Rimac Group describes Verne – its fresh autonomous passenger transport service – as “another impossible thing”. First, founder Mate Rimac founded his eponymous electric hypercar company in Croatia, a country with no history of car production. That went well. Porsche, Hyundai and Softbank were involved. The Volkswagen Group gave him a majority stake in Bugatti in exchange for access to its drive technology in future models.
Rimac Technology currently supplies electric drive systems to, among others, Porsche, BMW and Aston Martin, and is also developing advanced energy storage technology.
And now there is Verne, Mate’s autonomous passenger transport service, launched today in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Named after French writer and futurist Jules Verne, it will be made available first in Zagreb in 2026 and then in Manchester, UK. Agreements have been signed to provide the service to another nine cities in Europe and the Middle East, and Verne is in talks to launch the service in another 30 cities around the world.
So can this ambitious but rapidly growing startup from a diminutive country do the near impossible and launch a tough robotaxi service before most other players in this market – including Tesla, which will unveil its own robotaxi in August?
Don’t bet on it. Verne was founded by Mate and two of his closest collaborators and friends: Marko Pejkovic, currently the CEO of Verne, and Adriano Mudri, designer of the Rimac Nevera hypercar and currently the director of design at Verne. The Rimac Group owns 55% of the shares in Verne, with the rest held by Saudi investors.
The idea has been in development since at least 2019. Verne already employs 280 people, and during its global launch it presented a complete ecosystem consisting of applications, cars and “mothership” buildings to which the vehicles will return to be charged and cleaned.