I'm Mate Rimac founder and CEO of Rimac Automobili. Over the past eight years the
goal has shifted. It started with a dream to make my own car and now we consider
ourselves as a technology company pushing the limits of electric vehicles
and building the next generation of electric sports cars.
My passion was always with
cars so as soon as I turned 18 I bought
myself an old 1984 30 BMW for hooning around you know but being from Croatia I
read a lot about Nikola Tesla and I was always inspired by him but especially by
the electric motor I was always asking myself you know why is nobody building
an electric race car or electric sports car and and then one day the engine of
the BMW blew up and I decided to combine my two passions electronics and cars and
show what the electric cars can do so I converted this BMW in my garage into an
electric car and I started to compete I went on races and at the beginning
everybody was just laughing at me like what are you doing with this washing
machine on a racetrack you know like can I charge my phone on
your car and these kind of jokes and you know that was a different time now
electric cars are interesting and sexy of Tesla but back then nobody knew about
test light was something completely new nobody saw electric cars racetracks
and at the beginning in car wasn't really that great it would fall apart on
races the differential will break the shafts that I would have problems with
the batteries but after every race I would come back home and improve the car
make it faster and more reliable better you know so your development testing as
you were just having fun with it on the racetrack yeah you know I had more than
just a hobby in my mind back then already I wanted to make a business out
of it so I used this as a testbed and eventually it became competitive and
started winning and in 2011 I broke five FIA and Guinness World Records for that
for the fastest selective electric car well how did it get from being in the
BMW to something that you could market and create a business around basically I
wanted to make my own car you know I knew it's difficult to make carnet
hundreds or thousands of people have tried and failed but they were horacio
pagani and Christine for koenigsegg who have done it and I basically wanted to
do what they have done so I went for example to the University of mechanical
engineering in Zagreb in Croatia and I asked them for advice and they told me
it impossible to build a car in Croatia
give up the sooner you give up the less people will go under with you so I said
okay seems like you know I have to figure it out on my own you know going
from the BMW I didn't just want to convert this old car and improve it
until infinity I wanted to build my own so I met at the end of who is today our
head of design he was working for GM at that time in Germany as a designer and
we decided to develop the car I was responsible for a technology and he was
doing the design and it was just the two of us I was in the university he was
working for GM he would work on the design after work and I would you know
after university and we had some 3d models some sketches some renderings and
then a guy came up to me by coincidence a Croatian guy who works for the royal
family of Gulf state and said you know the stuff you're doing with your BMW is
quite cool I'm looking for interesting opportunities to invest into so do you
have something to show that I can bring to you know to Abu Dhabi and we made it
for sure with you know specs of the car renderings and he went there and he
called me like they want to order two cars and I said no great but there is no
car and there is no company just the two of us and the next thing he called me
and asked how much do you need of course I said a stupid figure that I thought
it's enough to build a car and we started to negotiate about the
investment that they invest into the company we decided to build it you know
and that was beginning of 2011 and we wanted to show the car at the end of
2011 in September 2011 at the Frankfurt Motor Show we made an agreement with the
Abu Dhabi investors like okay you are going to invest we have agreed and
everything we have to do the paperwork so it would take some more time so I
will lend money from everywhere I can and I will employ the first people will
start to build the car booked the stand in Frankfurt and then you are going to
pay back all the depth and that's how we started off in April 2011 the first
employees join me so we had five months to build the first car and nobody did
that before never had a car industry so I couldn't
hire anybody who it's not anything like that
what was the dollar figure optimistic or was it eventually not enough of course I
was completely wrong I had no idea what what we have to do I think you know
going back like the door handle in the in the BMW way would have cost more than
what I asked for but you know we had to figure it out we
had to do it we had the stand booked we were working day and night Saturdays
Sundays we would sleep on the floor we didn't believe we'll make it at some
point but somehow you know the car going on the track before Frankfurt we still
putting on the last parts and there it was the beautiful red concept one the
first one and you were just five people at the time when the car when the first
car was built but with the Abu Dhabi guys it didn't really work out well you
know it took a lot more time than we expected we he completely ran out of
money like months before Frankfurt we didn't
pay the rent for the facility the electricity company came to turn off our
electricity in the facility we couldn't pay our suppliers they were calling me
so it was really difficult and finally we came to the moment where we can sign
with them when the paperwork was done and you know we would finally get the
investment and we really needed that money so I flew to our Dhabi to sign the
agreements and then after almost a year of negotiations he said you know what we
don't want to do this in Croatia if you want to get the money you have to move
the whole company to Abu Dhabi and I really needed it but I still said no I
wanted to do it here you know one of my motivations is also to do something good
for the country and build up a car company and show that it's possible to
do it here and I didn't want to live in Abu Dhabi to be honest so we yeah we
didn't finish that investment and you know being in depth over here you know
like the water was well above us already and you know we had to figure out what
to do next we show the car in Frankfurt but it was very far from being a
production car by the way at this point you're what 24 25 years old perhaps 2011
29 so oh so even so 23 22 yes I was party to it that's that you know I mean
you're 22 you're not gonna give up and yeah you know that's like you'll figure
it out I think you're it's almost like a gamble then you know you were already
all-in so what are you going to do back up so there's several things we figured
out at that time so one we were completely out of money and in depth we
didn't know what to do next because the car was far from being a production car
if we wanted to make a full production car there was still a lot of stuff we
needed to do and so no I went to the suppliers of the car industry because
90% of the cars are built by suppliers and not by the manufactures themselves
and most of them didn't even want to talk to me of course some of them were
laughing at me but I told them about the volumes we are talking about and some of
them have special divisions to deal with small projects small projects for them
being Ferrari producing 7,000 cars per year they give you access to the stuff
they already have for the big manufacturers but you have to pay a fee
to get access to them so I went to one of these suppliers with lists of like
six things that I wanted like the parking lock the infotainment system
windscreen washers so not really the big stuff not powertrain or chassis or
something like that like small stuff and they said look we can't develop anything
specifically for you we can't adapt something we already have just you know
give you access to it and to have access to these six things that you want it's
20 million and I was there you know it's five guys in the garage with nothing you
know right so that was when I figured out to build a car we have to build up a
team that can develop technologies take the technologies to develop systems and
then build a car but because we didn't have the money to you know just do that
we had to work for other manufactures and that's the best thing that happened
to us so then after Frankfurt we started to look for projects for other
manufacturers and we started to develop full cars for them or powertrain systems
and batteries but always in the direction where we wanted to go anyways
kind of they kind of finance the development of our own car you know we
found a project where the car manufacturer wants to have a battery
that's basically more or less what we wanted to have for our
Carr anyways and that's what we did like 90% of the work was doing stuff for the
automotive industry and 10% was you know on the side working in our own car we
still wanted to bring the car on the road but in that way we became car
company a technology company not really a car company the car is still very
important that's how I started and what I wanted to do originally but the
business is really in the technology today we are a technology company we are
250 people much bigger than like the small car manufactures in a much shorter
time which is only possible because we do so many things for the industry the
cars are still very important for us as you showcase what we can do we have the
concept one currently which is in production but we have also a following
model or several following models being in development right now and there will
be a very important part of us we want to show with our cars what we can do
what electric cars can do we want to be you know the top electric supercar
manufacturer but the real business the majority of the business of the company
is the technology we are as far as I'm aware the most vertically integrated car
company in the industry we develop everything here we manufacture most of
the stuff here and that's very interesting for the car manufacturers
they some of them have a very clear idea what they want and they come with clear
specifications but most of them come here without really knowing what they
really want so having this experience and like we did already 24 projects for
different car manufacturers we have I would say an insight you know and some
ideas that are may be out of the box so we define the cars together with them
you know we cover the whole spectrum and that's very interesting for the OEMs but
on top of that we are focused on the high-end high-performance systems so
very high performance motors very high-performance batteries so everybody
was trying to make a high-performance hybrid electric car comes here when
you're a car company cost so much to develop a car you guys seem to be doing
it a different way yeah very different first Croatia is a tiny country like
Volkswagen has four times more revenues than Croatia has GDP we don't have a
single venture cap tell font no kindness we ever so the
Croatian government didn't support us or couldn't support us and we didn't ask
for it so we had to bootstrap our way through with nothing so that was the
hardest part that was 90% of my job to keep the company alive and the worst
thing for me was in 90% of the cases I didn't have the money at the beginning
of the month to pay the next payroll so somehow we had to you know make our way
through all the time and that was really stressful you know while growing this
company from here where it's very difficult to get any investment so we
were profitable from 2012 until today probably the only electric car company
that has such a long span of profitability but not because I wanted
to but because there was simply no other way we got the first investment round in
2014 which is public and it was 10 million euros which is a lot of money
but for a car company it's nothing so the whole investment in the company so
far was 10 million euros right now we are finalizing our second investment
round to get the company to the next stage but most of it is organic