By John Jeffay, NoCamels -
Most of us can only dream of owning a Rimac Nevera.
It’s the world’s fastest electric car (258mph), it costs $3 million, and only 150 of them will ever be made.
Ian Davidson has bought one. Car number 147 is currently under construction in Croatia, and he’s offering fellow enthusiasts the opportunity to own a small part of it, and race a virtual version of it.
The real version of the two-seater butterfly-door hypercar (like a supercar, but more super) does 0 to 60mph in just 1.85 seconds and will remain pristine in a secure storage facility. Driving the car would reduce its value. And the insurance would be a nightmare.
“You can’t own a Rimac Nevera,” says Davidson, the “tech evangelist” from Ra’anana, central Israel, behind Motovers. “And even if you did, you wouldn’t be able to drive it.
“It’s three times faster than average car. It has 18 times more horsepower than the average car. It’s just mind-boggling.”
The Nevera is produced by Rimac Automobili, founded by innovator and entrepreneur, Mate Rimac, who started his business as a one-man garage in 2009.
It now operates as joint venture with the iconic Bugatti, established a century earlier as maker of some of the world’s most beautiful and most expensive petrol-driven cars.
Davidson aims to attract 10,000 subscribers to his Nevera, each paying $600 for a share of the car, by way of an NFT (non-fungible token).
That means they’ll own a small part of the physical car, but will also own a virtual version, each “painted” with a unique AI-enhanced design (or livery), which they’ll be able to race against others.
“Part ownership is ownership,” says Davidson. “You say you own your house, but in most cases the bank owns the majority of it.
“You own a car but you might share ownership of the car on a 50-50 basis or you may own one ten-thousandth.
“I’m never going to drive the physical car, but I get the digital version to drive. And the digital world is getting bigger and bigger.”
It’s evolving into the metaverse – the internet’s parallel universe – and if you’re unfamiliar with this virtual world, fasten your seatbelt for the next bit.
Car lovers – typically young males – who are sufficiently dedicated, and wealthy, will spend $10,000 or more on a racing simulator rig that replicates the real experience with a seat, cockpit, steering wheel, pedals, and screen so they feel every bump in the road.
These petrolheads (they’ve yet to update the term for electric car lovers) compete against each other, sometimes for money, on racetracks in the metaverse. It’s as real it can be, without being real.
“If I put you on a driving simulator with six degrees of movement, with hydraulics and a headset, it would fool your brain. The experience would be unbelievable,” says Davidson.
Nevera subscribers will, in time, be able to race on a specially-designed 7km track, in their uniquely-liveried version of the car.
“We want to create our own signature racetrack, which will slot into the world of Assetto Corsa (a super-realistic simulated racing game),” says Davidson.
Nobody else is combining the elements of gaming, fractional ownership and NFT, he says.
“Bugatti wouldn’t be talking to us about doing all this if others were doing it. We’re doing something amazing.
“Rimac Nevera is our first car, a proof of concept, but we want to do the same thing with many more cars.
The bigger dream is to build a “mega electric car mall” in the metaverse full of such hypercars, where enthusiasts can converge, inspect, discuss and debate.
So far the metaverse can be a lonely place, says Davidson. He plans to bring together the petrolheads by acquiring more collectible cars, creating their digital twin, fractionalizing them and selling NFTs on the Open Sea trading platform.
“We’re building a space and we’re creating a community of people who have invested into the physical cost of part ownership and with that will come many things associated with being part of a club,” says Davidson.
The even bigger dream would complete the circle, turning that virtual world into a real one.
“My big, big, big, big picture five years down the line is this: We’ve bought 300 cars. The whole digital thing’s working, we’ve got tons of people, it’s all happening. You then make a physical manifestation of what you’ve created digitally.
“All our cars would be sitting in storage. The idea would be to bring all those cars out of storage into a museum on the racetrack. We’d build a physical version of the racetrack we’ve created digitally and put 100 cars, or 300 cars into this big museum. That’s where we’d really like to get to.”
