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Speed Depth Attitude
Introduction |
2021/12/17
For the government's sudden passage of the fuel car ban bill, Italy's supercar manufacturers need to step up their efforts.
Author 丨 Deng Yongtuo
Responsible editor 丨 Cui Liwen
Editor 丨Zhu Jinbin
The EU's proposal to speed up the timetable for banning the sale of fuel vehicles has ushered in another key vote.
Recently, the Italian government officially announced that it will completely stop the sale of fuel vehicles in 2035. The move follows the same route as major European countries and means that Italy has officially adopted the previous EU initiative.
In July, the European Commission set a deadline for banning the sale of fuel vehicles after 2035, a significant advance from the previous 2050 plan. In view of protecting the interests of domestic supercar manufacturers such as Ferrari and Lamborghini, Italy did not sign this agreement at the time, and defended the extension of the EU's proposal to stop selling fuel vehicles, hoping to extend the implementation for a few more years.
Italy's ecology transition minister, Roberto Cingolani, declared at the time that while Rome supported Europe's commitment to reduce emissions by phasing out the most polluting engines, the supercar industry is a niche market and is currently discussing with the European Commission how the new rules will apply to high-end automakers with far lower sales than mainstream producers.
Cingolani also believes that supercars will take time and technology to transition to electric vehicles, and the country is not ready to produce batteries. "An important step is that Italy has gained autonomy in producing high-performance batteries."
Recently, however, in an official government statement, Italy announced that it would phase out internal combustion engine vehicles from 2035 onwards, which was officially announced by the government after a meeting of the Committee of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, which was attended by the relevant parliamentarians of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility, and the Ministry of Economic Development.
As for the EU's 2035 fuel vehicle ban, as long as all member states vote for this proposal in the near future, there will be enough time for countries and manufacturers to adapt to this radical change.
It's a whole new opportunity
The decision will have a significant impact on Italian automakers. For Ferrari and Lamborghini, two of the world's leading Italian supercar brands, although they are also stepping up the electrification transformation, it is not an easy task to achieve 100% electrification in the short term.
Since independence from Fiat Group, Ferrari's market value, which has risen all the way to profitability, has now exceeded $60 billion, and its annual sales have finally broken the 10,000 mark in 2019. However, the figure of 10,000 vehicles does not seem to be enough to support an electric dream, in fact, Ferrari's pure electric model still looks confusing.
In addition to the first hybrid supercar Laferrari launched in 2013, Ferrari has used to support the environmental theme over the past decade, the newly launched SF90 Stradale (781Ps V8 engine plus 220Ps electric motor) and the 296 GTB (663Ps V6 engine plus 166Ps electric motor) just released this year. But no matter how you look at the emergence of electric motors, they are pursuing extreme power rather than compromising on emissions.
Until 2020, Ferrari's chief marketing officer Enrico Galliera said in an interview with Autocar that ferrari could not launch a pure electric model before 2025: "A pure electric model must be in line with the historical value of the brand, which is not possible at present". Galliera believes that the technological maturity of power batteries will not be enough to cover the quality requirements of supercars in the next five years.
Entering 2021, I don't know if it is because of the changes in the environment in advance, Ferrari suddenly changed its tone, announced plans to launch the first pure electric vehicle in 2025, and invited a new CEO Benedetto Vigna from a well-known STmicroelectronics company, and the resume and experience of this new CEO are very beneficial to Ferrari's transformation, and Ferrari hopes to achieve this goal under its leadership.
Ferrari's four-motor patent was exposed earlier, and the new CEO has said that the first pure electric model in the future will still be a supercar, with more than 1,000 horsepower. Until then, Ferrari may have a long way to go for electrification.
It is also a challenge
The Lamborghini, which hovered around 8,700 units a year, was cautious about expressing its electrification strategy until May this year. The brand's CEO Stephan Winkelmann told the Deutsche Zeitung as early as March: "Electric cars (roars) will not sound like internal combustion cars, and we will only reach out to the Volkswagen Group if they are in line with our brand".
And even Dies, the helmsman of the Volkswagen Group, played Tai Chi on the Lamborghini issue. Diess' plan for Lamborghini is "moderately hybrid" because "customers have not asked [Lamborghini] about [electrification options]".
However, just two months later, Winkelmann quickly changed his tune, saying that "by the end of 2024, we will hybridize all existing models". The target is to reduce the average carbon emissions of the Lamborghini brand in 2025 to half the 2020 level, and to launch Lamborghini's first four-seat all-electric sports car between 2025 and 2030. To this end, Lamborghini will come up with at least 1.5 billion euros, equivalent to a full year's revenue, while the rest of the synergies will still depend on the parent company Audi.
While Lamborghini will not abandon the V12 naturally aspirated engine it has been sticking to for years in the short term, new cars in the future will use a hybrid system with an internal combustion engine and an electric motor, and will also use the same supercapacitor technology as the Sián FKP 37. However, full electrification is still called by Winkelmann as one of the biggest risk-taking acts in Lamborghini's history, so it emphasizes that we still have to maintain lamborghini's characteristics in the process of achieving a pure electric transition.
The future will take time to test
According to the "Transition to Zero-Emission Vehicles" plan submitted by the European Union, the European Commission plans to reduce emissions from new cars and trucks by 65% from 2030 and 100% from 2035. While restricting fuel vehicles, the EU also requires member states to strengthen the infrastructure construction of new energy vehicles, including requiring member states to ensure that there is an electric vehicle charging station every 60 kilometers on major roads, and the maximum distance between hydrogen refueling stations cannot exceed 150 kilometers.
The EU, for its part, also said it would increase its share of renewable energy generation to 40 percent by 2030, while strengthening and expanding the carbon market and revising energy tax rules to promote a reduction in fossil fuel use.
Of course, there is still a long way to go before 2035, and as time goes on, a new generation of customer groups will emerge and new electric technologies will be born. In the future, with the continuous tightening of policies and regulations on the internal combustion engine, it is still unknown what kind of new technologies Ferrari and Lamborghini, which are old Italian supercar manufacturers, will develop into.
Of course, in addition to the two famous manufacturers mentioned above, maserati and the world's top supercar brand Pagani, in addition to the Apennines, where they will go under the trend of electrification in the future, I am afraid it will take time to test.
| Deng Yongtuo |
Not a big problem, there is no fear of cars.