Video: Rimac Nevera hypercar sets road-legal electric vehicle record at Goodwood

The Rimac Nevera – the world’s fastest electric car – has set another new record, becoming the fastest road-legal electric vehicle at the Goodwood Festival of Speed’s famed hillclimb.

The Croatian-built electric hypercar was one of the 10 finalists to take part in the ‘Sunday Shootout’ which closed out the 2023 Goodwood Festival of Speed event in the UK, and the only road-legal competitor among racing machines and bespoke track-day weapons.

In a video uploaded to YouTube, the Nevera completed its run up the 1.87km hillclimb course in 49.32 seconds – a time which Goodwood’s organisers and Rimac claim is a new record for a road-registered electric vehicle.

While the Rimac Nevera’s time was the fastest for a road-legal electric car, the outright Goodwood record is held by the battery-powered McMurtry Spéirling – a special one-off race car which used two large fans under its cockpit to generate two tonnes of downforce on the way to a time of 39.08 seconds in 2022.

As the Goodwood Festival of Speed isn’t an official racing event, accurate records about hillclimb times are hard to find, though it’s understood the fastest road-legal car to take on the course was a Nissan GT-R Nismo – which recorded a time of 49.27 seconds in 2014.

The Nevera’s new record follows the hypercar setting the highest top speed for an electric car in November 2022, when it achieved a top speed of 412km/h (258mph) on the Automotive Testing Papenburg circuit in Germany.

The Rimac Nevera is powered by four electric motors which can produce up to 1427kW and 2360Nm, with energy supplied by a 120kWh battery pack.