'All future cars will be self-driving' – Mate Rimac

So says Mate Rimac, creator of arguably the most impressive hypercar this century. But that barely scratches the surface of what this forward thinker is up to, as Steve Cropley finds out.

- By Steve Cropley

The frustration of trying to report the life and times of Mate Rimac, 35-year-old Croatian-born inventor of the acclaimed Nevera EV hypercar and architect of a forthcoming Bugatti renaissance, is that by the time he gets around to announcing something, it's already half-finished.

We meet in Rimac Technology's temporary office in an industrial estate outside Warwick, ostensibly to talk about his plan to expand into the UK. But to do it, we have to squeeze into a small room off the entrance hall - because the surrounding spaces are crammed with the 51 beavering British engineers he's hired already.

Ten miles away at Wellesbourne (we learn), there are "about 100" more engineers working on an autonomous project called P3 Mobility, whose existence Rimac hasn't even officially confirmed.

Anyone who meets him finds a friendly and candid person, amazingly generous with his time, but it's clear that to him, talking is nowhere near as good as doing.

Why the enthusiasm for British engineers, I ask. Croatia has great engineers, and so does Germany, which already has a Rimac outpost. "In Croatia, we have smart people, for sure, but not much experience," he says. "And I respect German engineers a lot, but most of them have worked in big, safe OEMs and haven't seen hard times. British engineers are different. They often have to do things quickly, on limited funds. That makes them resourceful. And they're more open to new stuff."

Since the autonomous P3 Mobility project has been confirmed in our conversation, I ask why it has needed to be secret. "Two reasons," he says. "One is the amount of hot air expended on this subject. So many promises are never delivered. We want to deliver before we talk. Two is that this is a tough project; plans change. If you announce something, changing gets difficult and we want to stay flexible."