Vazirani Automotive has unveiled its new hypercar, Ekonk. The electric vehicle is making some noise in the automobile sector, as it claims to be the fastest made-in-India car. The company also claims that it is the lightest electric vehicle in the world. The car weighs just 738kg while producing a total output of 712bhp. The car reached a top speed of 309kmph in a test drive by Chunky Vazirani, the founder and CEO of Vazirani Automotive. The rear-wheel-drive car is made of carbon fibre that makes it lighter than its other competitors.

The Ekonk enters the limelight after the company unveiled its first hypercar Shul in 2018. The Ekonk is an important testbed for the company’s newly developed battery technology, which is dubbed as DiCo.

The new electric car received its name from the Indian scriptures, where “ekonk” signifies the beginning of creation, as per the company. Vazirani said, “For us, Ekonk signifies our real beginning, where, for the first time, design and innovation come together. It’s our first vehicle that’s alive.”

The company states, “In the Indian scriptures, Ekonk signifies the beginning of the divine light. The big bang.” The official website also states that the company’s “design team worked in coherence with the engineering team to create a low drag concept car.”

Various factors make the Ekonk as lightweight as it is. The car is a single-seater. It does not have a car roof and a windshield. This makes it an open-cockpit vehicle. Most electric vehicles add 600kg to 700kg of weight through a heavyweight cooling system for the batteries. But the Ekonk uses DiCo technology, which discards the use of a heavy piping structure to cool the batteries and replaces it with the principle of air cooling. This significantly reduces the weight of the car.

The EV’s light weight not only makes it more efficient but also enables its high speed. The Ekonk boasts a sharp nose in the front, which is an aerodynamic feature that helps the car cut through air without much resistance. On the left side of the driver’s seat is an air vent that pops out of the body to deliver air to the batteries. During the test, the Ekonk did a 0–100kmph sprint in 2.54 seconds, making it one of the fastest accelerating cars in the world.

The car’s look is as dramatic as its functional features. It has got full-width LED lights bars on it, one in the front and five in the rear. The car’s rear wheels are covered and flaunt the word “Ek”, which means “one” in Hindi. The rear features an open design, perhaps for an exit route for its air-cooled battery technology.