In life there will be most of us, and there will be the one percent. There will be those of us who fly economy class, and there will be those of us who have their own private jets. There will be those of us who enjoy our small homes, and those of us who dwell in luxury manors. When it comes to green cars, there will be those of us who drive the Prius, and those who drive the US$980 000 Rimac Concept_One electric sports car.

The Croatian upstart has built a supercar of (figurative, if not literal) Bugatti proportions, but instead of building it around a fossil fuel-guzzling conventional powerplant, Rimac designed its hypercar with the equivalent of 800 kW worth of electric motors.

With a 92-kWh battery powering an electric motor at each wheel, the Rimac is said to be capable of rocketing from 0 – 100 km/h in just 2.8 seconds, while traveling as far as 595 kilometers on a single charge. The team of former Pininfarina designers penned an attractive shape to go with it, the Bulgarian leather crafter extrordinaires at Vilner were brought in to work on the interior and HRE developed a unique set of monoblock alloys, all for the Concept_One.

The car, with its 1 600 Nm of torque, also has some special tyres from Vredestein that Rimac says, “can guarantee superior road handling and performance with an elegant and stylish appearance.” These tyres will operate well on the Concept_One that has been limited to a top speed of 296 km/h. When asked why they limited it to this, Rimac said, “it can go 500 km/h, but we can’t guarantee the passenger’s safety.”

The company brought the Concept_One to the Top Marques Monaco event earlier this week, where it officially opened its books for reservations and deposits. Deliveries are planned for a 2013 and Rimac will only make 88 cars.