Aston Martin Rapide E

Aston Martin Rapide E (the first version of the name – RapidE) was developed with the participation of Williams Advanced Engineering. Its conceptual version was presented in 2015. Initially, CEO Andy Palmer wanted to produce as many as 400 such cars a year, and not in parallel with the fuel Rapide S, but instead of it, but plans had to be revised when the infamous Chinese conglomerate LeEco, whose founder Jia Yueting is still trying to revive his own electric car startup Faraday Future, left the project. Therefore, in the summer of 2017, Aston Martin announced that the Rapide would be a strictly limited model, and in the spring of 2019 presented a fully production-ready version at the Shanghai Auto Show.

As a result, the Rapide E received two electric motors on the rear axle with a combined output of 610 hp and 950 Nm and an 800-volt battery with a capacity of 65 kilowatt-hours installed in place of the V12. The battery pack in a carbon fiber and Kevlar housing, assembled from 18650 cells, supports charging more than 100 kilowatts and provides over 320 kilometers of travel on a single charge over the WLTP cycle. The manufacturer has repeatedly stressed that the Rapide E is able to drive a full circle around the Nurburgring without loss of power. At the same time, it takes less than 4 seconds to accelerate to 96 km/h, that is, the electric car turned out even faster than the hardcore Rapide AMR – the latest version of the fuel model to date.

It is noteworthy that it was the Rapide E, and not the DBX crossover, that was supposed to be the first model of the new Aston Martin plant in South Wales. The same company is going to launch the production of luxury Lagonda electric vehicles at the beginning of the next decade, the technical harbinger of which will be the Rapide E, which suddenly lost the title of the first serial electric car of the brand.