A little over three years ago, Ferrari boss John Elkann said that Ferrari's forthcoming electric vehicle will be landmark product. Due in the latter half of 2025, the yet-unnamed electric vehicle will be produced in a new facility dubbed e-building.
Ferrari's EV plant will be inaugurated on June 21. In addition to vehicle assembly, e-building workers will be also tasked with high-voltage battery and electric axle assembly. Chief executive Benedetto Vigna says that both axles and batteries will be handcrafted, which adds that little bit of specialness to the Italian automaker's first electric vehicle.
Emphasis on vehicle because Maranello's favorite son continues to be secretive about the body style. Hearsay suggests a berlinetta à la the 296 GTB and SF90 Stradale, but alas, we don't know for certain as of June 2024. Still, we do know that said mystery electric vehicle will make an "authentic" sound.
Speaking to Australian motoring publication Drive, product marketing head Emanuele Carando made it clear that any given vehicle's driving thrills are a combination of "power, force, weight, brakes, and sound." Regarding what authentic sound means in this context, authentic implies that it's not going to be an artificially generated sound coming from audio speakers. On the other hand, bear in mind that automotive marketing jargon is often misleading.
We shouldn't boo and hiss at Carando or the Prancing Horse as a whole, though, because Ferrari wouldn't have poured millions over millions of euros into the development of an electric vehicle had it not been forced by increasingly draconic emission and fuel economy regulations. Also remember that Ferrari offers the most exciting SUV of them all in the form of the Purosangue, which differs from its competitors by combining a naturally aspirated V12 engine with the kind of handling you'd expect from a Prancing Horse.
Photo: Ferrari
It goes without saying that Purosangue is a different animal from the Roma front-engined 12Cilindri or the 296 mid-engined supercar. It offers a different mix of emotions, but nobody would mistake the Purosangue for anything else after 10 minutes behind the wheel of the segment's only free-breathing V12 sport utility vehicle. This, in turn, brings us back to the eagerly anticipated EV.
Carando told Drive that weight to power matters a lot more than sheer power or top speed on a technical specs sheet. Considering that Lotus and Caterham deliver tons of excitement by keeping the curb weight as low as possible, it's pretty obvious that weight in relation to power makes a world of difference for the person behind the wheel.
Otherwise put, don't look forward to Tesla Roadster-besting power and acceleration. Instead, the newcomer appears to promise a relatively low curb weight and superlative handling. Relatively because electric vehicles are heavy by default due to high-voltage battery packs.
YASA axial flux electric motors are pretty much a given. Although the British company has been controlled by Mercedes-Benz AG since July 2021, it supplies Ferrari with axial flux motors for the aforementioned 296 series and SF90 series.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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