Ferrari would introduce the brand’s first all-electric model in 2025, media reports said.
TheDetroitBureau.com said the automaker expected battery electric vehicles would account for 5% of its sales in 2025, the year the first BEV comes out. By 2030, that would rise to 40%. Add hybrids and ‘electrified’ vehicles would account for 80% of its volume, company officials told analysts and investors.
“Everything we do will always focus on being distinctively Ferrari,” chairman John Elkann said during opening remarks ata capital markets day event. “The opportunity set of electrification and electronics will allow us to make even more unique cars.”
The report noted Ferrari’s traditional competitors were also shifting to electrified drivetrains. Lamborghini would begin migrating to plug-in hybrids in 2023, with at least three, possibly four, BEVs in its line-up by decade’s end.
Ferrari itself used a race-derived HY-KERS hybrid system in its La Ferrari hypercar and a plug-in hybrid system powers the new SF90 Stradale. But it won’t have a pure electric offering ready until 2025.
“We believe we can use the electric engine to enhance the performance of our cars,” CEO Benedetto Vigna said, while maintaining attributes that Ferrari customers crave.
According to TheDetroitBureau.com, Vigna said the company was rethinking the way it approaches things due to the changing nature of the market place. If anything, Ferrari expects the mix of new electric vehicles to help boost demand for, and earnings from, its conventional product mix. It also sees significant opportunities for its first-ever SUV, the Purosangue model debuting in September.
Officials forecast adjusted EBITDA would grow to EUR2.7 billion in 2026, up from EUR1.5 billion in 2021.
The switch to electric will, nonetheless, be costly, at an estimated EUR4.4 billion, or US$4.6 billion, through 2026. By then, it expects BEVs and PHEVs to account for 60% of its model line-up.
To handle production of the newly electrified models, Ferrari is expected to add a third production line alongside its current operations in Maranello, Italy, the report said.
It added Ferrari would seek partners to help in its push to electrify. The automaker “would be foolish” to develop its own EV operating system, for one thing, Vigna said. “You have to focus on areas where you can be the best.”
“The direction is clear,” Kepler Cheuvreux analyst Thomas Besson reportedly wrote in a report on the Ferrari strategy. “Electrification is required but will not change the DNA of the company and its products.”