The Rimac C_Two may be nearly sold out, but the electric supercar isn't ready for prime time just yet. Engineers are still hard at work finalizing the car ahead of production, and Rimac gave fans a look behind the scenes in the wind tunnel.
Rimac started from a clean sheet with the C_Two which means the car shares nothing with the previous Concept_One electric supercar that Richard Hammond famously crashed. The company said the challenge is to ensure all performance and homologation requirements are satisfied for the global market, which has led to a two-year development time thus far for the C_Two.
Rimac C_Two California
For the wind tunnel testing, engineers started with a supercomputer to solve 70 million elements at once. The process of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamic) simulations basically placed the car in a digitalized real world to understand how the flow field around the C_Two's body behaves.
From there, engineers and designers made changes to improve aerodynamics and tweak the car's final shape. Rimac said since the initial design, the company has changed every single surface due to a variety of factors.
Rimac C_Two
After the final shape and design were situated in the digital world, Rimac turned it into a full-scale model for wind testing. Engineers also ensured the model featured functional active aero components, realistic suspension and brakes, fans, and even pressure drops around the radiator cores and wheels when they rotate. Once in the wind tunnel, sessions were split to focus on a single area at a time: drag coefficient, lift coefficient, and cooling efficiency. When the tests were complete, the real-world wind tunnel tests nearly matched the supercomputer's figures.
All of the engineering precision comes at a cost, though. Buyers lining up to own the 1,914-horsepower supercar with an alleged 0-60 mph time of 1.85 seconds will spend $2 million. The company previously revealed that some customers have placed $600,000 worth of options on their cars. Rimac will build 150 examples and the first deliveries should commence in 2020.