Greenwich, Connecticut
CNN
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The Pininfarina Battista is an astonishing car. Its base price, $2.2 million, is shocking, but so are its capabilities. With a maximum output of 1,900 horsepower from four electric motors, Automobili Pininfarina claims it can go from zero to 60 miles per hour in under two seconds. It probably took you longer just to read that sentence.
If anyone still needs convincing that electric cars need not be boring appliances, the Battista is a convincing, if costly, argument. It has all the elements of a supercar – power, prestige, and price – but with extra-large servings of each. It’s an eye-catching, wallet-straining, gut-punching all-wheel-drive thrill ride.
I was driving along a narrow, curving blacktop road sprinkled with autumn leaves in a green Battista when a flashback hit me. I’d been on very similar roads not far from there about seven years before when I was driving a 1969 Lamborghini Miura.
The memory was ironic in addition to being kind of amazing. The Miura is widely regarded as the first modern supercar. It had a 12-cylinder engine mounted close behind its two seats instead of under the hood, as in most cars. It was a design that, until the Miura, had largely been consigned to racecars, not sports cars intended for street driving. Now, that structure is common in any number of expensive high-performance cars.
Just as Lamborghini was changing everything back in the 1960s, Pininfarina’s car could also mark the dawn of a new era. The Battista is among the first cars bringing the era of gasoline-powered supercars to what will likely be its eventual end. Electric power promises more acceleration and power without tailpipe emissions and, for better or worse, without the cacophony of a V12. But Lamborghini’s current CEO, Stephan Winkelmann, has said that a proper electric supercar isn’t possible with today’s technology. Plug-in hybrids, sure, but not completely battery-powered ones. Batteries, especially ones that would give a useful amount of range, are just too heavy to make any supercar properly super, the argument goes.
The Pininfarina Battista puts his skepticism to the test, but, I fear, Winkelmann may just be right. At least for now.
The fully electric Battista was designed and assembled by a company…
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