From Ferrari F430 to 1,900PS Pininfarina Battista
Here’s the rub, though. With EV powertrain technology that’s available today – in the case of Pininfarina, a collaborative effort with Rimac – extreme performance is not difficult. Beefed up motors and batteries in combination with a single-minded calibration can easily produce the Battista’s scarcely-believable figures.
Then you have to ask how it feels. How does the Battista turn that volcanic tower of power into a driving experience that goes beyond the assault of its acceleration? The real challenge is to calibrate a competent, satisfying, engaging and well-rounded driver’s car, befitting that evocative badge and those classically pretty looks.
Happily, as above, Paolo is a man with past experience of turning cars that wore Pininfarina insignias into standard-setters in the supercar space. His experience in what he calls “torque vectoring logics” goes back to the 2004 Ferrari F430 and its then-revolutionary E-Diff. This is the man for the job of distributing near-on 2,000PS between four hungry electric motors, then. The scale of the task is not unknown to Paolo, in spite of his seniority on the subject: “We’re putting almost 500 horsepower to each wheel. That’s as much power to one wheel as some full-on supercars have in total,” he says through a smirk.
The Ferrari of course had a transmission and a differential, archaic limiting factors by comparison to what is on offer here today. Even so, Dellachà admits they were initially worried about torque steer, with so much instant punch – 675Nm to each wheel – a toe’s twitch away. The car surprised them, deploying its performance prodigiously.
“This is the perfect setup for power distribution,” he says. “The beauty of independent motors and control over them gives us access to full torque-vectoring, with no differentials, no transmission, no loss of efficiency and limitless calibration possibilities by comparison. The magic happens when you’re finalising the calibration of the torque vectoring. It is ideal by definition.”