Weekend Drive by Hormazd Sorabjee: Lightning bolts
The fastest, heaviest, most expensive supercar in the world is also electric. Even at 2.2 tonnes, the Pininfarina Battista can do 358 kph
The headlines of the Mahindra-owned all-electric Pininfarina Battista are its numbers, which are completely off the charts. How does 1,900 horsepower sound? Yes, 1900 horsepower, which is around twice as powerful as a Formula 1 car. And if that doesn’t boggle your mind, 2,340 Nm of torque – the pulling power of a small locomotive – certainly will.
The super stats don’t end there. The Battista weighs 2.2 tonnes, around 400 kg more than parent Mahindra’s Scorpio SUV. But that doesn’t weigh on its ability to rocket from 0-100 kph in a scarcely believable 1.86 seconds and onto 200 kph in 4.49 seconds. These accelerations are world records and catapult this hyper EV into a different orbit from other sports cars.
So does the price. Each Battista will set an obscenely rich owner back around US$ 2.2 million, the equivalent of ₹18 crores, and that’s before customs duties. If you could buy a Battista in India (the limited run of 150 cars are all left-hand drive) it would cost a hilarious ₹40 crores!
There’s no shortage of superlatives to describe the Battista. It’s the fastest, most powerful, heaviest, and most expensive supercar I have driven. It looks drop dead gorgeous too. When you get an over-the-top car like this, it would be a waste not to do something OTT with it. And it doesn’t get more OTT than maxing out the Battista to set a couple of speed records.
But where? At the state of the art NATRAX test facility just outside Indore. The jewel of NATRAX is its 11.3 km high-speed track, the only one of its kind in Asia, and India’s new Temple of Speed. The target to beat is 332.2 kph, the fastest speed recorded on Indian soil by Aditya Patel in an Audi R8 V10 in 2016 on a closed section of a road in Hyderabad. NATRAX makes the job easier.
But there’s nothing easy about hurtling at 300 kilometres an hour. It’s hard to imagine what 1,900 hp feels like until you experience it. Floor it and it’s like being shot from a cannon. The ferocity with which the Battista accelerates slams my head to the seat, squeezes my cheeks in and sucks the air out of my lungs. I have never ever experienced such acceleration. It’s just bonkers.
In fact, on that day, the Battista set three world records: for the fastest accelerating car to 300 kph as well as the fastest to the quarter mile (8.5s) and half mile (13.38s). However, the ease with which it reaches astonishing speeds transformed any fear I had into confidence. I was raring to go.
Swooping off the long, banked curve at 290 kph and onto the straight, I had my foot planted firmly to the floor. The speedo readout indicated that the Battista’s furious acceleration was unrelenting: 320, 330, 350, 360 and then no more. I hit the speed limit set by Pininfarina in just half the 1.8 km straight. The car can go even faster, but the speed has been capped because tyres are a limiting factor. The satellite based data acquisition recorder on board accurately read 358.03 kph. I just set a new top speed record for the fastest car and fastest EV on Indian soil. My colleague Renuka Kirpalani hit 357.15 kph to become the fastest Indian lady driver in the world! And all these records were set just like that.
To be honest, the effortless manner with which the Battista hit Vmax was a bit of an anti-climax because of the way it felt. Rock solid, relaxed and without the drama of a vibrating, screaming engine, 350 kph and beyond at NATRAX felt almost like a Sunday drive! This high voltage, road hugging missile has just redefined speed.
