Atieva, a well-funded electric car startup led on the engineering side by Peter Rawlinson, former Tesla VP and Model S Chief Engineer, introduced today its first prototype, Edna, an all-electric van with supercar-like performance.
The vehicle is used to showcase the company’s all-electric platform, which will be first commercialized in a luxury sedan and not a van, but in the meantime, Atieva benchmarked the van against a Ferrari and a Tesla Model S.
The startup describes the platform powering Edna:
“Under Edna’s skin are two electric motors, two sets of power electronics, two gearboxes, one battery capable of storing 87 kWh of energy and outputting over 900 horsepower, plus all of the software to make the components play nicely together. With Edna we are able to test various aspects of the powertrain system, including motor control algorithms, regenerative braking behaviors, accelerator pedal feel, and cooling strategies, to name a few.”
The van is able to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in just over 3 seconds – beating several supercars, including the Ferrari and the Tesla Model S in the video Atieva released today – seen below. To be fair, there’s a version of the Model S that can accelerate quicker, Model S P90D with Ludicrous mode, but it doesn’t look like the startup used this version of the vehicle for the drag race.
Here’s the video of the race:
https://vimeo.com/173957873
Atieva is working to ready its all-electric platform to bring the sedan to market as soon as 2018. Two luxury crossovers are planned to follow in the lineup in 2020 and 2021.
The company is planning to build a car factory in California as evidenced by their application for a tax relief with the California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority. The agency approved the company for a project to build a $530 million electric vehicle plant in the state.
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