Drako Motors announced its next vehicle: the Drako Dragon, a new hypercar in an SUV format that can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds and still deliver on luxury.
Our first introduction to Drako was back in 2019 when the company unveiled the Drako GTE, a limited-production all-electric supercar with insane specs.
The San Jose-based company was founded by Dean Drako, better known as the cofounder and CEO of Barracuda Networks, and Shiv Sikand, an electrical engineer and cofounder of IC Manage. They repurposed the chassis of the Fisker Karma to create the electric vehicle.
Using an existing chassis resulted in some limitations, but the real product in the Drako GTE was the impressive quad motor architecture with each motor capable of a power range of +225 kW to -225 kW.
We are talking about almost a megawatt of power that can be precisely delivered to wheels to impressively control the torque.
In 2020, we had the opportunity to get a test ride in the Drako GTE to experience this quad motor powertrain with Valentino Balboni, the legendary Lamborghini test driver, behind the wheel on the Thermal Club race track just outside of Palm Springs, and we came out truly impressed.
The capacity to send so much positive or negative torque at each wheel is game-changing. The vehicle felt like a railgun on the race track even when cornering hard.
Drako always only planned to build two dozen Drako GTEs for over $1 million each, but we suspected that the program was basically just a super expensive test bed for their impressive powertrain, which would then end up in a new electric vehicle.
Enter the Drako Dragon: A new kind of hypercar
Now a few years later, our suspicion is becoming a reality as Drako announces today the Drako Dragon.
The company describes the vehicle in a press release:
Engineered in Silicon Valley and designed and crafted in Italy, the stunning, all-electric Drako Dragon takes electric hypercars to the next level. Designed and built to redefine the way the world thinks about automotive performance, style, and luxury, the Dragon is an entirely new kind of hypercar–one that wasn’t possible until now.
Dragon becomes the first vehicle designed and engineered from the ground up by Drako – more specifically by chief designer Lowie Vermeersch and his Italian GranStudio team when it comes to the design.
Vermeersch is most famous for being credited with the designs of vehicles like the Ferrari 458 Italia and Maserati GranCabrio, but most recently he has also been behind some electric vehicles we like really like here at Electrek like the Lightyear One.
Drako is not fully unveiling the Dragon just yet, but it did release four images teasing the vehicle’s design:
As you can see, it is a super sleek-looking SUV with gull wing doors.
We don’t have any images of the interior, but Drako commented on it in a press release:
Likewise, the cabin is wrapped in Europe’s finest, most sumptuous leather, exuding luxury and comfort, with a unique layout and easy ingress/egress. But more than just looking and feeling great, the 5-seat cabin is designed without compromise to its functionality, offering world-class passenger comfort and space and ample luggage capacity in addition to world-beating luxury and performance. The Dragon builds on the experience gained with the GTE, taking advantage of packaging and design freedoms allowed by EV powertrains–things that simply couldn’t be done with combustion engines–as well as the latest in composite manufacturing to build a vehicle unlike any the world has seen.
Again, where the Dragon shines is with the performance, which will make many hypercars envious.
It takes advantage of the DriveOS Quad motor powertrain developed for the Drako GTE – pushing the power to 2,000 horsepower resulting in incredible performance:
“While some carmakers tout their vehicles’ straight-line speed with movie punchlines, Drako needs no gimmicks for the Dragon: Top speed is over 200 mph, it runs the quarter mile in 9.0 seconds, and it hits 60 mph in 1.9 seconds. The Dragon summons this performance from the DriveOS Quad Motor Powertrain, its in-house battery system, and the nanosecond-precise control of the Drako DriveOS vehicle architecture, which combines the ultimate in handling and performance with next-generation technology and luxury features.”
Drako also mentioned its suspension will feature a three-stage system that will be able to adapt to both roads and trails.
As for price and availability, Drako is not going into the details yet, but we expect a full unveiling later this year at which point more details on pricing and availability will be available.
In a press release, the company talks about Dragon being “competitively priced,” but that’s against the “super-SUV segment.” That includes vehicles like the Lamborghini Urus, which starts at $220,000.
Either way, we expect the Drako Dragon to be much cheaper than the Drako GTE, which had a $1.2 million price tag, and it should also be available in higher volume.
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Author: Fred Lambert
Source: Electrek
