Despite the coronavirus pandemic, Pininfarina is pushing ahead with its electric vehicle plans, saying the Battista hypercar still remains on track to reach the hands of customers before the end of the year.
During a recent interview, Automobili Pininfarina chief executive Per Svantesson indicated the company is happy with how the Battista has been received.
“Producing high-performance cars like this requires complete attention to detail,” Svantesson told Autocar. “It’s one thing making a beautiful design, but we need to promise a lot to customers and then keep that promise through ownership.”
While the company has not sold all 150 examples it intends to build, Pininfarina’s new CEO said the brand is “in a good place” and has “around 100 people who want a test drive.”
The Battista is not the only vehicle being developed by Pininfarina. The niche automaker has been promising a range of EVs for quite some time and the first will be a super SUV currently known as the Pura Vision, which was scheduled to premiere in August at the Concours d’Elegance, although that event has since been canceled.
Pininfarina’s electric SUV was supposed to use a platform from American start-up Rivian, but after the company inked a deal with Amazon last year, Pininfarina’s hopes of using its platform were dashed. Svantesson says the company is in talks with new partners to launch the vehicle.
“The general plan is still the same, but I can’t promise the launch cycle will be the same as previously,” he said. “We’re looking at some interesting opportunities, and we’ve been presented with some lately that are making us look at the sequencing of future models. I can promise that we won’t be slowing down but speeding up.”
Although Svantesson didn’t specify who Pininfarina will team up with to make the SUV a reality, he said the brand is talking with various mainstream car companies.
