Comment by relativ575 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by relativ575 | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

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?

> 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.

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