Ferrari and Lamborghini are the main targets in the Italian government's appeal to the European Union to keep combustion engines after 2035, the year that, supposedly, it will no longer be possible to sell new cars in Europe with combustion engines.
The Italian government fully supports the European commitment to reduce emissions, which will largely mean the end of combustion engines, but Roberto Cingolani, Italian minister for the ecological transition, in an interview with Bloomberg TV, said that “in the gigantic market There is a niche in the car, and talks are taking place with the EU about how the new rules would apply to luxury builders who sell in much smaller numbers than volume builders.”
The deadline envisaged in the European Union's plans — still to be approved —, which mandate a reduction of CO2 emissions from cars by 100% by 2035, could be a “short term” for producers of supercars and other luxury vehicles that, for As a rule, they sell vehicles with much more powerful engines and which, therefore, have much higher pollutant emissions than the average for other vehicles.
As niche builders, brands such as Ferrari or Lamborghini sell less than 10,000 vehicles a year each on the “old continent”, so the potential for economies of scale to more quickly monetize the massive investment in converting to electric mobility is much lower. than in a volume builder.
The production of these manufacturers and even smaller ones represents a small fraction of the European market, which often amounts to ten and a half million units, or more, of cars sold each year.
Furthermore, given the performance requirements of many of these vehicles — supercars — more specific technologies are needed, namely high-performance batteries, which they do not produce.
In this sense, Roberto Cingolani says that, first, it is essential that "Italy becomes autonomous in the production of high-performance batteries and that is why we are now launching a program to install a giga-factory to produce batteries on a large scale" .
Despite the ongoing talks between the Italian government and the European Union to “save” the combustion engines in Italian supercars, the truth is that both Ferrari and Lamborghini have already announced plans to launch electric vehicles.
Ferrari named 2025 as the year we will meet its first electric and Lamborghini also plans to launch a 100% electric, in the form of a 2+2 GT, between 2025 and 2030.
Source: Automotive News.