The Piëch GT two-plus-two-seater will go on sale in 2028. It will have 1000 horsepower and cost more than $200,000. To this day, it is still a full-size clay model. Piëch Automotive wants to start making money by the end of the decade. Piëch Automotive was started in 2017 and showed its first car, the Mark Zero, at the 2019 Geneva Auto Show. The two-seat sports car was driven by a brand-new Chinese lithium-ion battery that was said to be very efficient. It could be fully charged in less than five minutes and could hold 10 to 80% of its capacity. The 611-hp, three-motor, all-wheel-drive EV that was created in-house was supposed to be made in small numbers in 2024 and start at about $15,000. It was possible that an SUV and a sedan with four doors would do the same. Rea Stark Rajcic and Anton M. (Toni) Piëch, who is Ferdinand Piech’s son, started Piëch Automotive. When asked about the plan, the older Piūch said, “I am in no way involved, nor do I take an active interest in it.” Feel pain. Toni Piëch started his project again with Ralph Illenberger, the chief technical officer, and Tobias Moers, who used to be the CEO of Mercedes-AMG and Aston Martin. To attract more investors, they came up with a much more complicated engineering idea and a new, more modern style. If everything goes as planned, Multimatic, which is known for making the Ford GT, will make the first 1000-hp, over-$200,000 Piëch GT 2.0 in Canada. In the year 2028, it will be available for purchase. The lovely two-plus-two-seater is still just a full-size clay model. It was made by David Seesing, whose most famous work to date is the TVR Griffith, which has never come out. The racing car is 188.2 inches long, 78.7 inches wide, and 53.1 inches high, and it weighs 4,100 pounds. It was named after one of the biggest car makers in Europe. It has 16 battery units, each with 312 different cylindrical cells, packed into its carbon-fiber belly. It stands on 109.4-inch wheels. The two electric motors, each with 503 horsepower and 406 pound-feet of torque, are driven by a 90.0 kWh battery. This gives the whole thing over 1000 horsepower and 800 pound-feet of torque. The fastest speed is 187 mph It’s already being sold with important performance specs like a top speed of 187 mph, a time of 2.6 seconds to reach 62 mph, and a WLTP range of 312 miles, even though the first working version will be made late next year. However, for the same amount of money, the new Porsche Taycan Turbo would be a better choice. So, the newbie also has to do well with “soft assets” like customization, uniqueness, and, most importantly, the supposedly very emotional driving experience. Because of the design, the restart is necessary, which is a big improvement over the sloppy first try. There is a slight British touch to the standard GT proportions, sturdy German construction, and nice touches like machined 22-inch wheels and ornate headlights and taillights. Mr. Tobias Moers says that the Piëch GT comes in many colors and trims, so no two are the same. But the inner design is still a mystery. This lets the user make the app their own by adding their music, changing the dynamic drive modes, and even making fake sounds. The Piëch GT is based on easy ideas. The brakes are made of carbon fiber, and the steering system can change the ratio and effort. The front and back suspensions are made of steel springs and multiple links. It might be possible to add wire-based steering later on. It doesn’t have air springs, rear-wheel steering, active anti-roll bars, or all-wheel drive. The Piëch Dual2Drive architecture, which evenly spreads movement by giving each back wheel its motor that works on its own, is likely the most unusual feature. A two-speed clutch links the motor to the wheel. Each power unit can have its own torque vectoring, traction control, and variable locking ratio thanks to the Piëch Torque Controller and POSA software design. The first gear ratio is 1:9, and the second is 1:5, but the legs are longer on the second one. The idea is explained by Ralph Illenberger, who says, “The Dual2Drive system brings the familiar sports car feeling from high-performance combustion engine models to the quieter on-off world of electric vehicles.” The best thing about an e-motor is that it can produce maximum torque instantly at low rpm. Its main flaw is that the torque-power curve drops at high rpm, which makes it a little slower to accelerate quickly at full throttle. To make up for this, we choose power over torque: changing gears, either by hand or as part of the chosen drive mode, gives you a well-known “kick in the buttocks” feeling that reminds you of the high-speed, high-rev boost effect in classic sports cars. He says the power delivery is punchy and progressive instead of straight and fake, making him think of a classic GT with a combustion engine. Piëch says that the vehicle’s batteries and a complicated cooling system that keeps the drivetrain cool on the track and when it’s hooked to a 500-kW fast charger are two of its most important new features. The GT basically uses the same 21700 cells that are used in many other compact power tools. There are well-known brands like Samsung and Panasonic, as well as smaller, more specialized ones like EVE (China), Molycell (Taiwan), and Universal (Germany). Cost is only one of the important things here. A 4.5-amp cell costs between 2.8 and 4.0 euros. This means that the total cost of the power pack is less than 10% of the price of the whole car, which is about $16,000 to $20,000. Safety, energy efficiency, heat resistance, and resistance to wear and tear are all important things to think about. Piëch designed a multi-redundant sealed total immersion plan with two just-in-case chillers, two water circuits, and two oil circuits. This makes sure that the system is very stable even when conditions aren’t ideal. Wise words Hi, Tobias More. Because of the way things are set up now, we can only feed energy at a maximum of 500 kW all the way through. This means that we can charge it from 10% to 80% in less than 10 minutes, which isn’t bad at all. The modular vehicle design is made up of a carbon-fiber monocoque, an aluminum front-end subassembly, and a steel back axle module. It is possible to have almost any mix of body styles, though the battery capacity limits the length. “Everyone has one, but the market doesn’t seem to like them,” Tobias Moers says about four-door coupes. He is open to an SUV, a car with a longer wheelbase, and any other unique vehicle. Moers says “We won’t do a facelift.” Instead, just two five-year cycles of the first-generation platform will be used a full redesign or an increase in the range in the middle. He doesn’t just want to market and sell his products online; he also wants to go after high-end luxury sellers in the Middle East, Europe, North America, and Asia. For the AMG One and the Valkyrie, Tobias Moers worked with Multimatic as a boss at AMG and Aston, so he didn’t see a need to find a new R&D partner when he joined Piëch. In the beginning, 2,000 cars will be made in 2028 and 2029. When a second four-door model comes out, production will rise to 4,500 or even 5,000 cars. When the second life cycle starts in 2033, with the release of a Purosangue-type SUV, annual production will reach a peak of 7,000 to 8,000 cars. Toni Piëch thinks the company will break even in 2029 and make money the next year. At the moment, 30 full-time employees work for the company, and 70 owners, most of whom are small businesses. These numbers are expected to go up, though, because the business wants to raise more money in a second round, which should bring in more than twice as much as the first investment. It is very important to get money from the Middle East. Family offices and area wealth institutions are the most well-known donors. Toni Piëch says, “The magic is in the brand.” He didn’t show up at the Stuttgart opening in his Urus or Huracán, and he definitely didn’t show up at the very rare Bugatti Voiture Noire that his late father had ordered as a dream car. He came instead in a white Ferrari F12 with Swiss license plates. 80% Tobias—the product—forms the brand. As a business owner, I must convince our funders to stay. Bosch Engineering Group (BEG) helped Piëch with his research and development by making sure that a flexible central control unit and a fast CAN bus interface were used to connect the hardware and software. The Piëch GT and BEG brainpower work together to make a new thing with a thin body that changes the way fun driving is. “We can purchase the best batteries available on the market, but we could never afford to develop our cells,” he says. We can’t afford that byte-powered mega brain either, but we can buy the better skills that other people have worked hard to get. In the end, the difference is in the mix. That being said, we’re sure that this unique mix is perfect in many ways.
