Torino, 17 April 2019 – Italian racing driver and entrepreneur Gianmaria Aghem unveiled today the new Blizz Primatist, a prototype aimed to break the FIA world land speed records over 100 km, 100 miles and the hour for a full electric vehicle.

Today, at Museo dell’Auto in Turin, Italian racing driver and entrepreneur Gianmaria Aghem unveiled the new Blizz Primatist, a prototype aimed to break the FIA world land speed records over 100 km, 100 miles and the hour for a full electric vehicle. After more than twenty years, Gianmaria Aghem has decided to retrace the road of records for electric cars, taking inspiration from 1994 Bertone’s ZER.

Podium Advanced Technologies has been assigned the responsibility to design from scratch the vehicle and all its components: from the chassis to the body structure, from the aerodynamics to the propulsion, from batteries to electronics.

Blizz Primatist is a full electric vehicle powered by a 204 HP electric motor, fueled by a Li-Ion 35 KWh custom battery pack, capable of a maximum speed higher than 350 Km/h thanks also to a Cx = 0,11.  The chassis adopts a steel space frame structure wrapped by a full carbon fiber body, allowing for a total weight of less than 500 Kg. Fully independent front and rear suspension is provided by a double wishbone design with push-rod and custom shock absorber.

The purpose of Blizz Primatist is to demonstrate how an electric car, powered only by batteries, can go far without recharging. On the High Speed track of Balocco, Primatist will try to cover the distance of 500 km in about 4 hours.
Once the first goal will be reached, the plan is to obtain the prototype FIA homologation and then move to the Technical Center of Nardò to improve the world time record of 100 km, 100 miles and over the hour.

Federico Micca, Blizz Primatist Project Chief Engineer in Podium Advanced Technologies, said: “Developing a car aimed to maximize energy efficiency was a whole new challenge for us. However, building on Bertone ZER original shape, we have been able to start from a sound aerodynamic foundation, which has been then adapted to our particular vehicle and further optimized.

One of the main challenges we encountered  was the identification and characterization of Lithium cells with the highest specific energy, that could allow to limit the weight of the 34 kWh battery pack below 180 kg, given a total vehicle weight target below 500 kg, and tuning our BMS to let them perform at their fullest potential.

Then we had to carefully study the vehicle packaging, whose optimization was the only way to achieve a 50-50 weight distribution, in a sheer 0,7 m track vehicle.

Designing a vehicle that could be homologated by FIA was another tremendous challenge, that required fitting on this “small” vehicle a number of safety features such as the steel spaceframe chassis with rollbars, designing and building the seat in aramid fiber, installing a 7-point safety belt, not to mention the electric safety features needed on a car powered by a 800 V full electric powertrain.

It took us more than a year to design and build the Blizz Primatist, and that has been an amazing ride, day in day out. Gianmaria Aghem, our visionary client and the racing driver who will personally break the land speed record, has been with us every day, pushing us with his relentless drive and energy and inspiring the team with his enthusiasm and trust.  
Leading this project has been for me a unique experience, bringing together the reward of overcoming the most stringent technical challenges and a lasting personal fulfillment.”
 
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