Everything we know about Ferrari’s first electric vehicle
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I'm betting the hp/weight ratio is better than my Niro EV's 100ish hp/ton.
Oh well, couldn't afford Ferrari anyway.
But I can dream.
Oh well, couldn't afford Ferrari anyway.
But I can dream.
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It's really annoying that someone is doing what all EV makers should be doing - designing for battery replacement and long life - and it has to be Ferrari and one suspects most of them will do low mileages.
It looks as if on this one the other upmarket makers have missed the boat.
But what a piece of electromechanical engineering!
It looks as if on this one the other upmarket makers have missed the boat.
As another one with a mere 100BHP/tonne, my one consolation is that in London traffic the Ferrari driver is going to be going at precisely the same 20mph that I do, but with far more worry about being hit by a Lime bicycle or a delivery van.
But what a piece of electromechanical engineering!
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I want to see how they package each motor/inverter unit on each wheel. This is the kind of crazy bespoke engineering that I'm glad we have millionaires for.
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Old adage:
Better to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow.
And I'm quite happy at 100hp/ton. I win twice.
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I mean, that’s precisely what they’re doing with the pickups. And they are playing it inside the car for the person who’s paying for the sound, rather than broadcasting it to people outside the car who didn’t ask.
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They are also talking about very long lasting batteries. Pushing the envelope on charging rates is probably the enemy of that.
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I know. My objection is that it's stupid. EVs are great because they aren't fossils, they are more powerful, faster, and don't make a strained grinding noise while doing it.
Look at what Hyundai and BYD have done. You have great connection to the road and the driving experience, without the video game noises.
The only thing missing now is someone creating an EV drivetrain that makes an interesting noise. Some of them don't sound bad, but none of them have the aggressive sound that Ferrari owners seem to want. A nicer pedestrian warning sound would be good too. Again there are some decent ones, but it would be nice to have a unique Ferrari one.
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Indeed, some of the Chinese models in Europe are sustaining over 400kW for part of the charge cycle. BYD have released cars capable of hitting 1000kW too, but only in China so far.
I wonder whose batteries Ferrari are using. Does anyone outside of China make battery packs that are capable of charging that fast? The comments about them being longer lasting suggests that they are the newer CATL chemistry, or one of the other Chinese suppliers.
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It may be common in EV cars, but I'm amazed by the fact that each wheel has its own independent motor (besides other physical parameters mentioned by other people)
Any design issue with the control unit design and guardrails, and you destroy the tires or even worse. I'm sure these "small" things are easier said than done.
Any design issue with the control unit design and guardrails, and you destroy the tires or even worse. I'm sure these "small" things are easier said than done.
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Thats easy.
Treat your customers like crap and make them beg for a chance to give ferrari money so they can get this car.
Then ban them if they dare doing any modifications to their already purchased cars.
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Most EVs can have battery replacements. The packs are designed to be unbolted from the bottom and swapped out. The difficulties are a} training b} pack availability, and c} demand.
At the moment, there's no enough call for pack replacements for them to be done regularly. So a relatively small number of mechanics in a brand know how to do them. And the packs aren't sitting in warehouses... they're almost always ordered from the manufacturing supply chain and take a while to arrive.
It's not the car that's the problem. It's the demand currently being low. If you've got a car that's under warranty, you'll get the pack replaced. But it might take three months.
What Ferrari is doing different is planning for battery architecture replacement. Meaning swapping out to different types of batteries in future. Which is a good thing, but is way, way easier when you're making a tiny number of cars that are priced astronomically. For a mass-production vehicle that's just added cost that relatively few owners are ever going to call upon. It's a nice thing and I wish I could believe ten years from now I could upgrade my EV's battery system and get some fancy super-duper-speed charging and double the capacity. But... I wouldn't want to pay today for that.
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Batteries on an EV are actually easy to replace*. There just is no market for it (yet?).
My January 2015 i3 has 188kkm on the odometer and can still travel 100km in the summer on it's original 18kWh battery. This despite the relative high load such a small battery endures, despite the fact that it is always charged to 100% SoC, and despite it is often driven to almost empty (twice actually empty).
*I once saw a BMW iX3 lifted high up with the entire battery pack below it on a sledge for a defective cell replacement.
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I’ve had two battery replacements on two different cars. My 2012 Volt because they got fluid in the battery compartment when doing tangential warranty work and our 2022 Model X after a collision where the undercarriage was impacted. Both were unique, so I agree with the previous poster that it’s more about the rarity of doing it more than anything related to engineering.
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In most ways it's equivalent to exhaust systems on ICE cars which are tuned not for maximum efficiency, or quietness, but to make the car roar. I guess my question is have they chosen sounds to amplify which give the driver actionable information on how the car is responding, or are they just going for what sounds cool? Nothing wrong with the second, the car is meant to be fun after all, but the first would help you feel connected and be useful when driving hard.
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Very cool concept.
I suppose the alternative way to make noise would be to have a really crappy powertrain with loose parts and rough bearings.
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Tell me you didn't read the actual article!
Ferrari put some mics in places to pick up actual drive line noises.
I noticed that some electric car motors sound dreadful. Toyotas especially. For me at least, they have a spooky whining sound.
So I'm glad they are giving sound a consideration.
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That's actually a really cool idea. Using fake engine noise is so fucking cringe imo. Doesn't BMW do that? Pretty sure it's them and tbh it makes perfect sense considering their enthusiasts.
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Perfect timing, just as they are halving EV production targets: https://on.ft.com/42z3JL8
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Yup... BMW does it on their gas cars, too. Despite my best attempts, you cannot fully turn it off, either. You can only reduce it.
Yes, you can program/code it out, but there is no built-in option to disable it entirely.
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And because they make cars that are rarely driven more than a couple of thousand miles per year and rarely left out in the elements, they are cars which you expect to be still in a car enthusiast collection in 30-40-50+ years.
A typical commuter car racks up miles so quickly that most will by lucky to be a teenager's beater car in 20 years and few will live outside of a scrapyard in 30.
The former is far more likely for it to make even the slightest bit of sense to do a battery swap for new technology at some point.
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I am also super curious about the sound. Any links to similar pickup-driven EV audio?
Also, where do I buy the red lab uniform? That's damn cool design and I want one.
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BMW, Ford, Dodge, GM, Kia, Lexus.....
Basically I think at this point you need a list of who doesn't use fake engine noise. Even on ICE.
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Great article, thanks.
While I'm not interested in owning a 500hp+ car (or for that matter 130hp+ bike) I love car/bike tech & reviews and don't expect that to change during my lifetime.
A true "joy for ever" subject that started at a very early age - perhaps it's genetic ha ha.
While I'm not interested in owning a 500hp+ car (or for that matter 130hp+ bike) I love car/bike tech & reviews and don't expect that to change during my lifetime.
A true "joy for ever" subject that started at a very early age - perhaps it's genetic ha ha.
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In some fairness, Ferrari started this before it became clear that the market for EV supercars was minuscule and became saturated almost instantly.
But yeah. Nobody actually wants this, including Ferrari. Ferrari, as a brand, is low-volume enough, and its buyers so disproportionately likely to store their cars in climate-controlled dust-free vaults and drive them a few dozen miles a year, that I'm not sure even the climate really needed this.
But yeah. Nobody actually wants this, including Ferrari. Ferrari, as a brand, is low-volume enough, and its buyers so disproportionately likely to store their cars in climate-controlled dust-free vaults and drive them a few dozen miles a year, that I'm not sure even the climate really needed this.
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Any thoughts on NMC battery chemistry vs LFP? I know it has lower energy density (can't remember if that's by mass, volume, or both) but is also less expensive and more stable. So there are cost-benefit tradeoffs for sure.
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There are generally 2 types of Ferrari owners. One will have to replace their tires due to age with nary a scuff on them. The other will replace their tires in the single digit 1000s of miles due to extreme wear.
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Nearly every car manufacturer producing EVs does, because most drivers are used to ICE drivetrains and there is a level of feedback that sound provides that an EV drivetrain really can't. At its worst it's overly synthetic and annoying, at its best it's useful feedback and it's pleasant, even fun. The system in the Ioniq 5N is apparently one of the best of the bunch and I can't wait to try it out. As an EV driver who happens to be a car enthusiast, not having some kind of sound in the background is weird, like playing a racing game with the volume down.
Ferrari's system is not a great deal different than anybody else's in concept or execution. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's an accelerometer in the drive unit, okay, sure. It's still going to be a heavily synthetic, tuned, piped-in noise. Every such system is tied to speed and acceleration, and every such system provides a level of emulation of the ICE experience that EV purists cringe at. That's not a reason not to offer the option, particularly in a performance-oriented EV where some noise and drama is part of the fun.
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A few years ago a Porsche stopped along at a red light then blasted off in the most beautiful engine symphony I've heard to date. Subdued, yet powerful, a gutural rumble that didn't ear-abuse you Dodge style, just let you know it doesn't care.
Then it pulled ahead and i saw a "Taycan" inscription on the back.
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You could even code a BMW 3 series to sound (internally) like an M5 or X5M if you want.
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No, it is not “slow”, but not pushing the limits either. There are many 800v cars that don’t charge this fast, and even those are quite fast for EVs in general.
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I’ve noticed that I drive my extremely boring commuter car worse on extremely boring commutes when I’m having to have the fans on full to clear a steamed up windscreen: I think I absolutely instinctively do gear changes based on sound and if the sound feedback is hidden then I leave it in third too long and rev too high.
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