Of all the auto manufacturers feeling the forced business pivot of shifting from ICE vehicles to EVs, it may not hit harder than at manufacturers who make the world’s supercars.
Perhaps that’s why Italy is now lobbying the EU to shield automakers like Ferrari and Lamborghini from the area’s planned phase-out of combustion engines, which is set to take effect by 2035.
Roberto Cingolani, minister for ecological transition, said in an interview with Bloomberg that “in the gigantic cars market there is a niche, and there are ongoing discussions with the EU Commission” on how new rules could affect supercar makers.
Cingolani continued: “Those cars need very special technology and they need batteries for the transition. One important step is that Italy gets autonomous in producing high performance batteries and that is why we are now launching the giga-factory program to install in Italy a very large scale production facility for batteries.”
The EU announced the plan to phase out new combustion vehicles by 2035. The timeline is far tougher for supercar automakers whose entire business models revolve around advanced engineering of engines that are far more powerful than average vehicles. They sell far less units and experience fewer benefits from economies of scale.
Cingolani said: “This is something we are discussing with other partners in Europe and I am convinced there will be not be a problem.”
Ferrari sold just 9,100 cars in 2020 and Lamborghini sold about 7,400.
“This is a global policy problem. There is a clear awareness about the need of a transition toward the electric mobility. On a century scale transformation this is not a problem, ” Cingolani concluded.
