Ferrari is one of the few remaining supercar manufacturers out there that refrain from going all-electric. The Italian company says it might start producing EVs, but doesn’t expect the necessary tech to arrive until at least 2025.
Ferrari CEO Loius C. Camilleri explained in an interview that the engineering crew of the company felt dissatisfied with the current evolution state of the power battery tech. He named the driving range and the charging speeds the main factors hurting the performance of modern EVs.
The first Ferrari hybrid – the SF90 Stradale – came out several months ago, packing a 4.0 V8 with 780 hp (582 kW) at the crank and as many as three electric motors. The resulting total power delivery to the road is estimated at 1,000 hp (745 kW), and the AWD coupe needs only 2.5 seconds to launch 0-100 km/h (0-62 mph). But, while you can go all-electric on a Stradale, its modest traction battery yields 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) of range in this mode at best.
Note that Ferrari isn’t alone in this. McLaren also believes that the enormous bulk of the modern traction battery compromise both performance and handling. Despite this, the company has been testing its own all-electric development mule for two years already. In contrast, Porsche believes that electric power can be used to improve the acceleration specs even further than fiddling with the IC engines would allow. Its Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid seems to prove the point pretty well.
To summarize, it looks like transitioning from gasoline to electric power is a forced move for Ferrari. If anything, the luxury carmaker will be obligated to do it eventually due to the increasingly strict environment protection laws. That said, calling it conservative would be an overstatement, given that it is currently working on its first-ever SUV model, the Purosangue.