This is the $2 million Rimac C_Two,
an upcoming all-electric hypercar
that's projected to hit 0 to 60
in just 1.85 seconds.
And this is one smashing headfirst into a wall.
Just like any other car,
the C_Two has to be crash tested
before all 150 units can be manufactured and sold.
But how do you crash test a hypercar
without losing millions of dollars?
Mate Rimac: Developing a very expensive,
low-volume hypercar is not that different
from a high-volume family vehicle
when looking at the safety.
So we have basically to do the same test,
which means hundreds and hundreds of tests,
or actually thousands of tests.
The problem is,
with the low-volume production that we have,
it's hard to justify
to produce many cars in the testing phase.
Actually, big car companies
would produce the same amount of cars
that we will produce in total,
for customers and everything included,
just for their testing program.
We have to condense that to fewer vehicles,
12 cars in different stages of development.
Narrator: So, how does Rimac make just 12 cars
last hundreds of tests?
The C_Two is built around a carbon-fiber monocoque.
This means its backbone
is one giant carbon-fiber cell
that houses the passengers.
This much safer and reliable design
has quickly made its way into modern hypercars
like Bugatti and Koenigsegg.
Rimac's claimed its monocoque to be
the stiffest structure ever put in a road car,
tougher than a Le Mans race car,
and three times as strong as a traditional road car.
The C_Two's monocoque is surrounded by
aluminum crash structures in the front and rear.
Crash structures, or crumple zones,
are the sections at the front and rear of the car
designed to absorb as much of a crash impact
as possible before it reaches the cabin.
In a majority of crashes,
including those Rimac performs during testing,
only these aluminum parts are affected,
and can easily and affordably be replaced right away.
The battery pack is also
a structural part of the car
that sits in the middle of the monocoque.
It would require an accident
far beyond what's tested here or at a third party
to damage the battery.
Rimac: So, you might think that maybe
the crash-test cars cost a lot less.
Well, actually, as they are prototypes
and there's lots of parts made
in a way that are not, let's say,
production spec, and you have a lot of
special tooling and 3D printing
and stuff like that,
it's actually more expensive
to crash those cars
and then replace the parts
over and over again after every test,
that each crashed car is actually
more than $2 million.
Narrator: So, what does the crash-test process
look like?
The first phase is done using computer simulations.
Here, the team can really go wild,
experimenting with all kinds of
vehicle layouts and materials.
As a multimillion-dollar car,
the C_Two requires hundreds of simulations
before engineers settle on a design.
Once a design for the car's frame and chassis
has been chosen, physical tests can begin.
The car's crash structures
are put on a sled and rammed into a wall.
The team looks to make sure the vehicle's build
and the materials are suitable.
Once enough data is collected
and engineers are satisfied,
it's time for the next phase,
testing prototypes.
In the first test,
electronic components are replaced
with dummy parts of the same size and weight
to keep results accurate and costs low.
Using data from these tests,
the team develops a prototype
with a fully functioning drivetrain.
These cars will be crashed
at higher and higher speeds,
from 10 to 50 miles per hour,
until they are ultimately destroyed.
Rimac uses prototypes that only have the front
or rear body work of the car attached
in order to save time and money.
These prototypes are what engineers hope to use
for the final production.
Only after the team approves of this model
can they begin homologation,
where fully completed cars
are tested in front of third-party authorities,
who decide whether the vehicle meets safety standards.
By now, Rimac has reached
the homologation phase, and it won't be long
before the C_Two is street ready.
But no matter how safe and technologically advanced
Rimac can build the C_Two to be,
watching a $2 million car get smashed to bits
will always be painful.