The Hyundai Motor Group invested €80 ($84 / £67.3) million into Rimac in 2019 to develop prototypes for an electric midship sports car and a high-performance fuel cell electric vehicle with the intent to bring them to the market.
While a number of years have passed since that original announcement, we haven’t seen any new vehicles from this partnership – which, it appears, is now ending.
According to insiders who talked to Automotive News Europe, Hyundai has decided to end its various projects with Rimac. As a result, work will reportedly stop on the fuel cell project which spawned the Vision FK concept. Introduced last year, the concept featured a “fuel cell energy converter” as well as a rear-wheel drive plug-in hybrid powertrain. This setup gave the car more than 671 hp (500 kW / 680 PS) and a range in excess of 373 miles (600 km).
Also Read: Hyundai Introduces New Hydrogen-Powered Concepts, Including A 671 HP Sports Car
However, it’s not all bad news as the electric sports car will reportedly make it to production. The project is rumored to be nearly complete and will reportedly be introduced early next year.
Details are limited, but one source told the publication that Hyundai’s relationship with Rimac soured as the latter grew closer to Porsche, which increased their stake in Rimac to 24 percent and established the Bugatti-Rimac joint venture last year. However, a Rimac spokesperson denied this as they told the publication “Hyundai has been supportive in the transformation of the company during the last 12 months – including the carve-out of Rimac Technology and joining forces with Bugatti under the new company Bugatti-Rimac.”
The spokesperson also downplayed reports of a rocky relationship as they said they have “two active high-level projects ongoing” with Hyundai as well as “one completed and several future projects under discussion.”
