Want to give a Tesla (TSLA) owner envy? Tell them about Renovo Motors. It's another electric car maker in the valley and its debut model, the Renovo Coupe, will set you back over $500,000. Yes, over a half million in cold, hard cash.
The car debuted just a few weeks back at the Pebble Beach Concours d’ Elegance, and both the moneyed class and the gearheads gawking online were giving it rave reviews.
Chris Heiser, CEO of Renovo tells Yahoo Finance he was looking to make a splash at Pebble Beach. Renovo Motors was essentially a start-up in “stealth” mode for four years but, as he says in the attached video, he feels the company exceeded it’s expectations in bringing a unique offering to the marketplace.
“The supercar market is an extremely diverse and interesting market and it's something that’s been growing for a long time,” he says. “There’s an extremely wide and diverse range of vehicles in the space and what we’ve seen is that in order to be successful you have to provide an exciting experience, something that’s extremely unique and something that captures the passion of your customers.”
This may be an electric car, but the power it produces is bordering on Bugatti Veyron territory. The Coupe uses twin sequential axial-flux electric motors sending power to the rear wheels of the car (note that the car has no forward gear ratios, just drive and reverse), with the motor producing an astounding 500+ horsepower combined with 1000 lb-ft of torque. With instantaneous power delivery, the Coupe will go from 0 to 60 mph in the 3.4 seconds, with a top speed of 120 mph.
“From there we add some of the most power-dense battery packs, motors, electronic systems, we run at higher voltages than any other car on the road, we push an incredible amount of current, and at the end of the day we deliver performance that is faster than anything we’ve seen at the road,” Heiser boasts.
To give the car an injection of rich, American sports car racing DNA, Renovo worked with Carroll Shelby’s company Shelby American to convert its CSX9000 (based on the legendary Daytona Coupe) body into the one used for the Renovo Coupe today. Peter Brock, the original designer of the Daytona Coupe, made structural changes to the chassis in order to accommodate an electric, rather than gasoline-powered drivetrain. The retro feel of the exterior belies the futuristic drivetrain and mechanicals underneath the Coupe’s smooth metallic skin.
Desite the high price, Heiser believes the right buyers will be interested. “In our case we choose an all-electric platform we focused on aspects of the technology that are exclusive to our offering, and we’re trying to create something that just gets people engaged,” he says. “Certainly the price point is high but not as high as some of the other cars in this segment and we feel value for money, and exclusivity are draws for our product.”
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