.

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Catch fittings have been installed to evaluate their thermal and structural performance, and adjustments to the tile line will address hot spots observed on Flight 6. The reentry profile is expected to push the structural limits of Starship’s rear flaps at maximum entry pressure.

SpaceX says lessons from these tests are critical to refining the next-generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles. With Starfactory production ramping in Texas and new launch infrastructure under development in Florida, the company is pushing to hit its goal of achieving a fully reusable orbital launch system.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk takes aim at Bill Gates’ Microsoft with new AI venture “Macrohard”

It is quite an appropriate name for a company that’s designed to rival Microsoft.

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Credit: xAI/X

Elon Musk has set his sights on Microsoft with a new company called “Macrohard,” a software venture tied to his AI startup, xAI. 

Musk described the project as a “purely AI software company” that’s designed to generate hundreds of specialized coding and generative AI agents that could one day simulate products from companies like Microsoft entirely through artificial intelligence.

Macrohard‘s Purpose

Musk announced Macrohard on Friday, though xAI had already registered the trademark with the US Patent Office a few weeks ago, as noted in a PC Mag report. Interestingly enough, this is not the first time that Musk has mentioned such an initiative.

Just last month, he stated that xAI was “creating a multi-agent AI software company, where Grok spawns hundreds of specialized coding and image/video generation/understanding agents all working together and then emulates humans interacting with the software in virtual machines until the result is excellent.”

At the time, Musk stated that “This is a macro challenge and a hard problem with stiff competition,” hinting at the venture’s “Macrohard” moniker. A few years ago, Musk also posted “Macrohard >> Microsoft” on X. 

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Powered by xAI and Colossus

Macrohard appears to be closely linked to xAI’s Colossus 2 supercomputer project in Memphis. Musk has confirmed plans to acquire millions of Nvidia GPUs, joining rivals such as OpenAI and Meta in a high-stakes race for AI computing power. Colossus is already one of the most powerful supercomputer clusters in the world, and it is still being expanded.

xAI is only a couple of years old, having been founded in March 2023. During its Engineering Open House event in San Francisco, Elon Musk highlighted that the company’s speed will be its primary competitive edge. “No SR-71 Blackbird was ever shot down and it only had one strategy: to accelerate,” Musk said.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk confirms he’s still in wartime CEO mode

He is still locked in.

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Wcamp9, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk tends to use social media platform X as his personal platform to express himself, so much so that critics tend to allege that the CEO is no longer serious about his numerous companies. 

As per Musk, he is still very much in wartime CEO mode, despite all the jokes and fun posts about Ani on X. 

Elon Musk leads several prolific companies, much more than the average CEO. And while Tesla is the only publicly traded entity that he currently leads, Musk is so visible that everyone across the internet pretty much has a strong opinion of him one way or another. For his longtime supporters and followers, however, what truly matters is if Musk is locked in.

Considering that Elon Musk’s feed on X has recently been filled with AI imagery, a good portion of which involve AI-rendered women, some X users have expressed concerns that the CEO may be losing focus once more. Musk responded to one such user by highlighting his very busy schedule and his numerous active projects. 

Needless to say, Elon Musk is still locked in. He is still in “wartime CEO” mode.

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As per the CEO, even his recent AI posts about AI are “part of a broader vision and strategy.” He also highlighted that SpaceX’s Starship Flight 10 is launching in a few days, xAI’s Grok 5 is starting its training next month, and Tesla’s Autopilot V14 is also coming next month. As per Musk, “long-term strategy is compelling.”

Elon Musk’s comments are quite accurate. While he may seem to spend all his time on X, after all, he is very much still neck-deep in all his companies’ projects. There is a reason why Musk became known as a visionary, and a lot of it is because he really is intimately involved in all of his companies’ projects. 

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