Bugatti Rimac CEO, Mate Rimac - Cars and Culture Episode #143

The automobile is one of the most important inventions that revolutionized the modern world in America. The rich history of car culture runs deep as technology continues to shape the future of the industry. Jason Stein, former publisher of automotive news is here to share the stories of people passionate about cars from industry leaders and innovators to car obsessed celebrities buckle up as Jason takes you inside the boardroom, onto the tracks and around the bend on cars and culture on Sirius X

M Business Radio. Welcome to Episode 143 of cars and culture. It's good to have you back listening again. I'm your host, Jason Stein. One word in the industry, especially the industry of fast cars, and wow factors stirs the senses like few others Rimac it's all about brutal asphalt ripping speed. It's all about beautiful design. And it's all about a Croatian engineer who had an idea in mind to build a better electric car. Mate Rimac is the quintessential dreamer, who had a vision for a better ca

r company, and then went out and just did it. Oh, and not just at a snail's pace, but at the speed of sound. hypercars to be more precise, Rimac is well on its way to becoming an incredible success story already admired so much that it's folded into the Volkswagen Group family, and making its mark on the development of several new vehicles including new Bugatti keys that are on the way. But first, let's hear his story. The one of starting out with a dream of being the first Croatian car company

on the planet, then doing it and now creating history at every turn. In this rare interview, Cars and Culture goes to the Toronto Auto Show, to meet up with Mate and listen to his tale of success and hardship, and a mountain of momentum, with more than 1000 employees yet only 15 years old. His is a unique story hypercars and success, the story of Rimac on cars and culture. Hi, my name is Mate Rimac, I'm the founder and CEO of Rimac Automobili and Rimac Group and also CEO of Bugatti Rimac. This i

s cars and culture with Jason Stein, Mate, what a pleasure to be with you here in Toronto sitting in front of one of your prized possessions that I know that we're going to talk about but but first it is it is great to have you on the program. You are Cars and Culture, in my opinion, and we're gonna we're going to talk a lot about the cultural aspect of it as well. But But first, tell me how proud you are to be sitting here and in front of the Nevera and and on all of the world records that you

broke last year. And and this is one of just a few that are actually one of two in Canada and one of the few in the world, right? Yeah, well, for me, it's a bit mixed feelings like on one side, of course, I'm so proud looking at the car. On the other side, you learn so much by going through a process of development of a car. And I'm one of the very few people in the world who did that multiple times from ground up. Because usually, you know, in car manufacturers, you start with an existing car t

hat you modify or like you you slightly adapted or it's a facelift or you know, you combine engines or platforms from other cars and so on. I was lucky enough to witness multiple times now completely new cars that are from scratch, and when I was one of them. And along the journey, you learn so much, because when I started this journey, I had no idea about cars, you know, I? Well, I was a normal car guy, but there was not from the car industry. So when I look at the Nevera, I'm immensely proud o

f what started just as an idea in this head. Now, you know, there's a bunch of carbon and aluminum and copper and titanium or whatever, right that sits right here and can do crazy things. But at aside, it's also so much pain that we had to go through to build at the same time. The team, the company, the processes, the facility, the shareholders, get the money on board, you know, everything to make this car happen. So it was also a lot of pain, blood, sweat and tears, as they say, to get this car

on the ground, and ultimately being what it is today. So yeah, it's a long, long journey. From you know, that idea in somebody's head until actually stands here. Let's go back to the idea that was in your head, you're seemingly someone who's come out of nowhere to some extent, to know build these vehicles that are in in high demand, get a lot of conversation about them. They perform it at incredible levels. Why the idea? How the idea? Take the listener through the house? Well, you know, first o

f all, I was just the car guy like, I guess so many of the listeners here from basically when I was born, and there was really no precondition to it because I was born in a area where there were basically no cars so that time was still Yugoslavia in 1988. And where I'm from that what's today, Bosnia. So Bosnia is basically the second poorest country in Europe. And where I'm from is the poorest part of Bosnia. So there were almost no roads, almost no cars and my parents had nothing to do with car

s. So but somehow I was really obsessed with cars. Since before I could walk or talk. And I wanted to do something with cars all my life. Whether being a racecar driver A former one driver, designer engineer, I cycled through all of it. And I tried to absorb everything like a sponge. What's about cars, and one of the lucky things that happened was that we moved to Germany because the war started in Yugoslavia at the time. So my parents moved to Germany and there, you know, there were a bunch of

cars. And they had a car culture, like lots of magazines, TV shows, I was watching all of them, and try to learn as much as I could. 10 years later, when I was 12 years old, we moved back to Croatia. But that stuck with me. And then when I was 18 years old, I bought a 1984 BMW that eventually blew up the engine, and I converted to electric car and so on. So I just wanted to do something with cars, anything. And I was a huge BMW fan, like my big dream was to work for BMW one day. And you know, I'

m lucky today that what I'm doing is much more exciting than just being an engineer for BMW. By the way, we also work now, right with BMW, many other brands. But why I decided to do exactly this is because in Croatia, so over 100 years ago, Nikola Tesla was born. He invented the electric motor that you're using everywhere today. And being crazy, I read a lot about him and his motor. And at that time, so in 2008 2009, electric cars were in the thing. And I was wondering why nobody makes electric

cars that are exciting. So I wanted to do that with my BMW where I blew the engine up to show that electric cars can be fun and exciting. And that, you know, in the future, when someday, combustion engines won't be around anymore, that there is still space for enthusiast to enjoy their cars. And that's I think, what's special about Nevera, even people who don't like electric cars, when they try the Nevera, they're like, Wow, this car was built by proper car, guys. Like, this is fun, right? It's

exciting. Like Chris Harris, you know, he's not really a huge fan of electric cars, but he loved the new era. And he was blown away by it. And, but it's for me, it's not just about electric. So that's, let's say, one part of my journey, where I did the craziest things with electric cars, you could do like, now it's accepted that electric cars are fast and all of that stuff. But 15 years ago, when I started would have been impossible to imagine an electric car with the fast and fastest combustion

cars, fastest hybrids, whatever. And that's actually what innovation is. It's the fast accelerating car built. And, but but I'm not religious about electric. So now, you know, Bugatti is also part of the story. And you will see it in a few months in the success of the Chiron, which is, you know, from last bolt, from the first to the last bolt was, you know, I've led that project and was really, again, an idea in his head. And you will see it has a very interesting combustion engine, very big on

e. So I'm just about doing cool stuff for with cars, not because of a particular, let's say, technology, or whatever, just because I think in the end, like, you know, I'm an optimist. And I believe that cars are kind of the culmination of all the human disciplines, and once had art, because they have to be beautiful, but not just in terms of looking at them. But also, you know, the way it feels when you touch a button, the way it feels, when you open the door, the way it sounds, when you close t

he door, the way it smells in the car, you know, it's like, a lot of sensory experiences. But then also all of the sciences like material science and or dynamics and composites and software and electronics, everything is in the car, everything humanity is doing is in the car. And it's an arms race between so many smart people in the world, so many manufacturers. So I think that's why I got excited about cars initially as a kid. And I kind of feel if you push in the right direction and do cool an

d exciting stuff. And people get the opportunity to understand the people behind them that new generations will be excited about as well. Let's go back to that. 18 year old though that was the BMW engineer. Where does the big break come from? How do you go from from that, that kind of role that you would take to where we sit today? Well, it's there's no like, single big moment. It's just 15 years of like, ups and downs. And I mean, I was story of like, the chance of me starting a car company in

Croatia, where there is zero there was zero out industry before at least. I mean, there's some small suppliers but no, no really car industry, or it was one of the least developed, if not the least developed European countries when it comes to automotive industry. There was no investors no talent, no, no market, no government support. So I didn't know one single person the ultimate street I didn't know anybody. So the chances of getting here were like 0.00 and it was an incredibly difficult jour

ney. Like I could tell you so many near death experiences for the company. Then I'm really brandmark by it and and kind of like I have PTSD from it. But you know, it maybe the Biggest I would say reason for it to happen was when the engine of the BMW original blew up, I actually wanted to put in a combustion and other combustion engine like V8 from the 1989 and five at the time. But first of all was too expensive for me. But second, I was like, this will take a lot of my time, a lot of effort, a

nd it's going to be difficult. So, but I'm already doing it, why not do something that could also turn out into business? So I thought at the time, and I was following Tesla, so Tesla just started was like, totally under the radar. Nobody really knew about it. Elon Musk was not on the on the radar. It was Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who are the original two founders, and I was following it. And I was like, this could go somewhere. And I follow the scene of people who are converting thei

r cars to electric in the US and racing them. So there was a small community of people like DIYers, who were doing this kind of stuff. And I thought, when I'm already doing this, okay, I want performance, and I want to do something cool. But let's do something that can turn into business. And actually, my first company that I found the time was built to convert combustion engine cars to electric. Quickly, I realized that that's a bad business, both technically and financially. And then I decided

to build my own car, and so on. But I think that was really the key, where I was like, Okay, I'm going to do something that's going to take a lot of effort from me a lot of time. So, let's do something that could also be a business and not just a hobby, and yeah, took from there. How did you assemble the team that ultimately led to where we are today? Well, so because as you said, you're coming from an area where we're, it's not really automotive centric. Yeah. When I actually, I was like, Okay

, I want to build my own car. And I was just, you know, self taught in a garage. I was actually like, just when I started with this, I was just finishing high school and started university. And I went to the University of Mechanical Engineering Zarya, which is like the closest to something automotive, in in Croatia, or it's called actually, of mechanical engineering and naval engineering, select boats, because Croatia had the boating industry. Like after the war, that fell apart as well. But I t

old him, like I want to build a current ratio, I want to build electric supercar. And they told me, it's impossible to build a car in Croatia, the sooner you give up, the less people go on tour with you. I was like, okay, that's very encouraging. So, but you know, being, I think, you know, determination, like doing your own thing, and not listening to naysayers, this is something that's very important if you want to do something like this. So I actually knew a couple of guys that were good with

their hands and did that stuff not in automotive industry. But for example, my first colleague, I wouldn't even call him an employee, like the guy who was working with me in the garage, Igor, he was a great self taught engineer and, and manufacturing guy, because during the war in Croatia, Croatia had an embargo on weapons, they couldn't buy weapons. So he was responsible in the army to develop and make drones and operate them. So he had to develop and make drones in Croatia without any, you kno

w, real infrastructure for it without the again, no similar story, right? So he was super skilled. And then another guy was a corporate guy, but in his free time, he was building electric bicycles, in his in his garage, and then a third guy, he was building race cars. So these were like the initial people like super enthusiastic, you know, non corporate, but they were experienced from the old industry. So we were just like building the company on how would I say, people who had no idea about thi

s, but we're just thinking, let's say common sense, but there's only so far you can get with common sense. So at the beginning, I couldn't afford to hire foreigners like I don't know, like an Italian from Ferrari, or, or some Germans who worked in German auto industry, I just couldn't afford any of that. So it took years for us until we were financially stable enough and I had the first investors on board and so on until we could hire the experienced ones but oftentimes, those were impressive CV

S turned out to be nowhere near as good as just these guys who loved to do you know, we were always selling this inferior complex like first of all, like all aspirations, we are not nearly as good as Germans or whatever. That was false. You know, then thinking like we have like we are far inferior just because we have never worked in the oil industry. Okay, yes, that's also problem because you only learn in your own mistakes, which is the worst way of learning but you make up for it and you know

, just enthusiasm and and curiosity and unconventional solutions, but it helps to have the experience so now we are like, we have a lot of people from the auto industry from all possible manufacturers. Which is good boys. Do you have now? Two and a half 1000. Wow. Well, two and a half hours so you go from the garage to two and a half 1015 yourself. Amazing. Yeah. Does is somebody like Christian Koenigsegg who's been on this program is, is he an inspiration? Because it's kind of the same thing, i

sn't it? It's coming from Sweden and wanting to build hypercars and wanting to do something different and starting with two hands. Yeah. Well, actually, Horacio Pagani and Christian Koenigsegg are my big heroes together with Nikola Tesla. And I'm lucky, you know that I know both of them very well. Now, I would even consider them friends. With currency, we worked also a lot the Reguera right battery, that was one of our first big projects that we that we did, let's say first for for serious produ

ction car, even though very small volume. And that was actually really the inspiration. Like when I was doing the BMW, I was like, This doesn't make sense. And you know, I had a few customers who have converted their cars to electric. And I realized, like, that really doesn't make sense, technically and commercially. So it only makes sense to really develop a conference scratch that's going to be designed around the idea of electric propulsion. So for motors, batteries, and floor and all that st

uff. And I knew that there were two guys who did Horacio and Christian. And actually, you know, I tried to read everything about them. You know, that's a huge advantage of stuff like this today, like you didn't have this information, right? Back then. I mean, the world changed so much. It's difficult to think back, like how different the world was just 15 years ago, like, you know, now you have like this shows and podcasts of Horacio, and Christian and me and people like us, and you can learn a

bit about them. But I know I wanted to meet Christian. And I went to the Geneva Auto Show without knowing how he looks like. And I was going to the most senior looking guy at the Koenigsegg stand. And it was actually his father. Jesko. And he was such a nice guy. He listened to this, you know, kid, I mean, I, I was like an 1819. But I looked even a lot younger, you know. So, you know, this kid who wants to build his own car. So he listened to me, and he gave me Christian's email. Then I wrote ev

erything to Christian and I still have these emails today. Actually, I must say, looking back at it now, incredibly, looked quite professional what I wrote that got him, you know, interested. Then when I actually had the first employees. I took the whole company. I remember like, I had the Volkswagen Passat. And we, we all jumped in the car. And we went for a factory tour in in Pagani in Modena. And that was a huge thing for me like Pagani, at that time was like 40 employees. And I was like, man

, if we could be one day like Pagani, like that will be amazing. Like, but that was, that seems so far fetched. Yeah. Now, where are you? You feel that you're closer now? A lot closer? Well, you know, today, we have two and a half thousand employees Pagani is like 200. Right now that like, number of employees really? Equals. But even in terms of stature and stature. I mean, you've you've grown this you've, you've developed now a culture for a vehicle, right? You've Yeah, the proof is in the prod

uct. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think everybody's like, you know, I don't consider anybody competition. It's, I really consider everybody in industry, friends. We are super open, like, everybody can come to us and see everything we do. And believe me, both Christian and Horacio are multiple times also then everybody else in industry, basically. So I'm very happy to collaborate with anyone. And, you know, Horacio has positioned Pagani so uniquely, it's basically art. He's not in his arms r

ace of technology and performance. The cars are good, and they are performing well. But it's more about the artistic side, while Koenigsegg is all about crazy ideas and making them happen. So the Rimac is a bit like that. But now it's a Bugatti, I also have a second canvas to draw on, which is a bit differently positioned than then to others. How did the partnership come about that, that you would become involved with? Bugatti and that and that you would now have the Volkswagen Group by your sid

e. So as I was building the business, initially, like we were, I couldn't get any investors. So that was the most difficult thing, like there were no investors in Croatia. And foreign investors, they didn't want invest in electric cars, first of all, because at that time, they already burned their fingers with like Fisker, and a bunch of others that went bankrupt. And when they heard Croatia, like, what they never thought about investing for Asia, and then third, there was like just a 20 year ol

d guy with a few few, like 20 year olds in his garage. And what, as we were proving ourselves, we started to work for other car companies, we started to get business, we started to get revenue, and we were basically self funding, but just barely, barely surviving, like always being late with paying the rent and suppliers and stuff like that. It was really struggle. But then, you know, some investors join us. And one of the first was portion, so they invested in 2018, which was the first time the

y ever invested in the company, and that was a huge deal for us. So in the whole journey of the 15 years, that was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, single events that you know, got us where we are today, where it was basically seal of approval then everybody was like, Okay, if Porsche invest in these guys, they are something special, they know what they're doing. And Porsche actually invested five times in total in our company. So over the years, they invest more and more as we were worki

ng closer and closer together. And then at some point, you know, the Volkswagen group had a lot of change. So, Ferdinand Piech, who was the longtime patriarch for Volkwagen, he, he was not there anymore, then he passed away. And then there was diesel gate. And Volkswagen Group was going all the way with hybrids, especially electrification, 100% and folk, and Bugatti just didn't fit into the picture, first of all, electrification like, how are they going to do it? And second of all, in such a gig

antic group, like the Volkswagen Group, which actually, if you think about it has four times more revenues than Croatia GDP. So single company has four times more revenues in Croatia, and alterations GDP of the five or 4 million inhabitants of Croatia. And so they were not sure what's the future for for Bugatti and how they can lead it to the next stage. They were thinking about multiple options, and somebody had the idea. Well, there's this guy in Croatia, who's already building electric sports

cars, because they actually thought that the next Bugatti has to be electric, which I strongly disagreed with, actually. And you will see that the next one will not be fully electric to be hybrid car. And they were like, Okay, we have already relationship with these guys through through Porsche. So it, it was an interesting idea to explore. But I then learned in such a huge companies that there is not, there was no opinion of the company, there was many opinions of many different people. And no

t many agreed with that idea of bringing us together, that's the right thing to do. But in the end, it turned out to be an absolute win win for all sides. So it was win for Bugatti win for him. It's a win for Porsche and folks, for now. 40 employees, it works beautifully. works beautifully. How will that collaboration lead to more innovation or to more advancements within the company? Well, it's not a collaboration. It's one company now. So Bugatti Rimac is one company so I'm the CEO of that com

pany of both brands. It's one development team, one design team, but with two brands and two different locations, where we assemble Bugattis and Molson and in Croatia, than Nevera, and also a lot of parts for Bugattis will be made in creation in future. Well, innovation, it's just you know, like, the reason why I do this, like, I really respect the previous management's have done, especially Mr. Winckelmann, who brought all the variety of the models, you know from the Chiron, they went to the Ch

iron pure sport, the Supersport the Centodieci, the La Voiture Noire, the Devo. And that's exciting and nice, but it was not technical innovation was all based on the same platform. And if you look at the Chiron, it's an amazing car, I want myself and I really enjoy using it. But it's basically 20 years the same thing we platform. So the W16. gearbox, the platform from the very runtimes is basically the same. And, you know, I don't want to invest years of my life and hard work into rebuilding ca

rs. So what I'm about to do real exciting stuff. And I actually, so when when this idea came up of joining forces with Bugatti, it was basically a blank sheet of paper, like, anything could be done, because the original plan of the management at that time was that the successor of the sharing was supposed to be an electric kind of SUV coupe like thing. And so anything was possible that SUV, electric, supercar, hypercar, four door, or whatever. And we were thinking about everything. But I just th

ink that Bugatti needs a hypercar. So the surance successor will be a hypercar. There could be other things for Bugatti, as well, because the beauty with Bugatti is with the history, it has all kinds of cars in the past pre war era, you know, you have the beautiful royal, which is like this huge car from the 1920s. That, you know, basically Bugatti has a heritage also in luxury, not just in performance. Right. But I think just the, you know, core of Bugatti has to be hypercar. And you'll see wit

h the new one, it's very hard to actually not just from, let's say, the powertrain perspective, but also lots of technical solutions that are that are in there. And, and it just, like, for me, the driving force to do all of this, you know, because it's hard work, and you invest your life in it, you know, five years, six years, that's what it takes to develop a car. And, you know, two or three of these programs and your youth is gone. Right? Right. So so when I do it, I want to do something excit

ing, right? And that's, that's why the new cars will be exciting. What are the characteristics that we'll see? So it's coming actually, so we have started to show the car to existing customers. We will probably show it In a few months, so what I can tell you is that we tried to combine a very you know, when already combustion, then let's make it very emotional and very exciting. And on the other side, you have the electric powertrain for performance. So the electric is there more in the backgrou

nd. Because it gives you instant power. It gives you interesting things that you how you can control the car, for example, with the Nevera we have for like motors, right? So you can control each wheel separately. And you can do with that things that you cannot do with other cars. Like if you watch the Chris Harris test drive, like the way he was drifting, the current signage, just you cannot do that with the traditional powertrain. So taking these advantages, but still having a very interesting

and exciting combustion engine. I think that's, that's really the key. And then I think the characteristic that you will see with a serial successor is that it really seems like it comes from one single person, like from one hand, where everything really works together, the powertrain, the design, the exterior, the interior, the aerodynamics, it just like so well works together fits together, that it really looks like one package that that just works on all levels in a different way than what co

mes before. You've got to be enormously satisfied with where you are right now. Yeah. So, you know, I always say, what I did before this company is high school. And I didn't go to fancy university. But I say that my shareholders have invested invested hundreds of millions of euros into my education through what I'm doing. And when I read, I learned so much, and it's an amazing car. But also, I see lots of things that I could have done better. And now when I look at the surance successor, and you

know, we spent now in Dubai, we had the first silent launch with our first so customers come there, they can see the car before, before the public. And we actually do that individually. So for every customer, we present him the car, show it around, and I was there for three, four days looking at the car all the time, and I'm walking around it all the time thinking, what did we miss? What could we have done better. And I'm really self critic. And when I look at that one, I'm like, I don't see an

ything. I don't see anything that we could have done better. It's like so amazing that we didn't make any compromise because when you start a new project, you usually have super high ambition when it comes to performance and technology and so on. And usually like stuff falls off the table, because you run out of time, money, talent, whatever. And with the Nevera, we actually have overshoot our targets. So when we presented a car, initially, we set some performance numbers, and nobody believed we

could achieve it. And unfortunately, we had, we were forced to bid within Nevera to show it very early because we were not in a great financial situation. So we needed to show the car to customers get the first customers on board very early in the program. While we got we now don't have that problem and show it pretty late. But never less. All the crazy things that you'll see us in the interior and so on that really unseen and unheard of in industry, nothing fell off the table. So when I look a

t it, I'm really proud. Like, wow, we managed to pull it we actually managed to pull this off. And that's that's really crazy achievement, that that's such a, that's so many things that we that that are so special in this car, like the engine, like the interior, you'll see some of the things, the suspension, those kinds of stuff that we managed to pull it off. Final thing, do you have people thinking differently about Croatian automakers folks who can create something that's incredibly special?

Oh, yeah. I mean, one of the reasons why this and I made my life unnecessarily difficult, because I really wanted to keep the company in Croatia and show that you can do something like that in Croatia, which was, as I told you, like, pretty unimaginable. It's crazy that now today, you know, people consider it. I mean, even if you look at what so here in our background, people here they have the training about our history, and so on. And here we can see the picture of our campus behind us. It's l

ike huge manufacturing facility where you know, the newest technology and cars and in batteries and so on is made for many car manufacturers. So car manufacturers from all around the world now come to a place where they would never have come before, just because I started there. But it made my life incredibly difficult. However, it's really brought a lot of positive things to the country. So they are now you know, first of all people so it's possible. But then also, you know, investors have more

confidence, like when there is new guy now, he can tell them there is already, you know, success stories out of the country. And it helped many of them and actually also our partners, I helped some of them to help to find some partners in Croatia, like other startups to do other things like digital services or software development and stuff like that. So it's that it created a little bit of a of a little ecosystem some people who, you know, didn't want to stay in the company any longer or want

to be entrepreneurs themselves, you know, they learned a lot in the company and they set up their own thing and do their own thing and I'm trying to support them as well. So I definitely think he changes the country and and if we succeed in our mission and a few years, we should be a significant portion of the Croatia of Croatia GDP. So it actually is full transformation of the country. So yeah, that makes me proud but also a lot of the gray hair comes from my thank you so much for being on the

program telling your story. Congratulations on having the vehicle here in Toronto and and best of luck in the future with all of your projects. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks again, my guest today, Rimac founder Mate Rimac to see my interview with Mate. Go to the cars and culture YouTube channel, like and subscribe to see more than 140 interviews and more than 1200 videos. I'm Jason Stein, we'll see you down the road