THE FUTURE IS NOW

Aljoša Tušek, the CEO and Founder of Tushek Hypercars, once a very successful racing driver has always been intrigued by implementing the demands and knowledge of a professional racing driver into a sports car, so he decided to make his own supercar, drawing from his racing experience.

In 2008, he began to design the first supercar, the Renovatio TS 500 and with that model Tushek instantly earned a place in the global supercars market. The Renovatio TS 500 was also presented on the BBC’s famous TV show, Top Gear, where they were clearly impressed with the car, which was tested in the French Le Mans before the start of the famous 24-hour race.

In a way, Tušek says, it was the earliest proof of a successful model from a price-performance point of view, as it was very light and manageable, as well as balanced in price for a supercar, priced at around 250,000 euros in 2008.

The next model, the TS 600, secured Tushek’s position among handmade hyper cars on the global market. It was a big success – the UK magazine Auto Car named it one of the four best super sports cars of the year in 2014 and it still remains in the top 10 list of supercars.

Tushek’s goal has always been to have the best car on the market; they have only sold their prototypes so far, as they have never been satisfied enough with any model to go to the production line. The TS 900 plug-in hybrid is the first model where they plan to produce two dozen cars. They presented it at Top Marques in Monaco, and met with a lot of demand. It comes in a road friendly and a racing version. Its popularity is such that it’s one of the top played high performance cars in leading worldwide video games such as Asphalt9 and Grid Legends.

At Tushek, they started thinking about the electrification of driving early on, as they quickly saw the direction in which the automotive industry was heading. They began with the development of their electric drivetrain system in 2012, because, as Tušek says, they always try to work ten years in advance.

Their electric drive unit TUSHEK DIRECT ELECTRIC DRIVE (TDED) is the result of Slovenian technological know-how and was developed on the basis of engines used in advanced lightweight aviation. Starting from such high-power aviation engines, it took over 6 years of development to reach the 2018 patented drivetrain, currently one of the best automotive electric drive units on the global market.

As Tušek points out, with electric drives, the most important compromise is between the range and the weight of the batteries. This is precisely where the efficiency of the drives developed at Tushek prevails as one of the best in the world. In fact, their drivetrain is capable of operating with only 10 KW per 100 km during normal driving, with the batteries weighting only 65 kilograms in the TS900 Hybrid.

The development of their hypercars, as well as the drivetrain, depends on the development and use of new materials for the drivetrain and battery casings, which must be ultra-light and at the same time ultra-durable. Thus, they started collaborating with the Faculty of Polymer Technology from Slovenj Gradec, in the development of special materials for battery casings that are capable of withstanding extremely high stress.

Internal combustion engines are coming to an end, and they will probably last the longest in hyper cars and auto-motor sports. The engine sounds that people are used to now will be replaced by new ones. As Tušek jokes, now electric cars sound similar to “small UFOs”, but in the future, he adds, they will be a matter for each individual manufacturer to decide as part of the design of the car.

At Tushek they are focused on development and are investing heavily in testing new materials and developing electric drivetrains that will power their hyper cars entirely in the future. But, due to the expected delay in the transformation to electric cars in auto-motor sports, they are currently betting a lot on their hybrid TS900, which is, as they say, a technological revolution on four wheels, that shows the real use of new technologies. It creates new driving dimensions made possible by hyper-hybrid technology and a drive that has many patent-protected solutions.

However, since they do not see the future in hybrids, but in fully electric cars, according to Tušek, they are now focusing on the development and production of a fully electric hyper car, codenamed TS X000. He claims it will be a completely different hyper car, compared to the ones we are used to seeing on the roads now. It is still a mystery, how much horse power it will have, but Aljoša Tušek hinted, that it might have more than 2000.

So far, they have made a proof of concept for their all-electric car, and they want to test the new TS X000 for the first time on a racetrack towards the end of 2023. They plan to break into the global market in 2024, and then start with small-scale production of the car. Their goal is to create a model of the car that can be produced over a long period.

Tushek has become a development company as they invest 90 percent of their time in development, meaning that their R&D department is growing fast, but they have practically no production. They see their future in development, designing and assembling their own cars, and using certain parts from companies that are pioneers in their fields. Most of the cars are and will be the result of Slovenian know-how.

The development and patenting of their electric drivetrain has enabled them to establish partnerships in the automotive industry, that will financially support further growth and development. They also see the future in cooperation with the automotive industry, Tušek says, where they are currently a development partner to a global car manufacturer.