Connect with us

News

Rimac Nevera receives EPA and CARB range estimates

Credit: Rimac

Published

on

The Rimac Nevera all-electric hypercar has four motors, a 120-kilowatt-hour battery, and a $2.1 million price tag. New certifications of the vehicle from the Environmental Protection Agency and California Air Resource Board now give the Nevera a new metric: range, and it sits at 287.28 miles per charge, according to the documents.

Rimac’s humble beginnings as a Croatian carmaker have shifted substantially since the company was somewhat of a hobby for founder Mate Rimac. Now, Rimac has completely transitioned to a full-fledged operation, developing some of the fastest and most advanced all-electric hypercars on the planet. Rimac’s early successes have launched collaboration projects with VW’s Porsche and Bugatti.

Tesla Model S Plaid and Rimac Nevera face off in world’s quickest production car drag race

But Rimac has been working on its own projects too, like the Concept One and the Nevera, which will be the company’s first attempt at a new design that features more power upgrades due to improvements in the electric motor systems. Rimac estimates its Nevera hypercar can reach 258 miles per hour.

Early range estimates from the WLTP have found the Rimac Nevera capable of a much more forgiving 342 miles of range per charge, but these ratings are generally not as close to realistic as the EPA range ratings for other vehicles that have been released in the past. According to the EPA and CARB documents, first seen by AutoBlog, the Nevera will have 287.28 miles of range at a full charge.

Of course, customers who will end up buying the Nevera will not be super worried about a high-range EV. If they wanted that, they’d stick with the Lucid Air, which, amongst its configurations, has the most range over the Tesla Model S Long Range, which was the first EV to receive an over 400-mile range rating from the EPA. Rimac customers want speed and performance, and they’ll get it. The 258 MPH top speed is complemented with 1,914 horsepower and 1,741 pound-feet of torque.

Advertisement
-

Rimac will also feature several other tech features in the Nevera that truly set it apart from other vehicles. Not only will the car have a fully independent torque vectoring system for handling, but it will also have a facial recognition feature that will allow only the owner of the car to start the vehicle. Additionally, the vehicle will adjust its performance settings to match the mood of the driver, and will have Level 4 autonomy capabilities, Mate Rimac estimates.

As previously mentioned, the Nevera will cost somewhere around $2.1 million. The Nevera Production Car #002 is currently undergoing pre-delivery testing in Croatia.

I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.

Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

Advertisement
Comments

News

Tesla Semi catches fire in California: what we know

Published

on

Credit: KTVU

A Tesla Semi caught fire in Hayward, California, which caused both directions of traffic to shut down for hours before being completely reopened early on Wednesday, the California Highway Patrol said.

The fire occurred just after 5:30 local time in Hayward on Tuesday, as the Semi caught fire in the southbound lanes of I-880 before CHP officials made the decision to shut down both lanes of traffic due to potential risks from hazardous chemical smoke.

There were no injuries reported.

Advertisement
-

The cause of the fire is currently unknown, as neither Tesla nor the CHP have not determined a cause.

However, some images taken before the Semi was completely destroyed by the fire seem to indicate this might have been an older unit, as it appears to be one of the designs that Tesla shipped as part of its pilot program, before revising it and starting mass production just a month ago.

At the time of publication, CHP had not returned our request for a comment for additional details, including the Semi involved and any potential collaboration on an investigation between the CHP and Tesla. We will update this story when we hear back from them.

The southbound lanes were reopened at 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday, with the northbound lanes opening last night a few hours after the fire began. The CHP did state that the lithium batteries were “incredibly difficult to extinguish,” according to NBC Bay Area.

Advertisement
-

The truck’s driver said that the Semi caught fire, but he did not have an explanation.

An estimated 5,000 to 7,000 semi-truck and large commercial vehicle fires occur on U.S. roadways every year.

Continue Reading

News

Tesla’s ‘Emergency Drive Away’ function gets its first use in the real world

Published

on

Credit: Tesla

Tesla’s launch of the “Emergency Drive Away” function a few months back offered owners a safe option to evacuate an area if they were in reasonable danger. The function finally got its first use in the real world, but it appears it was by mistake.

A video shared by u/Joshalander in the r/TeslaLounge subreddit recorded the instance from his vehicle and said the incident took place in Austin this past weekend during the city’s F1 Race.

“Was charging around 6 AM this past Sunday in Austin before heading to the F1 race and heard a pop. Looked over and saw the new emergency drive-away feature in action. Genuinely felt bad for the dude when he got out and realized what happened, since he looked exhausted and only seemed to half-read the prompts.”

Emergency Drive Away unlatches the Supercharger connector from the vehicle, but still causes damage to both the car and the Supercharger. Tesla has said that it will cost up to $25,000 in repairs to have everything fixed back to normal.

Additionally, the company said that if it were not used in an emergency situation, the driver of the vehicle who activated the Emergency Drive Away feature would be responsible for all repair costs.

Tesla constitutes the following situations as reasonable justifications for activating the feature:

  • You face an immediate threat to your life or personal safety.
  • You must leave the area immediately.
  • Exiting the vehicle is unsafe.
  • Unplugging the charge connector would unreasonably delay your departure or expose you to a risk to your personal safety.

After using the feature, Tesla requires the driver to schedule Service so the car can be inspected.

Continue Reading

News

Tesla’s Cybercab battery design could make robotaxis even cheaper

Tesla built the Cybercab’s battery pack with spare room for a future switch to LFP.

Published

on

By

Tesla built the Cybercab’s battery pack with empty space inside it on purpose, and the reason points to a cheaper robotaxi down the road.

Robert Sumpf, Tesla’s director of mechanical design engineering for battery modules and packs, said the extra room beside and beneath the Cybercab’s modules was left there so the company can move to lithium iron phosphate cells later. “So, we protected this pack to go to an even lower energy dense chemistry as we scale and need to bring LFP into the platform,” Sumpf said in a Cybercab deep dive with Munro Live.

The Cybercab runs on Tesla’s own 4680 cells with a nickel chemistry today. LFP cells store less energy for their size, so a straight swap would cut range. The reserved space lets Tesla add more LFP cells to make up the difference. In return, Tesla would get cells that cost less, run cooler and survive more charge cycles. LFP became the most used EV battery chemistry in the world last year.

Not all of that room was planned for a chemistry change. Lars Moravy, Tesla’s Vice President of Vehicle Engineering, said part of it exists because “we didn’t need as many batteries as we thought we did.” Tesla told Sandy Munro in early 2025 that it was targeting a Cybercab pack under 50 kWh with close to 300 miles of range.

The pack also breaks from the structural design Tesla used in some Model Y and Cybertruck builds. Instead of potting hundreds of cells into one block, the Cybercab uses four separate, individually sealed modules, so a bad module can be replaced without scrapping the whole pack. Sumpf was blunt about the older approach, giving the Model Y structural battery “a grade D” because it was hard to build and nearly impossible to repair. He estimated a fully structural pack gains about 10% more cell volume, but said “the issue is the service cost.”

Advertisement
-

That cost matters more for a car that rarely sits parked. Cybercab chief engineer Eric Earley said replacing an entire pack “before half a million miles is a killer on cost,” which is why remanufacturing and serviceability were built into the design from the start.

The same Munro Live tour produced Moravy’s admission that the Cybercab line at Giga Texas is now outpacing Robotaxi deployments, along with a look at the robotaxi’s unorthodox paint process. Tesla is aiming to deliver the first Cybercabs to outside customers by the end of 2026, though Elon Musk has said the vast majority will stay owned by Tesla and run as a transport service.

Sumpf did not give a date for an LFP version, name a cell supplier or say how a chemistry change would affect range. For now, the 4680 cars keep piling up: Texas DMV records from Tuesday list 544 Cybercabs authorized for Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet, more than the 507 Model Ys on the same roster for the first time.

Continue Reading