The electric supercar entrepreneur following in the footsteps of Elon Musk
His press handler is trying to rein him in, but Mate Rimac’s on a roll. The founder of electric car company Rimac is delving into his computer to share a file which backs up his quest to dominate the industry.
Asked about the potential for a tie-up between his 10-year-old Croatian business and Bugatti, a part of VW Group — which owns a quarter of Rimac through its Porsche arm — the 33-year-old says: “I’m really not allowed to talk about the transaction… but I’ll show you a picture.”
“Oh man,” groans his minder. The future of the company which produces £1m electric hypercars and electric drivetrain technology to heavyweight automotive customers around the world could be at stake.
To her relief it’s not a secret rendering of how Mate sees his fast-growing business working with one of the world’s most famed marques, something VW boss Herbert Diess let slip last month.
Instead it’s an image of company founder Ettore Bugatti with his Type 41 Royale, the most powerful and largest — at more than 20ft long — vehicle the firm had ever built when it was rolled out in 1926.
“It’s got a lot of potential,” says Mate. “Ettore Bugatti — I guess he was a little bit of a crazy guy as well.”
Crazy isn’t how Rimac comes across. Instead, the word is driven — so driven that he is happy to take on challenges others would fear are impossible, even after one of his cars hit headlines for a fire which seriously injured motoring show star Richard Hammond.
He founded his firm a decade ago in a garage, having converted an old BMW to electric power after its engine blew up in a race. The car — which was four years older than him — caught the attention of Croatian press and eventually an Abu Dhabi royal, who asked Rimac to build him two electric cars.
“We had no cars, no company,” says Rimac. “I was working on it after university in the evenings.”
A deal was struck, with funding provided on the condition they hit milestones such as unveiling a prototype at the Frankfurt car show in September 2011.
“In April 2011 I convinced two friends to convince their wives to give up their jobs and come work with me. It was crazy,” he says, producing photos of the three of them sleeping on floors after working round the clock to get the car ready.
However, the deal soon “went south”, says Mate, as they were pressured to relocate to Abu Dhabi.
“I didn’t want to go there. I wanted to do it here, in Croatia. We were in total s**t. We had no money, I couldn’t pay the employees.”
A new Concept
In desperation, Mate started touting the firm’s expertise and subcontracting for other automotive companies.
He landed a contract to build a car for a Spanish company in less than six months. “It was so crazy no one else would do it,” he says.
“But we did it and it was shifted to Spain, and the other company took the credit for it. That’s the kind of crazy s**t we were doing.”
The company is “inverted” now because of what it did to survive, he says. About two-thirds of his firm is producing high performance electric components for other manufacturers — Aston Martin is one — while the remainder is building full cars.
“It was small steps at the beginning, you have to prove yourself 100 times, with really small projects for marginal players,” he adds. “it wasn’t like Porsche came through our door the first day.”
A turning point came when he showed the Concept One, the first car with a Rimac badge, at the 2016 Geneva auto show.
“We had Mercedes a few metres away, BMW on the other side, and the chief executive of Ferrari walking by and thinking ‘What the hell is this?’,” says Mate.
“We could never get that kind of exposure as a components manufacturer.”
Although it has produced fewer than 100 cars, this expertise means Rimac is valued at about €500m and has attracted investment from VW, Hyundai and China’s Camel, one of the world’s largest car battery producers.
“We are raising hundreds of millions more this year, and doing a few other deals,” the founder says. He won’t be drawn on them, much to his media adviser’s relief.
Car crash
The company really hit the headlines in 2017. Hammond, filming for Amazon’s The Grand Tour, crashed a Concept One and suffered serious injuries when it rolled over and caught fire. Batteries in the car — which was on loan from a customer — kept reigniting.
Rimac produces another presentation detailing the crash and its impact on the business, which came at a critical juncture in talks with potential new investors.
“We weren’t certain if it was insured, we were running out of money, couldn’t pay staff, we were right on the edge,” he says, showing emails explaining Rimac’s perilous situation to employees. The crash, he says, came at the “worst moment in our worst crisis”.
“We had chief executives of customer companies calling, saying ‘what’s going on with your battery, why is it burning?’,” recalls Mate.
Hammond later appeared in a video with Rimac discussing the crash. In it the presenter seems a little hesitant about the car, while Rimac presents data that indicates it was excess speed that was the cause.
The crash and its aftermath “wasn’t a glorious moment for us”, he says. However, it planted Rimac in the minds of the public. The company got a further boost when fellow Grand Tour presenter Jeremy Clarkson said the Concept One ended his scepticism about electric vehicles, calling it “brilliant”.
Electrifying future
Rimac has moved on. It has unveiled its second car, the €2m, 1,888hp C_Two, of which just 150 will be made.
The company has also grown. The entrepreneur wants to talk about the new base it is building just outside Zagreb, which is needed to house Rimac’s 1,000 staff, with capacity to expand to accommodate double that.
“It’s something we’ve been dreaming about since 2013,” he says.
As well as car and component production facilities, it will accommodate research and development and house a test track and museum — even including accommodation.
Staff and visitors can look forward to an eco-friendly building, with a restaurant serving organic food — potentially from animals kept in the grounds.
Rimac says such an environment means it’s “easier for people to understand the company”, which is about electrifying driving and reducing emissions.
“We want people to immerse themselves in our ethos, drink a little bit of the Kool-Aid,” he says.
However, he adds he’s “not a hippie or anything like it. If I had the money I would have a garage full of V10 and V12s and naturally aspirated cars, and burn tyres and stuff like that.”
But he started the company to make electric cars “desirable, sexy. It’s about making the best electric cars possible”.
Rimac is known in the industry for ending presentations with an appeal to people to stop eating meat. As a vegetarian — a rarity in Croatia — he says food production is the “elephant in the room” when it comes to saving the environment.
“I’m just being a realist and data-based guy, I mean this is coming from a guy who makes electric cars for a living,” he says.
“For everything that’s talked about electrification, [going vegetarian] would have an immediate impact without these big capital investments in infrastructure.”
‘I've huge respect for Elon’
It’s inevitable that Rimac gets compared to Elon Musk, something he doesn’t like, saying the Tesla boss has “achieved a million times more”.
“People sometimes ask me what Tesla has that other companies don’t,” he says.
“I always say they don’t have any magic, it’s just Elon doing things very differently. I’ve a huge respect for him but I don’t think the comparison is fair. We are a tiny player compared to what Tesla has done.
“I’d like to meet him, but you only get a chance to make a first impression once,” he says. “I’m not yet happy at the level where the company is, it’ll be a few years until we achieve some of the things I want us to achieve, then maybe I’d like to meet him.”
Rimac clearly shares some of the billionaire’s outspoken tendencies. But does he think he could achieve with Rimac what Musk has done with Tesla?
“Ask me when I’m Elon’s age,” he says of Musk, who at 49 years old was briefly the world’s richest person earlier this year.
The fast-talking Croatian was still at school when Tesla was founded. His business could yet blaze a similar trail.
