Mate Rimac

At 19 years old, Rimac started to convert an old 1984 BMW 3 Series into an electric car in his garage.

The vehicle broke several world records for electric cars.

Being fascinated by cars all his life and wanting to enter into the world of racing, Rimac bought a 1984 BMW E30 323i at the age of 18 in 2006 as that seemed to be the cheapest way to get into racing.

After the gasoline engine exploded during one race, he decided to turn the car into an electric one, inspired by the innovations of his idol Nikola Tesla.

His peers mocked him for racing with an electric car – for bringing a "washing machine" to the race track.

After many upgrades, and a total of seven different iterations where all of the key components of the car were replaced with Rimac's new developments, the car became faster, winning races and gaining attention.

It soon drew attention to the benefits of electric power and Rimac's talents as an engineer, in addition to setting a number of world FIA and Guinness records.

Seeing the potential in electric performance, Mate decided to found a company to build electric cars.

Initially called VST Conversions (v=s/t being the formula for speed), Rimac offered conversions of traditional vehicles to EVs.

Mate Rimac (born 12 February 1988) is a Croatian innovator and entrepreneur.

He is the founder and CEO of the Rimac Group, a business which includes Bugatti Rimac – composed of the Bugatti Automobiles and Rimac Automobili brands – as well as Rimac Technology, a supplier of technology to automotive brands.

He also founded Greyp Bikes, a high-tech eBike and eBike technology company which was taken over by Porsche AG and is now known as Porsche eBike Performance GmbH.

During his high-school years, Rimac won local, national and international competitions for electronics and innovation.

Rimac was born in Livno, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SFR Yugoslavia (present day Bosnia and Herzegovina) in 1988 to Zdenka and Ivan Rimac.

The family temporarily moved to Frankfurt, Germany in 1991, when he was three years old, to escape the nascent Yugoslav Wars which had rendered the family's home region uninhabitable.

The family lived in Germany until 2000, after which they moved to Croatia, settling in Samobor, where Rimac's father founded a real estate company.

Moving from Germany to Croatia, Rimac has admitted that it was hard for him to adapt and keep up in school.

He was bullied for having a Bosnian accent.

However, Rimac was fascinated by cars and technology and was working in his parents' garage on his own projects.

During high school, Rimac's teacher and later mentor, Ivan Vlainić, convinced him to participate at a local competition for electronics.

Mate did not have high hopes as he did not excel at school but, nevertheless, he won the first prize.

After that, Mate competed on a national level, where he also achieved top spot, which led him to represent Croatia in global competitions for electronics and innovation.

In 2005, Rimac built a device that replaced the computer keyboard and mouse with a glove, which he called the iGlove.

Shortly after, Rimac invented a rear-view mirror system for avoiding a vehicle's blind spot, called Active Mirror System, which won an award at the IENA international trade fair 2006 in Nuremberg, Germany.

At age 17, Rimac applied for two international patents for his inventions.

Rimac won numerous awards in international competitions for electronics and innovation before turning 18, in South Korea, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Malaysia and Croatia.

Rimac attended the VERN University of Applied Science from 2007.

The company that would eventually turn out to be Rimac Automobili was founded in September 2009, when Rimac was 21.

While the company was founded in 2009, Rimac had no employees until 2011.

He obtained a bachelor's degree in Entrepreneurial Management in 2010.

Rimac later admitted that if it wasn't for his high-school teacher Ivan Vlainić, who pushed him to compete at electronics and innovation competitions, he might have never built a company as those early successes taught him how to build something and have self-confidence.

In 2010, Rimac met Adriano Mudri, who was a designer at General Motors at that time.

He then went on to create his first all-electric supercar from the ground up, the Concept One, in 2011 at the age of 23.

His company, Rimac Automobili, went from its first employees in 2011 to more than 1000 employees in 2020, attracting major investment from Porsche AG, Hyundai-Kia and Camel Group, one of Asia's largest battery manufacturers.

In addition to developing and manufacturing their own electric sports cars, Rimac provides electric vehicle technologies and systems for many big names of the auto industry.

It is currently publicly known to be working with, or producing components for, Porsche, Hyundai, Kia, Renault, Jaguar, Aston Martin, SEAT, Koenigsegg and Automobili Pininfarina.

Rimac's second car, designed, engineered, and built in-house, is the Nevera, with first customer deliveries expected in 2021.

Rimac has previously turned down offers to move his business out of the country, stating that his goal is to bring automotive manufacturers to Croatia.

Motor Trend has ranked Rimac ninth on their list of the biggest players in the auto industry, Forbes named Rimac one of the Top 30 Under 30, the 30 best entrepreneurs under the age of 30 of the world, in 2017.

Rimac was named the Croatian Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017 by EY Hrvatska (Ernst & Young Croatia).