WASHINGTON — If you’d like an electric car that can top 200 mph, a Rockville company will build it for you, but dig deep to buy it.
Genovation, which has set out to prove electric cars also can be performance cars, is now taking pre-orders for its GXE, an all-electric Corvette conversion. The car broke the electric-car speed record, hitting 205.6 mph during tests at Space Florida’s Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center earlier this year.
The estimated price? About $750,000.
Genovation will produce just 75 GXE (Genovation Extreme Electric) vehicles. Pre-orders require a $250,000 deposit.
Who is going to buy a $750,000 electric car?
“It’s going to be a car collector. Somebody who appreciates cutting-edge technology,” Genovation CEO Andrew Saul told WTOP.
”When you look at the Bugatti Veyron, which holds the world [speed] record for a production gas-powered car and costs $2.4 million, clearly they’ve been making them for a while, so there is a market for it,” Saul said.
The cars will be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2019, after a two-year design period and a one-year build time.
The modified Corvette comes with state-of-the-art battery management, inverters, batteries and electric motors, and produces in excess of 600 hp. The car has a range of 130 miles during normal driving operation.
“The electric motors are really advanced. The inverters, battery technology, battery management system, the vehicle management system are all extremely cutting edge,” Saul said. “We are really pushing the boundaries and raising the bar in electric vehicle technology, and to date, nobody’s been really pushing the technology as hard as we have.”
Genovation will get a chance to show off the GXE to well-heeled buyers next month at an auto show in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, which coincides with the Formula 1 race there. It also showed the car at this year’s Concourse D’Elegance at Pebble Beach, California, where Saul said it was well-received.
