300-mile test Pininfarina’s wild Battista
https://drives.today/articles/408/electric/300-mile-test-pininfarina-s-wild-battista/ben-barry.html
"It’s the acceleration that stays with you – enough to make a Bugatti Chiron blanch, as well as yours truly when passengering with ex-Formula 1 and Formula E driver Nick Heidfeld around Circuito Tazio Nuvolari. Heidfeld’s been on-board since day dot, periodically feeding back on development while a larger dynamics team does the day-to-day. The link? Heidfeld raced for Mahindra Racing in Formula E, and then its parent Mahindra & Mahindra bought a majority stake in Pininfarina in 2014. When Mahindra boss Anand Mahindra and Pininfarina chairman Paolo Pininfarina agreed to realise founder Battista Pininfarina’s dream of creating a car, they founded Automobili Pininfarina and needed a test driver. Nick! Now a pre-series Battista is in the pitlane, pulsing and throbbing with an artificial soundtrack almost like a high-performance car idling, bass rhythmically tingling the diffuser.
The design is strikingly well resolved for what in some ways is a first attempt, if not shown in its best light in our test car’s black. Design is crucial here, because really the Battista harks back to Pininfarina’s core skillset as a coachbuilder, and under its carbonfibre body lies hardware designed and engineered by Rimac, the Croatian electric hypercar maker. Just like Rimac’s Nevera, a carbonfibre passenger cell packages a T-shaped 120kWh lithium-ion battery, the stem of the T following the spine of the car like a propshaft might, the cross extending behind the seats. It allows the seats to be far lower than they would be with a conventional ‘skateboard’ EV battery platform. Each axle has two electric motors with its own single-speed gearbox, and there are five radiators – one for each motor, another for the battery. Double-wishbone suspension is attached to aluminium crash structures front and rear, again just like the Nevera, but chassis tuning, the way software manages it all, that’s Automobili Pininfarina special sauce. The Battista is not billed as a track car, rather a ‘pure-electric hyper GT’, so it’s appropriate our first leg is on the road, wearing the winter tyres mandatory in Italy at this time of year.
Dihedral doors remove a chunk of roof as they rise, making climbing aboard relatively straightforward, and you settle into those low seats with useful comfort and generous lateral support. Two large infotainment screens are angled in a V shape ahead of the steering wheel, and between them a smaller portrait-orientated screen displays speed. It’s a smart, driver-focused layout, although the steering wheel obscures a portion of the screens. Rotary controllers like afterburners sit at elbow height on either side – on the right for Park, Reverse and Neutral, on the left to adjust five drive modes (Calma, Pura, Energica, Furiosa and the individually configured Caraterre), which hike performance up in increments of 21 per cent of the maximum, then 53 per cent and 71 per cent, before finally uncorking the full 1874bhp. Quality seems decent, if a long way from the steampunk jewellery of a Pagani.
We thread through industrial towns and Northern Italian flatlands up towards the more challenging topography of Montalto Pavese, where muted autumnal colours merge with (thankfully) dry grey tarmac like paint mixed on a palette. The Battista reveals itself to be an undemanding car to drive steadily. Its steering is light, more accurate than feelsome, with a measured rate of response away from the dead-ahead, which is probably for the best, and brakes that are similarly well judged, with a small amount of give at the top of the pedal. The primary ride flows beautifully in Pura mode, but toughens up in Energica; I use the harder setting only briefly.
It takes time to adapt to one-pedal driving, because you’re mostly easing in and out of the throttle like Hendrix finessing a wah-wah pedal – you have to be very precise. The soundtrack is a little disquieting, like the threatening digital soundscape of Bladerunner 2049, but with it off, other noises fill the vacuum: the distant whir of electric motors, flecks of road debris, water swilling about in the cooling system when you stop at the lights. All authentic, all very alien.
We head up to the twists above Montalto Pavese, where the Battista feels, and is, a very wide car, not helped by flamboyant mirrors that hinder vision through bends. Gnarled frost-bitten sections send raw thumps up into the carbon chassis, like extra isolation wouldn’t go amiss in something billed as a GT, but when the road flows it is phenomenal – the body is like a perfectly aligned spirit level over the bumps, and you burst forwards on a wave of performance that doesn’t seem to stress these squishier winter tyres despite such brute force. It just goes stupidly quickly and then goes faster still when you apply more throttle. This is performance with the elasticity of bungee jumping – a huge freefall surge of speed, and the twang back when you release the throttle and regen kicks in.
The Battista is more dexterous and involving than a numbers car built to obliterate straights, but not entirely in the mid-engined fashion the design fools you into expecting. It turns in like both front tyres are keeping all their contact patch firmly on the surface, stays flat because so much weight is positioned low down and is split 48/52 front-to-rear, then soaks up the stress when you’re relatively early on the throttle (though you suspect giving it everything with some lock applied is a bad idea). It’s even surprisingly good at suppressing torque steer, given the brute force flooding through the front axle. The problem is the sense that there’s so much left to uncork.
Back at a slightly damp track we switch first to Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres, and I ease myself in with Energica mode’s modest 1341bhp and 1393lb ft. On the long start-finish straight the Battista gathers speed with a surreal mix of crushing force and total calm – it is rock-solid, tracks straight and true, but there’s speed like you’re accelerating a jet, sound rushing to catch up. Spotting your braking point is tricky – at first I’m early, but when I leave it just a little later the speed has increased so dramatically it feels uncomfortably late.
This much I kind of expected. What I couldn’t imagine was how the Battista would behave when you push it to the limit in a corner, get the body moving, then add throttle, like you would to balance a normal car that’s getting frisky. In truth it’s a bit odd, at least on the 4S tyres. The spectacularly flat turn-in is still evident, but now the tyres and systems are fighting with the performance in tighter turns. In theory there’s torque vectoring and stability control giving each tyre precisely what it needs, but it feels more like four watch mechanisms being independently wound up, and there’s a lot going on to stop the body yawing about. Similarly, it’s a heavy car to get stopped, and the hard-working ABS adds another sense of punctuation. It’s not very fluid, and I trigger limp mode several times as the electronics and the power battle, something that’s apparently being worked on ahead of the imminent start of production. Furiosa mode is better. It unleashes the full 1874bhp, and naturally there’s the kick of even more violent acceleration, but it’s still kind of abstract, like Starship Enterprise warp mode – I don’t get a sense of the nose raising and tyres chewing the surface in a straight line; it almost floats forwards supernaturally.
The handling is much more convincing when the track dries, the Cup 2 Rs go on and I turn all the stability control off. The extra mechanical traction lets the slightly clunky systems fade into the background, so the Battista flows and turns more eagerly, and it feels more rear-biased, which apparently it isn’t – but there’s a nicer sense of working against the traction, having it bleed away progressively." Etc.
