Pre-orders for Japan’s Aspark Owl have just opened
and all it will take to secure one is a casual deposit of US$ 1.15 million. Yep,
seriously. The final price also comes out at US$ 3.6 million. The little-known Japanese
automaker has been developing the Owl for quite some time and is promising to
deliver a vehicle to customers that can accelerate to 100 km/h in just
1.99 seconds with street-legal tires. In February, an Owl with racing slicks
clocked a 1.89 second sprint to 100 km/h.
The reason behind the Owl’s mind-blowing performance
is its all-electric powertrain that delivers the equivalent of 1150 hp and 885 Nm of torque. The car also makes use of carbon fiber throughout its
construction and has a dry weight of roughly 1500 kg.
Aspark is currently showing off the production-spec
Owl at the Paris Auto Show and looking for rich clients to either put up or
shut up. In fact, the aforementioned US$ 1.15 million deposit is non-refundable
and budding owners won’t be able to test drive one for at least another year.
Despite all of this, Aspark expects to find 50 customers willing to take the
risk, Bloomberg reports.
Beyond the Owl’s potent acceleration abilities, it
will allegedly be able to accelerate up to 280 km/h and travel 300 km on a single charge. Aspark may be able to find 50 customers if it had the electric
hypercar market all to itself. However, it doesn’t. Instead, vehicles from the
likes of Rimac and Pininfarina are all promising better performance than the
Owl for less money. The next-generation Tesla Roadster is also expected to have
a performance advantage over the Aspark.
