On the heels of Porsche’s Taycan reveal, another heavy-hitter pulls up to the high-performance electric vehicle starting line: Automobili Pininfarina

Less than one week on the heels of Porsche’s premier of the much-anticipated Taycan, another heavy hitter has entered the race to produce of the next high-end “it car” in the luxury and performance electric vehicle segment. Automobili Pininfarina yesterday announced a collaboration with two major automotive industry vendors, BOSCH engineering and BENTELER, to jointly produce a high-performance electric vehicle platform.

Automobili Pininfarina CEO Michael Perschke, Bosch Engineering CEO Johannes-Jörg Rüger, and BENTELER jointly announced their collaboration in a press event ahead of the International Motor Show Germany, often referred to popularly as the Frankfurt International Auto Show or the Frankfurt International Motor Show.

Automobili Pininfarina is a manufacturer rooted in the famed Carrozzeria Pininfarina automotive design and coach-building house, famed for applying their aesthetic panache to the creation of landmark vehicles for a varied range of automakers, from Ferrari to Cadillac. Both Automobili Pininfarina and Carrozzeria Pininfarina were acquired in 2015 by Mahindra, an automaker based in India.

In their joint announcement, Automobili Pininfarina, Bosch, and BENTELER said they would collaborate to develop a platform to support a new line of high performance and luxury-grade electric vehicles to be manufactured and marketed under the Pininfarina brand, with the underlying EV platform potentially available to other automakers as well.

The stated goal of the collaboration is to “attain added synergies and enable a more rapid adoption of electro-mobility across all market segments, including the fast-growing luxury and performance markets.”

“Today’s announcement marks a pivotal and transformative point for Automobili Pininfarina as we and our partners leverage our leading position on design as well as our world-class engineering capabilities to significantly advance our mission to bring to market a portfolio of world-class luxury performance electric vehicles,” Perschke said.

Automobili Pininfarina’s vision of developing an entire line of EVs in the performance and luxury segments aims to build on the momentum of the Pininfarina Battista, an all electric hypercar that the automaker introduced with much fanfare at the Geneva Motor Show this year, with production scheduled to begin in 2020.