It’s not only Europe’s mass-market automakers that ought to be worried about the coming Chinese EV invasion. The continent’s supercar community is under threat too, and that threat just got more tangible with the European debut of Aion’s Hyper SSR in Italy. The SSR, which looks like an electric Acura NSX with dihedral doors, was presented for the first time on the continent at parent company CAG’s Advanced Design Milan facility in Italy this week. And though there’s no indication that it’s about to go on sale in Europe, bosses at Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini and Rimac would be foolish to think cars like the SSR don’t have ambitions to find buyers beyond China’s borders in the coming years.
Regular readers might have already heard
about the SSR when it was unveiled in China last year. The carbon-bodied exotic
measures 4,538 mm long and 1,238 mm tall, making
it fractionally shorter, but taller, than a Rimac Nevera, although the Croatian
supercar packs a much bigger punch. It makes 1,877 hp, whereas the
SSR’s tri-motor electric drivetrain ‘only’ generates 1,208 hp.
But outside of the crazy world of EVs
that’s still a heck of lot of horses, and the SSR seems to shrug that power
deficit off anyway: GAC claims its machine can crack 100 km/h in 1.9
seconds, which would make it almost as quick as the Nevera (1.8 seconds). The
SSR does fall behind in the end, though. It runs out of puff at 250
km/h while the Rimac breezes on to 412 km/h.
But that’s the least you’d expect given
that the Nevera stickers at around US$ 2 million and the SSR reportedly costs
around a tenth as much (US$ 233k) in its Ultimate Track configuration, and only US$ 178k in entry-level form. In keeping with the car’s zero-emissions
credentials, GAC says the Hyper SSR’s interior is made from sustainable
materials and contains no animal products. As on a Ferrari, there are no stalks
mounted behind the hexagon-shaped steering wheel, the lightweight seats are claimed
to deliver plenty of support without losing daily comfort, and there’s the
plenty of digital tech, as you’d expect. The driver faces an 8.8-inch virtual
gauge cluster that’s paired with a second 14.6-inch display on the console.