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Comment by bix6 | Hacker News Reader

Specs are insane but why does it look like a budget sedan with a cool paint job?

This sounds kind of fun. It’s curious they weren’t allowed to drive though..

> But I can say that the Torque Shift Engagement system — which gives the driver five power levels on the right paddle and five engine-braking levels on the left — is one of the most intriguing ideas I’ve seen in an electric car. It doesn’t simulate gear changes. It creates an entirely new torque language controlled by the driver, introducing an active decision-making element to trajectory management that sounds like it could restore the kind of driver engagement that many enthusiasts fear EVs have lost.

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> It creates an entirely new torque language controlled by the driver

Oh wow, sounds like some corporation BS if I ever read some. My EV works by pressing the gas pedal and the torque is right there - not sure what revolutionary new invention is required?

Driving manual/stick is considered "manly" and a lot of sports car enthusiasts would never drive an automatic. So I presume this multilevel "torque language" bullshit is basically a way to retrofit stick shift into an EV that has no mechanical need for it.

Yes, this must be it. There's no experience like driving a manual with a two-plus ton vehicle.

Agreed, I'm driving a ~2000kg truck atm with a stick shift from the 90s and a V8 in a hilly city and it's so much more fun than the arbitrary compact cars I've been borrowing for years. Super mega scary on gas, but fun nonetheless as on occasional leisure thing.

If you enjoy that, get a Deuce and a Half - not much worse on gas (lol) but the shift pattern is something else entirely.

I've never heard of this, but it looks incredible. I've seen some similar looking beasts around that seem to be modified for apocalypse survival and would love to try and drive it, as long as I don't have to reverse it up a slope lol

I will say, Teslas usually have too much torque because I feel very nauseous in them as a passenger. Having more fine grained control over the torque profile might be nice

Sure, but this isn't a Tesla...

If you're going to drive this slowly you might as well buy a Tesla

Tesla model S accelerates faster and has a higher top speed, and also more range on a smaller battery....

For a absolutely tiny fraction of the price!

It also looks better than this Nissan leaf knock-off!

I'm not the target market, this thing costs more than my house! But I do think the specs are... Disappointing...

Tesla Model S is discontinued.

Whatever its merits, there wasn’t a market for it.

Which suggests that a similar but worse product shouldn't sell either?

The brand name counts for a lot in this market.

Lamborghini Urus sells well even though it’s inferior on every metric to cars a fraction of its price.

Tesla lost its premium brand cachet and consequently the Model S/X market.

Ferrari presumably has some data that there are buyers for a $500k scifi sports car with their logo on it.

Just pointing out that, technically, if you're gonna drive slow, the Ferrari is the appropriate choice over the Tesla.

> If you're going to drive this slowly you might as well buy a Tesla

Model S Plaid has faster acceleration than Luce and they have similar top speed.

Reportedly, the Luce has more nimble handling.

The casio watch is more accurate than a mechanical watch, it doesn't mean I should like it more

> Model S Plaid has faster acceleration than Luce and they have similar top speed.

People don’t get sports cars just for the acceleration.

Good thing neither are sports cars.

The Luxe doesn’t look sporty at all, even if it has excellent handling.

The reason you feel nauseous as a passenger has nothing to do with the maximum torque output of the vehicle, but because one-pedal driving mode amplifies bad driving habits by people who never learned how to use the accelerator pedal on a car properly.

Way too many people stomp, release, and repeat. This works in Mario Kart when the A-button input is a boolean value but in a Tesla with one-pedal driving turned on you end up repeatedly accelerating or decelerating and never go a constant speed.

The look is nothing less than I would expect from "make it thinner and round the corners" pioneer Jony Ive.

I don't know why people insist on EVs being kind of ugly and boxy, but Ferrari had a chance to do better and didn't.

I think energy efficiency matters more with EVs, because it determines how frequently you have to charge on road trips, and more aerodynamic designs look a bit uglier.

It's a $650,000 car. These are not anyone's top priorities with it.

> energy efficiency matters more with EVs

This is correct, but I really don't see why Ferrari would care.

Exactly! Many Ferraris of the past have gotten single digit MPG, no one cares. All of a sudden they have to make a Chinese looking EV because of "efficiency"? Give me a break.

Aero efficiency means going faster and going for longer without making the battery heavier. The cost and packaging aspects of bigger batteries doesn’t matter to Ferrari, but speed & handling absolutely does, and weight is a definite speed/handling penalty.

Ferrari makes hypercars, they know a thing or two about making aerodynamics look good. It's a primary concern of all their designs and yet all their other designs look a lot better than this.

I think they are just falling into the same trap all other manufacturers do at first. They think the customer buying the EV is a different customer, who didn't like their other cars. So they make the techno-future mobile for a customer that doesn't exist.

Just make the same cars with an EV drivetrain, that's what the person who loves your brand but is in the market for an EV wants.

Legacy car manufacturers have done just that (forcing an EV into an ICE chassis). The results generally suck and the pure EV manufacturers like Tesla and BYD have kicked their ass in the market.

You can use a similar design to your existing fleet without a literal retrofit of an existing chassis to shoehorn a battery and electric drive train in there.

The retrofits usually are less preferable not only because of pointless inconveniences like transmission tunnels, but because they'll be the manufacturer's first toe dipped into the EV waters. The retrofit chassis speaks to either a rush to market, or a cautious approach not wanting to commit too many resources. The former says it'll have issues, the latter says they might bail on it and leave you stranded for service and repairs. Or both at once.

That was kinda different thing. It was legacy manufacturers scrambling to push out any EV they could get together so they are not left behind too much. But in meantime they started working on genuinely new designs (like Hyundai Ioniq, Mercedes EQS, BMW Neueu Klasse) or they adjusted their platforms to better accommodate electric drive trains (like Audi e-tron).

It’s a sports car, they all have atrocious fuel efficiency, especially in this price range.

Just 280+ mile EPA range on a 122 kwH battery. 5100 pounds. 2.5s to 60. Not insane by any standard, ICE or EV.

Yeah that's actually rather inefficient. Tesla Model Y has 84kWh battery and a range of 300 miles.

Does it really?

No, but we're comparing the EPA ranges here, which is the point of them.

The point of the EPA ranges are to be misleading.

The car manufacturers are well aware of what their vehicles achieve in real world usage.

It would be trivial for them to give and prospective buyer indicative ranges for any particular geographical area.

You're missing the point.

The actual number of the EPA range is imaginary, yes. But it's useful for comparisons.

But if we're talking about comparisons between two vehicles, the vehicle with a 122kWh battery and a 280 EPA range will go less far and is much less efficient than the vehicle with a 84kWh batter and a 300 EPA range.

Not really, no, except in narrow circumstances.

I've done Stockholm - Oslo on a single charge in early winter, which is almost exactly that distance, so I'd say it does! Even kept me nice and toasty along the way!

> Yeah that's actually rather inefficient

Unsurprising, for a Ferrari. I suspect it's designed for performance and not efficiency. Atrocious mileage is par for the course in this segment (see the Veyron)

A lot of Ferraris are driven less than 280 miles per year.

They’ve historically had eye watering regular maintenance bills, even outside of them generally having a reputation for being temperamental. Maybe Ferrari will continue pioneering in their own way and make an unreliable and expensive to own EV

Chasing "driver engagement" during regular driving at/below speed limit on regular public roads strikes me as a bit pointless. You're just trying to add friction to the process because there happened to be friction in the past.

And when you're not going the speed limit on regular public roads here's plenty of "driver engagement" to be had going too fast round tight corners (hopefully on a track, but we can't all be perfect ;)) regardless of whether there's some weird obfuscation between you and the actual mostly flat torque curve of the electric engine as long you build good suspension, body stiffness, put decent tires on it, don't make it too heavy etc.

I would love Lotus to make another road legal go-kart and slap an electric engine in it.

an eletric lotus would be a blast, but having a big heavy battery seems antithetical to their entire car building philosophy

Isn’t that what the Tesla Roadster was?

So a Tesla Roadster? :)

I don’t understand the EU’s love for the stick shift. Auto transmissions have been better for a long time and with EVs you don’t need that abomination at all. Imagine needing to push a lever every few seconds while driving.

Weird that you don't understand it. Have you read any of the replies in the multitudes of times you've invariably seen this discussion come up online?

They only really became better (more efficient) when they ditch torque converters and use some form of direct shift automatic gearbox or CRV instead which adds complexity. Small and cheap cars are far more popular in Europe and both of the above add cost and complexity.

I've driven manual cars daily for years and once you get used to it, changing gears is not even something you think about.

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