Automobili Pininfarnia's electric hypercar named Battista

Automobili Pininfarina, the new Mahindra-owned manufacturing arm of the Italian design house, has announced that its upcoming electric hypercar has been christened 'Battista'. The company will unveil the hypercar in production guise at the Geneva motor show in March 2019. The model has been named after Battista ‘Pinin’ Farina who founded the Carrozzeria Pininfarina coachbuilding company 90 years ago.

The announcement further says that the upcoming all-electric Battista hypercar will be designed and hand-built in very limited numbers at Pininfarina SpA, under the supervision of Paulo Pininfarina – Battista’s grandson and current Pininfarina SpA Chairman.

The brand recently unveiled a ’75 percent complete’ model of its upcoming electric hypercar. Earlier codenamed 'PF0', the all-wheel-drive two-seater will offer 1,900hp and 2,300Nm – "twice the output of a Formula 1 car" – and a 0-100kph time of ‘under 2sec’. The 0-300kph sprint should be achieved in less than 12sec. The Battista will have a range of around 482km.

The Battista sees the debut of a new design language dubbed ‘Pura’ which will place an emphasis on elegance and simplicity – a reaction to the aggressively modernist aesthetic that currently holds sway in the supercar market .

The all-electric hypercar features active aerodynamics that also extend to it's nose, with the whole upper section of the nose cone acting as a spoiler which can lift up. Along with a completely flat underbody, the PF0 has an adjustable diffuser at the rear. The cabin will get two screens mounted high-up on each side of the steering wheel, directly in the driver’s view. Much of the battery and electric drive technology for the Battista is being adapted from Croatian company Rimac Automobili, 10 percent of which is owned by the Porsche Engineering Group.

While Automobili Pininfarina’s head office is located in Munich, the Battista will be ‘handmade in Italy’ at the company's facility on the outskirts of Turin. The PF0 is planned to go on sale in autumn 2020, priced between USD 2-2.5 million.

Production for the Battista will be limited to just 150 units. Of the 50 cars allocated to the North American market, many have already been reserved after the mock-up was shown to potential American buyers. Another 50 will be allocated to the European markets and 50 will be shared between the Middle- and Far-East markets.

The Battista will be the first of several cars from the new Automobili Pininfarina brand. It will be only the second series-produced car to wear the Pininfarina badge The first was the Fiat 124 Spider – which, for its final two years of production (between 1983 and 1985) was sold as a Pininfarina-badged model .

Three new SUVs will follow the Battista, of which the most powerful one (codename: PF1) will rival the Lamborghini Urus. Work on the PF1 SUV has already begun at the brand's Munich headquarters and it is expected to go on sale in 2021. We recently broke the news that Automobili Pininfarina will partner with Rivian – an electric vehicle maker and automotive technology company based in the US. Rivian Automotive will provide their new skateboard platform for the company’s all-electric SUV models that will follow the PF0.