Of all the ambitious start-ups that promised machines of mayhem, few have actually been able to step up and keep up with the rest of business. One of those companies is Rimac, the creator of the Concept One electric supercar that made headlines recently when The Grand Tour presenter Richard Hammond crashed one in Switzerland. It was an ignominious end to one of only eight road-going Concept One models, but all’s not lost in the world of Rimac after the company announced a new $36 million investment that would allow it to finally expand its lineup beyond the vaunted Concept One.

The infusion of money came from Camel Group, a Shanghai-based company that’s regarded as the largest manufacturer of batteries in all of Asia. The specific details of the deal were not mentioned by either company, but the deal is termed as a subscription agreement, which essentially means that Rimac likely agreed to sell a certain number of shares to Camel Group in exchange for a specific amount ($36 million as it turns out) that the Chinese company has agreed to pay. Of that amount, Rimac is expected to gain a majority of the funds, but not all of it. Roughly $3.6 million of the amount will be sent over to Greyp electric bicycle company. As far as what Rimac plans to do with the new funds, no less than Mate Rimac, the founder of both Rimac and Greyp, made the company’s plans clear: build a new electric supercar to succeed the Concept One.

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I’m excited for this one

You have to appreciate what Rimac has been able to do in the face of all the pressure that comes with building a car company from the ground up. A lot of companies have tried to follow the same blueprint and very few have been able to actually rise up to the occasion. Rimac has been able to do it, so it’s no surprise that there’s a lot of excitement surrounding this news.

The partnership with Camel Group is a smart one, especially if Rimac is able to leverage the Chinese battery maker’s expertise in its field and apply it into its next electric supercar. That seems to be the direction this partnership is going because Rimac founder and CEO Mate Rimac has already said that the follow-up car to the Concept One will be electric, so it’s going to use some kind of battery as part of its powertrain.

Speaking of the yet-to-be-named machine, Rimac hasn’t said what kind of power it’s going to carry, but it did hint that it’s going to be more powerful than its predecessor. Remember, the Concept One already packs a whopping 1,073 horsepower and 1,180 pound-feet of torque, good enough to propel it from 0 to 60 mph in just 2.8 seconds before peaking at a reported top speed of 221 mph. If the next model is going to be more powerful than the Concept One, we could be looking at an output that will reach at least 1,200 horsepower and 1,300 pound-feet of twist.

I don’t know how Rimac will be able to do that, but I’m well past the point of being skeptical of what the company is capable of doing. The Concept One showed me as much, and if its other plan of introducing a more powerful version of the Concept One – called the Concept One S – ever comes to fruition, well then, consider me excited to see what the company can come up with now that it has the funds to make it happen.

References

Rimac Concept One

Read our full review on the Rimac Concept One.

Read more Rimac news.