Automotive News Europe — 2024-05-23
Automotive Industry
CEO Benedetto Vigna said Europe's automakers should be less complacent in the face of new competition from China. He confirmed that Ferrari is on track to launch its first EV by the end of 2025.
The emergence of Chinese electric vehicles should sound a clarion call for Europe to be less complacent, Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna said. “For me, this is a call to action for Europe,” Vigna said Thursday, 23 May 2024, in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “People are defining it as a war but for me it’s a nice competition.”
Vigna confirmed that Ferrari is planning to launch its first full-electric model in the fourth quarter of 2025. The brand has dipped its toes into electrification with the SF90 Stradale plug-in hybrid.
Tensions between China and Europe are growing as a deadline approaches for the European Union to announce the results of a probe into Beijing’s EV subsidies. Several manufacturers have spoken out about the risk that protectionist measures turn into a painful trade war.
Beijing during the third week of May 2024 signaled that it is ready to unleash duties as high as 25% on imported cars with large engines in response to a recent tariff increase from the Biden administration. Most of China’s auto imports are in the luxury segment, with Porsche, Audi and Range Rover among the top 10 brands in 2023.
Ferrari is less exposed. The Italian manufacturer has said its sales in China will not exceed a 10% share as existing tariffs already drag on profitability.
“The market in China is still not mature,” Vigna said. “China is not for Ferrari what it is for other luxury brands.”
Ferrari preparing first EV
Ferrari is preparing to launch its first full-electric supercar in the fourth quarter of 2025. Vigna said in the interview that he was confident that demand would be similar to Ferrari’s combustion-engine models.
The vehicle, to be unveiled in the fourth quarter of 2025, will be “unique in every respect,” he said. “We are on the right track.” Ferrari said in 2023 that by 2026, a total of 60% of sales would come from hybrid and full-electric models.
It’s a tense time for the high-end automotive sector, which is deliberating how to lower emissions as demand for EVs slows and governments scale back subsidies.
Mercedes-Benz Group has stopped development of a separate platform, MB.EA Large, for large electric sedans and SUVs to save money and plans to sell gasoline-engine cars well into the 2030s. Lamborghini’s CEO believes it’s still too early for the brand to offer fully electric models.
Ferrari is building a new factory for making hybrid and electric supercars in its home base of Maranello, Italy, that will be unveiled in late June 2024. In April 2024, it unveiled a new laboratory to research lithium battery cells.
For the manufacturer’s first EV, Ferrari won’t mimic the roar of its combustion engines but reinterpret the sound an electric motor makes, the CEO said. Clients younger than 50 — and some that are older — already have approached Vigna expressing their interest in buying Ferrari’s first battery-powered model.
They’re “waiting for our green car,” he said.