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If Ferrari can't figure out how to make electric car by 2035, well in the next decade, then they deserve to cease to exist.

> What the minister is saying is that if Ferrari can't build autonomously their own batteries - from scratch - they can't produce a real Ferrari.

Why is this the case? Why batteries and not, says, computer or sensors, or for that matter tires? All of them have huge impact on vehicle's performance and characteristics.

> minister Cingolani is worried that in Italy what we call "the motor valley" will have to close if forced to rebuilt itself in only 14 years (it's really a short timeframe to reconvert an entire production chain)

VW is in on tract to produce half a million electric vehicles this year, despite producing literally none a decade ago. Why can't Italian brands with deep automobile expertise and history?

> Lamborghini is not an Italian brand anymore and hasn't been since 1998 when Audi bought it.

Roma football club is owned by an American billionaire, as is Fiorentina. Nobody calls them American clubs. As for carmakers, Volvo is not a Chinese brand despite being owned by Geely. Land Rover and Jaguar are still prestige British brands even under Indian ownership.

Most of italian "motor companies" are third party suppliet, IIRC about a third of the components inside a german car are produced in Italy. These companies are undercapitalized like almost everyone in Italy (that's another story) so a transition could be very very difficult.

Seriously, I would never have expected that somebody would unironically go on and compare VW with Ferrari.

You literally have no idea what Ferarri is and what they do and where they do it and how they hire their employees. Their cars are almost exclusively hand-made and everybody who works at Ferrari is proud to do so, yes, even the dude mowing the grass - this is not cheap to maintain. There are people there whose skills can't be translated to building electric cars - which are really just oversized RC cars. There are people there who are experts in engines - and those will be laid off. In fact, everybody working on engines at Ferrari would be laid off. And those are a lot of people.

The ICE is something that deserves to go on in something special like a Ferrari. This whole electric cars debacle makes me wish the planet would be blown up by aliens sooner before we all roll around in crappy BMW i3 lookalikes because there's nothing else available and there is no choice albeit industry is polluting several degrees of magnitude more than just ICE cars[1]. And certainly so in the case of a small italian sports cars manufacturer that yields true works of art, poetry on wheels.

By comparison, VW is a tech giant who can afford to mass produce their stuff and will not suffer nor will they have to lay off a significant percentage of their staff.

Video reference [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc

I know this is not reddit and I will gladly accept downvotes, but you nailed it!

That's what I was trying to talk about.

There are things that deserve to be preserved, like we do with our artistic heritage, Ferrari's ICEs are one of them.

I think this is the fundamental disagreement.

Preserving the ICE is like preserving the cigarette. The cigarette's place in classic culture, in classic movies and nightlife, is profound.

Doesn't make me sympathetic one little bit. Petrol engines, cigarettes, it's fundamentally unhealthy, get rid of it.

If Ferrari is unwilling to convert to electric automobiles, then Ferrari can go the way of Marlborough.

> Preserving the ICE is like preserving the cigarette

That's a silly comparison IMO

Ferrari engines are not dangerous for anybody

Anyway, human life is unhealthy for the rest of the World, would you get rid of that too?

Ask mega fauna if you disagree.

> then Ferrari can go the way of Marlborough.

So much nonsensical bitterness...

You know that every car is made of toxic products and they can't stop using them, in your opinion is it more unhealthy 2 thousands Ferrari every year or millions of Volkswagen, their tires and motor/brake oil (which are highly toxic)

Should we get rid of VolksWagen too?

Dogmas are stupid.

Considering that Italy will be hit hard by climate change, I find this a weird opinion to hold for an Italian. Last thing I heard there's no garbage pickup in the capital city in Rome, so these Ferrari companies must somehow forgot to pay their taxes a lot or?

We cannot solve every problem right away.

But constantly improving, in many small ways, and chipping away at issues is how we make the world a better place.

Certainly I think phasing out ICEs, especially on public roads, is essential.

The Ferrari business model of producing highly polluting sports cars, when there are far more efficient electric models that can run on wind power, is not a positive direction to be traveling in.

> Roma football club is owned by an American billionaire, as is Fiorentina

True, but Ferruccio Lamborghini sold the company in 1972 (100% of the shares) and it's since 1998 a VolksWagen's company through Audi.

Lamborghini hasn't been an Italian company for the past 50 years even though the brand is considered Italian.

I highly doubt that all parts of a Ferrari are produced in Italy. As far as I can tell they e.g. use plenty of electronics components sourced from Bosch.

Automotive EE here, more than 1/2 the electronics in a Ferrari are available in the Fiat base line. The 500 specially typically shares the same body, radio frequency hub, and engine controller is the same in the McClaren 570 (unrelated but personally interesting), and almost certainly somewhere in the Ferrari line, it’s a common part, software is different obviously. It goes on from there, window motors, steering angle sensor, airbag hardware, the electronic pedal is from the bla bla bla.

Last I saw one of the Ferrari “Touring” models was hotter, nicer Maserati Levante for like $300,000 more.

Basically the only things unique to supercars, past the body and chassis are the bad parts. The parts the drain the battery constantly and require you to store it with a trickle charger attached. Or have a rep fly out to unlock the battery panel because it refuses to open when completely dead (personal experience with a LaFerrari).

Supercars, are not cars. If you have any experience with them you know what this means. The engineering that goes into a RAV4 is a lot more in hours and dollars.

So this topic is a bit silly to me, they’re extremely niche machines. I wouldn’t classify them as transportation even if they fit all the checkboxes.

What's the opposite of this experience I guess.

The Toyota as you've cited, or a similar Hyundai?

Where the sheer volume and implicit agreement with the customer is predicated on the fact every single part is engineered for reliability, and the automobile wins the "total cost of ownership over 10 years" prize in Choice magazine for its segment?

Yea. I mean, GM has a group of maybe 20 people that do nothing but fog lights on trucks. If you took 20 engineers away from McClaren, I think the company would shut down.

I’m pessimistic about the industry from the moment that OTA updates were possible. Everything has gotten worse with that. “We’ll fix it before Dealers get them!” (No, you won’t). But for the most part, car engineering is a really unique thing. Tons of time, tons of money, because there are tons of them. How many people have private jets? How many people have boats? Trains? Etc. but everyone has a car, and they basically all have to work all the time in any condition with a flat out assumption you aren’t going to take care of it.

I think it’s really funny that if I walk into a building with supercars, and I mean Bugatti, Koenigsegg, the rare Porches, the million dollar plus crew, that they ALL have to sit with trickle chargers on them. Because otherwise they would ALL run their batteries dead in two weeks or less.

The LaFerarri issue I mentioned was the batteries were all dead, the ebrake was on. So it couldn’t be loaded on a trailer. The access to the ebrake release is behind a door you can’t get to without power. No one designed this as a car for humans. To this day the only person I’ve seen actually drive one like a car was a guy in Taiwan that was definitely some gang or cartel executive. Nice guy though. He didn’t care it isn’t a real car.

I think it’s funny because people who dream of these things, have no idea what a pain in the ass they are to even get in and out of.

Porsche makes some higher end ones that still feel like cars, and the Ferrari touring aren’t bad, big though. IDK. I’m probably just jaded on vehicles.

Is one of the points you are trying to make is that we don't have a proper level of engineering until something is mass produced to the same quality level? Maybe mass produced is the wrong word, but something that satisfies more of the common design constraints or functional requirements.

I do think that there is a sloppyness that develops in thinking when using a medium that allows for free infinite continuous modification. Having a design be final has a certain foundational quality to it.

> As far as I can tell they e.g. use plenty of electronics components sourced from Bosch.

Well, it's not literal, there are things they have to build using components made by others.

But AFAIK electronic components in Ferrari are made by Magneti Marelli (I briefly worked for them, not in car manufacturing though).

Marelli makes some electronics for Ferrari, but Bosch makes a lot as well. For example, Ferrari has used Bosch fuel injection systems and ECUs since the 80s.

It also seems unlikely that all the wires and tubing are made in Italy.

That's probably true, but that doesn't help the narrative and so people lobbying for an exception to the rule will ignore that point.

Frankly, even though I'm Italian, I think that there should be no exception.

If that production chain didn't bother with an electric conversion until now it's really their fault.

Then again the current electric vehicles frenzy isn't new, and it was pretty inevitable that it would come to this sooner or later.

I can understand their position of wanting to remain 100% local but they're a private company, it's on them to adapt to the world and not the other way around.

It seems obvious now but even 2-3 years ago I don’t think it was so obvious. Aside from Tesla, other auto manufacturers have just been dithering around.

Two years ago, I bought a Renault Zoe, which had been in production since 2012. Renault has been dead serious about electric for a very long time.

I strongly suspect that BMW et al have actually timed it perfectly.

Volume and demand for electric vehicles has not quite hit a tipping point, but just at the right time they've come out with the i3, which has really beaten Tesla in quite a few different aspects. Ditto the Ford Lightning or what have you.

IMO the car companies are actually not quite as naive as we've come to think. They robably have internal roadmaps ready for the next 10+ years of electric releases.

I expect they will ramp up to a "Tesla killer" at just the right time.

Volkswagen has a factory in Poland, Poznan. They produce parts that are shipped to Germany. The parts have embedded label "Made in Germany". I'm quite sure Ferrari doesn't literally produce all parts in Italy, but factories are supervised by Italians, up to Italian standards.

> According to Italian sources, minister Cingolani is worried that in Italy what we call "the motor valley" will have to close if forced to rebuilt itself in only 14 years

And this right here is why it would have been so important for the EU to announce an EU-wide EV ban 20 years ago and provide research incentives for electric and hydrogen. That would have given everyone ample time to change course, to retrain workers and avoid building investment ruins. But unfortunately, the German car lobby was extremely influential, up until Dieselgate when even the EU Parliament wasn't amenable to bribery any more. Now, climate change is forcing everyone's hand and everyone is off worse as a result of that inaction.

Knowing that so many things are being changed for good is amazing.

"climate change is forcing everyone's hand"

Everyone should see it this way. Like, there's no leeway, just do whatever it takes to tame climate change.

> And this right here is why it would have been so important for the EU to announce an EU-wide EV ban 20 years ago and provide research incentives for electric and hydrogen

This!

Why can't they simply build a battery factory in Italy? It's the 21st century thing to do.

short answer: they can.

But

- in Italy workers protection laws are very strong and it is an even stronger political topic, there are entire regions depending on the production chain of luxury Italian brands. Reconversion is not as easy as it looks.

- it is like asking why US can't build an free and public health care system that works for everybody, it should be simple for the richest country in the World. And yet people like Daniel Desnoyers who missed a payment of $20 to the insurance company and had his prescription for depression meds denied, end up committing suicide.

> - in Italy workers protection laws are very strong and it is an even stronger political topic, there are entire regions depending on the production chain of luxury Italian brands. Reconversion is not as easy as it looks.

The main problem is not workers protection, which are quite stronger in Germany, but historical lack of innovation. The government gifted billions to the Italian automotive industry just to keep factories open, not to innovate or produce good cars. The result is an automotive sector that requires special exemptions otherwise it is at risk of dying.

The expertise required to build a factory of high quality batteries probably doesn’t even exist in Italy and attracting engineers from abroad is extremely hard if the entry level salary of a German engineer is higher than the total compensation or an Italian engineer with 10 years of experience.

> The main problem is not workers protection, which are quite stronger in Germany, but historical lack of innovation

As I've said, job retention is an even stronger political topic.

nobody here wants to lose consent over cutting jobs.

Lack of innovation is just the consequence of a very conservative work force.

> and attracting engineers from abroad is extremely hard if the entry level salary

That, exactly.

It's not going to happen soon, even though it is technically feasible, it is hard to put the wheels in motion.

Paraphrasing Charles M. Schulz: I love living in Italy and Italian life style, it's public opinion I can't stand.

I am lucky enough to not have to deal with that daily.

> As I've said, job retention is an even stronger political topic. > nobody here wants to lose consent over cutting jobs.

I think there are a lot of misconceptions on workers protection in Italy. While older workers are protected, if they work in companies with more than 15 employees, this is not generally true anymore.

> Lack of innovation is just the consequence of a very conservative work force.

A huge number of people are hired with temporary contracts that are renewed yearly or even more often. Others are hired through body rental agencies, many others are effectively employed "at-will". Unpaid overtime is the norm. To be clear: this is true for engineers as well as for cleaners. These people can't be expected to produce any innovation.

In the meanwhile, in political debates we pretend that Italian companies do not innovate and can't pay Western European salaries because they can't fire people.

> In the meanwhile, in political debates we pretend that Italian companies do not innovate and can't pay Western European salaries because they can't fire people.

Thanks for the comment.

I agree with you completely, worker protection doesn't hurdle innovation.

The trend towards less protections has been going on since the 90s when I entered the active workforce in Italy and personally I've rarely worked under the full protection of the law until recently.

As a freelancer in the tech sector I always had above average salaries, I can't complain, my gripe is the majority of the work force consider a job something that the state must provide indefinitely, even when the financial returns are not there see Alitalia and FIAT as an example.

The solution is not IMO less guarantees for the workers, but incentives for continuing education and subsidies to sustain people that lose their job to help them be back on track.

We have a bit of both, but not enough and not fairly distributed, while guaranteed workers refuse to learn new things because "it's not written in the contract" and there's almost nothing the employer can do to make them.

So we are basically incentivizing people to get a job and never have to grow with the job or hire people in the public as a way to keep unoccupied people as low as possible as a form of subsidy in disguise.

The rest is on its own, especially the younger generations.

But there are many innovative companies in Italy, for example in aerospace or structural engineering (bridges, dams, etc. )

"short answer: they can" it seems to me is not the right answer.

Competitors are doing it, the market trends seem to go towards this direction and the laws are being shaped to force it. And this has been for years now.

I have heard several times that Ferrari was behind with the electric conversion and that was probably a mistake. Not sure if they were waiting for this exception or simply they could or they did not know how to make it.

> I have heard several times that Ferrari was behind with the electric conversion

They are not technically behind, it is a political choice, the mother company (FCA) decided not to pursue that road for the time being (around 2016).

Specifically the CEO Sergio Marchionne who also was CEO of Ferrari S.p.a.

That was probably a wrong bet on his side, but knowing the guy and his talent in business, he would have probably fixed the situation if he had not died suddenly in 2018. Those who took his place are not as good as he was (I'm only referring to the skills as businessmen of course)

Agree, but I did not mean technically. If Rimac has been able to create electric super cars I guess they should be perfectly able to do it, it was mostly that they are behind because of the company decisions.

It's more expensive than buying it from someone.

At the price of a Ferrari ? It's not like they can't rise prices!

They can do a lot of different things, but companies generally try to maximize profits.

But they'd have a place they could send all their now useless employees to.

> What the minister is saying is that if Ferrari can't build autonomously their own batteries - from scratch - they can't produce a real Ferrari.

"SK Innovation to Supply Batteries for Ferrari Electric Vehicles"

http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=3...

So the SF90 Stradale is not a real Ferrari?

Yes, I'm aware of the SF90 strdale.

But the SF90 stradale is a plugin hybrid, made for the 90th anniversary of the scuderia.

They simply had no other choice.

Don't take everything literally, you can have a Franciacorta or a Parmigiano that is produced with raw materials that sometimes are not exactly from the Franciacorta or Parma-Reggio area, but that's the exception, not the rule.

> They simply had no other choice

Why give them a choice now? They will still be able to stay in business and make great cars. They will be called Ferrari by them and the rest of the world. Some whining over them no longer being "real" Ferrari or Italian can be and has been ignored.

Job loss over no longer being competitive with current / coming tech is a real problem. But I feel politics should not step in to protect obsolete tech, rather they should help stear away from it and support innovation.

I think I owe an explanation.

Ferrari making all of the parts of the car they can is not about nationalistic pride, it's about control.

They make a luxury product and want to control everything about it.

Ferrari's pride has always been engines and an electric engine is made by motor+batteries.

Of course compromises are made, of course they don't manufactur absolutely everything, but Ferrari batteries are a plus for premium customers, just like Tesla batteries are what people buying Teslas want in their cars

People owning Ferrari also own the leather bag set specifically made to fit that model.

An example

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174824008379

of course made in Italy, Schedoni is based in Modena, where Maranello is.

It's part of the experience.

Apple is considered the Ferrari of computing because the majority of their customers only own Apple devices and accessories and wouldn't want anything else, especially if they are cheap off the shelf alternatives.

They live the Apple experience in full.

And Apple can offer it because of vertical integration, they are making their own CPUs for the same reason.

How long did it take to Apple to make it happen?

If Ferrari starts assembling core components from multiple retailers, it's not a unique custom made piece of ego anymore (and a show off of incredible crafting abilities if you ask me, a piece of art some would say), it's "just a fast car"

I hope I've explained myself better.

Anyway, I also think that the argument is somewhat silly from Italian politicians, but I can understand why they are pushing for it.

Nothing says made in Italy more than a Ferrari.

It's the most popular Italian brand in the whole World.

> not about nationalistic pride, it's about control

and yet even this explanation contains loaded phrasing suggesting excactly that

> Ferrari's pride has always been engines > Nothing says made in Italy more than a Ferrari

There is some value in the quality argument, but surely they can check incoming parts? Hand check everything, do the luxury quality thing etc.

I think the argument is not that they cannot get their hands on batteries up to their performance standard, rather it is they cannot make "unique, hand-crafted batteries lovingly labored over by the best people in the industry doing nothing but supplying Ferrari and looking back at X years of tradition". And honestly, it just sounds like pride to me (not that pride is always a bad thing).

> They live the Apple experience in full.

And the Apple experience worked just fine during the Intel MacBook phase.

Ferrari could do the same and try to come back with their M1 equivalent for electric driving later.

> There is some value in the quality argument, but surely they can check incoming parts? Hand check everything, do the luxury quality thing etc.

Absolutely!

But branded parts are more valuable for customers (I mean that type of customers).

Especially if it's the core of the product and unlike Apple that sells billions of devices, Ferraris are produced in the thousands and there's a waiting list to buy one.

> And the Apple experience worked just fine during the Intel MacBook phase.

That was the compromise they made to transition to a fully owned pipeline.

But as a soon as they were ready to do the switch, they did it.

Exactly what Ferrari has done with the SF90 stradale.

> "unique, hand-crafted batteries lovingly labored over by the best people in the industry doing nothing but supplying Ferrari and looking back at X years of tradition". And honestly, it just sounds like pride to me (not that pride is always a bad thing).

You are absolutely right.

Pride is not a bad thing and that's their main selling point.

The two things are are not mutually exclusive.

I specifically said they are not doing it because they believe Italy is the best place in the World, but because by controlling their core components, they can kepp the "Ferrari pride" (TM by me) alive and consequentially the made in Italy brand something to pay premium prices for.

The fact that I, as an Italian and a Ferrari fan think that Ferrari is something to be proud of, is tangential.

They are most of all Emiliano Romagnoli, that has more in common with Switzerland and Germany than Italy economically wise, but has the heart of Italian people (and great food).

That's what you are buying when you buy a Ferrari, together with the car.

The whole battery thing is BS because this isn't an electric car mandate. They can still make hydrogen fuel cells.

What drives the wheels on a fuel cell vehicle?

Ferrari doesn't have a problem with electric motors. It's the batteries that concern them.

Electric motors

to add to this, Ferrari in particular wants their cars to be "for rich people only" or so the local race track claimed that they can only buy used Ferraris because Ferrari won't sell them cars as that would let non rich people drive them. Lamborghini on the other hand they could get new.

It took Germany about 10 years to rebuild it's auto industry after WW2- much to the frustration of its neighbours.

Only a select few nations were rebuilt after WW2. Not everyone was lucky and I don't think everyone got the same amount

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

10 years plus all that post-war american aid

I hate to be that guy, but the Marshall Plan only lasted 4 years and primarily benefited the UK, France and Germany (in that order) among other European nations. Its effect was estimated to be an increase in GDP growth of less than 0.5%. The US contributed the equivalent of $200 billion over the course of those four years.

Note that they didn't simply dump money in Europe, the amount refers to goods and services (including shipping those goods to Europe and shipping exports back to the US). The US effectively provided European governments with goods that those governments could then sell to local companies. In Germany this was done under the presumption that the revenue would later have to be repaid to the US, though the share to be repaid was later drastically cut by the US.

The biggest reason Germany benefited more from the Marshall plan than other European countries is that they expected having to repay it fully and thus were able to pay off the loans that were part of the Marshall Plan decades before other countries. But even so the overall effect has been overstated in the past and is not considered to be crucial to the economic development of Germany or Europe in general after WW2.

Most of the "aid" after the Marshall Plan ended (because the US got involved in the Korean War and thus not interested in extending the program) went towards building European militaries and suppressing communism.

While I think it's an exaggeration, there's some truth to modern critics of the plan saying that it mostly served for the US to get rid of excess production (as the US government paid its local companies in US dollars the treasury generated as part of the Plan) and stabilizing its currency (because the goods were then bought by European companies in their local currency from their own governments rather than in US dollars from the US companies directly) while also combatting the potential for a rise of communism and unifying Western Europe as an ally to the US in the Cold War.

Is there a reason Mercedes don't qualify in youæ¹¹1r book? (regarding manufacture of chassis and engine in F1)