Ferrari wants to make a Tesla-beating electric supercar

Ferrari will make a battery-powered supercar to challenge Tesla at the high end of the electric-auto market, stealing sales and attention from the Tesla Roadster and Model S which defined the luxury electric-car market years ahead of rivals.

“If there is an electric supercar to be built, then Ferrari will be the first,”  Ferrari CEO Sergio Marchionne told journalists at this week's Detroit auto show.

“People are amazed at what Tesla did with a supercar: I’m not trying to minimize what Elon (Musk) did but I think it’s doable by all of us."

After being skeptical for years about the speed of introducing alternative engines and new technologies, Marchionne now believes that the time is right for a shift in the industry. Marchionne reckons, for example, that by 2025 fewer than half the cars sold will be be fully combustion-powered, as gas and diesel give way to hybrid, electric and fuel cell drivetrains.

Marchionne predicted that carmakers will have less than a decade to reinvent themselves to survive in the world of new technologies. Premium brands will manage to hold onto their cachet, while makers of run-of-the-mill people transporters will confront disruptors including Tesla or the Waymo robo-vehicle division of Google parent Alphabet.

“We do it because we have to do it,” Marchionne said. While there is work to be done, the new plan for Ferrari being released in the first half will include hybrid cars, he said, “so going from there to an electric is easy.”

Businessweek