6 ms·

I've said it once 20 days ago, I'll say it again here I think everybody is getting it wrong. As Italian (and Ferrari fan, but that's another story) what reall

I've said it once 20 days ago, I'll say it again here I think everybody is getting it wrong. As Italian (and Ferrari fan, but that's another story) what really matters for Ferrari (and ~~Lamborghini~~ Maserati) is that they aren't mass produced, they are not an industrial product (most of them are assembled by hand) and - most of all - all of the parts are produced in Italy! 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. Of course this is different from buying batteries from a supplier and strapping them in a mass produced car, assembled by machines. It has nothing to do with rich people or taxes, it's just a matter of bootstrapping an entire industry from the ground up. Of course Ferrari knows how to build electric engines, it's completely out of touch to think that one of the leading car producer in the World in terms of know how can't do what BYD does (Ferrari is the only F1 team that still manufactures all of the components of their car from the engine to the chassis and everything else) Also what the Italian minister said has been wrongly translated. According to Italian sources, 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) then he also talks about the niche supercars market, not only of Italian brands like Ferrari and Maserati, but also Lamborghini and McLaren. EDIT: Lamborghini is not an Italian brand anymore and hasn't been since 1998 when Audi bought it. The title is misleading. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28419590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28419590

k__ 5y ago
Why can't they simply build a battery factory in Italy? It's the 21st century thing to do.
- RivieraKid 5y ago
  It's more expensive than buying it from someone.
  - ldng 5y ago
    At the price of a Ferrari ? It's not like they can't rise prices!
    - RivieraKid 5y ago
      They can do a lot of different things, but companies generally try to maximize profits.
  - k__ 5y ago
    But they'd have a place they could send all their now useless employees to.
- peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  short answer: they can. But - in Italy workers protection laws are very strong and it is an even stronger political topic, there are entire regions depending on the production chain of luxury Italian brands. Reconversion is not as easy as it looks. - it is like asking why US can't build an free and public health care system that works for everybody, it should be simple for the richest country in the World. And yet people like Daniel Desnoyers who missed a payment of $20 to the insurance company and had his prescription for depression meds denied, end up committing suicide.
  - melenaboija 5y ago
    "short answer: they can" it seems to me is not the right answer. Competitors are doing it, the market trends seem to go towards this direction and the laws are being shaped to force it. And this has been for years now. I have heard several times that Ferrari was behind with the electric conversion and that was probably a mistake. Not sure if they were waiting for this exception or simply they could or they did not know how to make it.
    - peoplefromibiza 5y ago
      > I have heard several times that Ferrari was behind with the electric conversion They are not technically behind, it is a political choice, the mother company (FCA) decided not to pursue that road for the time being (around 2016). Specifically the CEO Sergio Marchionne who also was CEO of Ferrari S.p.a. That was probably a wrong bet on his side, but knowing the guy and his talent in business, he would have probably fixed the situation if he had not died suddenly in 2018. Those who took his place are not as good as he was (I'm only referring to the skills as businessmen of course)
      - melenaboija 5y ago
        Agree, but I did not mean technically. If Rimac has been able to create electric super cars I guess they should be perfectly able to do it, it was mostly that they are behind because of the company decisions.
  - 5y ago
gfxgirl 5y ago
to add to this, Ferrari in particular wants their cars to be "for rich people only" or so the local race track claimed that they can only buy used Ferraris because Ferrari won't sell them cars as that would let non rich people drive them. Lamborghini on the other hand they could get new.
ThePhysicist 5y ago
I highly doubt that all parts of a Ferrari are produced in Italy. As far as I can tell they e.g. use plenty of electronics components sourced from Bosch.
- znpy 5y ago
  That's probably true, but that doesn't help the narrative and so people lobbying for an exception to the rule will ignore that point. Frankly, even though I'm Italian, I think that there should be no exception. If that production chain didn't bother with an electric conversion until now it's really their fault.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  > As far as I can tell they e.g. use plenty of electronics components sourced from Bosch. Well, it's not literal, there are things they have to build using components made by others. But AFAIK electronic components in Ferrari are made by Magneti Marelli (I briefly worked for them, not in car manufacturing though).
  - MichaelZuo 5y ago
    It also seems unlikely that all the wires and tubing are made in Italy.
  - prova_modena 5y ago
    Marelli makes some electronics for Ferrari, but Bosch makes a lot as well. For example, Ferrari has used Bosch fuel injection systems and ECUs since the 80s.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  Automotive EE here, more than 1/2 the electronics in a Ferrari are available in the Fiat base line. The 500 specially typically shares the same body, radio frequency hub, and engine controller is the same in the McClaren 570 (unrelated but personally interesting), and almost certainly somewhere in the Ferrari line, it’s a common part, software is different obviously. It goes on from there, window motors, steering angle sensor, airbag hardware, the electronic pedal is from the bla bla bla. Last I saw one of the Ferrari “Touring” models was hotter, nicer Maserati Levante for like $300,000 more. Basically the only things unique to supercars, past the body and chassis are the bad parts. The parts the drain the battery constantly and require you to store it with a trickle charger attached. Or have a rep fly out to unlock the battery panel because it refuses to open when completely dead (personal experience with a LaFerrari). Supercars, are not cars. If you have any experience with them you know what this means. The engineering that goes into a RAV4 is a lot more in hours and dollars. So this topic is a bit silly to me, they’re extremely niche machines. I wouldn’t classify them as transportation even if they fit all the checkboxes.
rakoo 5y ago
Then again the current electric vehicles frenzy isn't new, and it was pretty inevitable that it would come to this sooner or later. I can understand their position of wanting to remain 100% local but they're a private company, it's on them to adapt to the world and not the other way around.
- et2o 5y ago
  It seems obvious now but even 2-3 years ago I don’t think it was so obvious. Aside from Tesla, other auto manufacturers have just been dithering around.
  - jeffrallen 5y ago
    Two years ago, I bought a Renault Zoe, which had been in production since 2012. Renault has been dead serious about electric for a very long time.
  - urthor 5y ago
    I strongly suspect that BMW et al have actually timed it perfectly. Volume and demand for electric vehicles has not quite hit a tipping point, but just at the right time they've come out with the i3, which has really beaten Tesla in quite a few different aspects. Ditto the Ford Lightning or what have you. IMO the car companies are actually not quite as naive as we've come to think. They robably have internal roadmaps ready for the next 10+ years of electric releases. I expect they will ramp up to a "Tesla killer" at just the right time.
relativ575 5y ago
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.
- peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  > 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.
- albertopv 5y ago
  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.
- Cosmin_C 5y ago
  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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc
agilob 5y ago
Volkswagen has a factory in Poland, Poznan. They produce parts that are shipped to Germany. The parts have embedded label "Made in Germany". I'm quite sure Ferrari doesn't literally produce all parts in Italy, but factories are supervised by Italians, up to Italian standards.
- trollski 5y ago
  is that legal?
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
It took Germany about 10 years to rebuild it's auto industry after WW2- much to the frustration of its neighbours.
- satao 5y ago
  10 years plus all that post-war american aid
  - hnbad 5y ago
    I hate to be that guy, but the Marshall Plan only lasted 4 years and primarily benefited the UK, France and Germany (in that order) among other European nations. Its effect was estimated to be an increase in GDP growth of less than 0.5%. The US contributed the equivalent of $200 billion over the course of those four years. Note that they didn't simply dump money in Europe, the amount refers to goods and services (including shipping those goods to Europe and shipping exports back to the US). The US effectively provided European governments with goods that those governments could then sell to local companies. In Germany this was done under the presumption that the revenue would later have to be repaid to the US, though the share to be repaid was later drastically cut by the US. The biggest reason Germany benefited more from the Marshall plan than other European countries is that they expected having to repay it fully and thus were able to pay off the loans that were part of the Marshall Plan decades before other countries. But even so the overall effect has been overstated in the past and is not considered to be crucial to the economic development of Germany or Europe in general after WW2. Most of the "aid" after the Marshall Plan ended (because the US got involved in the Korean War and thus not interested in extending the program) went towards building European militaries and suppressing communism. While I think it's an exaggeration, there's some truth to modern critics of the plan saying that it mostly served for the US to get rid of excess production (as the US government paid its local companies in US dollars the treasury generated as part of the Plan) and stabilizing its currency (because the goods were then bought by European companies in their local currency from their own governments rather than in US dollars from the US companies directly) while also combatting the potential for a rise of communism and unifying Western Europe as an ally to the US in the Cold War.
- 5y ago
elil17 5y ago
The whole battery thing is BS because this isn't an electric car mandate. They can still make hydrogen fuel cells.
- sawjet 5y ago
  What drives the wheels on a fuel cell vehicle?
  - akmarinov 5y ago
    Electric motors
  - namlem 5y ago
    Ferrari doesn't have a problem with electric motors. It's the batteries that concern them.
lttlrck 5y ago
> 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. "SK Innovation to Supply Batteries for Ferrari Electric Vehicles" http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=36038 http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=3... So the SF90 Stradale is not a real Ferrari?
- peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  Yes, I'm aware of the SF90 strdale. But the SF90 stradale is a plugin hybrid, made for the 90th anniversary of the scuderia. They simply had no other choice. Don't take everything literally, you can have a Franciacorta or a Parmigiano that is produced with raw materials that sometimes are not exactly from the Franciacorta or Parma-Reggio area, but that's the exception, not the rule.
  - orangeoxidation 5y ago
    > They simply had no other choice Why give them a choice now? They will still be able to stay in business and make great cars. They will be called Ferrari by them and the rest of the world. Some whining over them no longer being "real" Ferrari or Italian can be and has been ignored. Job loss over no longer being competitive with current / coming tech is a real problem. But I feel politics should not step in to protect obsolete tech, rather they should help stear away from it and support innovation.
    - peoplefromibiza 5y ago
      I think I owe an explanation. Ferrari making all of the parts of the car they can is not about nationalistic pride, it's about control. They make a luxury product and want to control everything about it. Ferrari's pride has always been engines and an electric engine is made by motor+batteries. Of course compromises are made, of course they don't manufactur absolutely everything, but Ferrari batteries are a plus for premium customers, just like Tesla batteries are what people buying Teslas want in their cars People owning Ferrari also own the leather bag set specifically made to fit that model. An example https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174824008379 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174824008379 of course made in Italy, Schedoni is based in Modena, where Maranello is. It's part of the experience. Apple is considered the Ferrari of computing because the majority of their customers only own Apple devices and accessories and wouldn't want anything else, especially if they are cheap off the shelf alternatives. They live the Apple experience in full. And Apple can offer it because of vertical integration, they are making their own CPUs for the same reason. How long did it take to Apple to make it happen? If Ferrari starts assembling core components from multiple retailers, it's not a unique custom made piece of ego anymore (and a show off of incredible crafting abilities if you ask me, a piece of art some would say), it's "just a fast car" I hope I've explained myself better. Anyway, I also think that the argument is somewhat silly from Italian politicians, but I can understand why they are pushing for it. Nothing says made in Italy more than a Ferrari. It's the most popular Italian brand in the whole World.
mschuster91 5y ago
> According to Italian sources, 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 And this right here is why it would have been so important for the EU to announce an EU-wide EV ban 20 years ago and provide research incentives for electric and hydrogen. That would have given everyone ample time to change course, to retrain workers and avoid building investment ruins. But unfortunately, the German car lobby was extremely influential, up until Dieselgate when even the EU Parliament wasn't amenable to bribery any more. Now, climate change is forcing everyone's hand and everyone is off worse as a result of that inaction.
- peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  > And this right here is why it would have been so important for the EU to announce an EU-wide EV ban 20 years ago and provide research incentives for electric and hydrogen This!
- obedm 5y ago
  Knowing that so many things are being changed for good is amazing. "climate change is forcing everyone's hand" Everyone should see it this way. Like, there's no leeway, just do whatever it takes to tame climate change.
Cipater 5y ago
Is there a reason Mercedes don't qualify in youæ¹¹1r book? (regarding manufacture of chassis and engine in F1)

k__ 5y ago

Why can't they simply build a battery factory in Italy? It's the 21st century thing to do.

RivieraKid 5y ago
It's more expensive than buying it from someone.
- ldng 5y ago
  At the price of a Ferrari ? It's not like they can't rise prices!
  - RivieraKid 5y ago
    They can do a lot of different things, but companies generally try to maximize profits.
- k__ 5y ago
  But they'd have a place they could send all their now useless employees to.
peoplefromibiza 5y ago
short answer: they can. But - in Italy workers protection laws are very strong and it is an even stronger political topic, there are entire regions depending on the production chain of luxury Italian brands. Reconversion is not as easy as it looks. - it is like asking why US can't build an free and public health care system that works for everybody, it should be simple for the richest country in the World. And yet people like Daniel Desnoyers who missed a payment of $20 to the insurance company and had his prescription for depression meds denied, end up committing suicide.
- melenaboija 5y ago
  "short answer: they can" it seems to me is not the right answer. Competitors are doing it, the market trends seem to go towards this direction and the laws are being shaped to force it. And this has been for years now. I have heard several times that Ferrari was behind with the electric conversion and that was probably a mistake. Not sure if they were waiting for this exception or simply they could or they did not know how to make it.
  - peoplefromibiza 5y ago
    > I have heard several times that Ferrari was behind with the electric conversion They are not technically behind, it is a political choice, the mother company (FCA) decided not to pursue that road for the time being (around 2016). Specifically the CEO Sergio Marchionne who also was CEO of Ferrari S.p.a. That was probably a wrong bet on his side, but knowing the guy and his talent in business, he would have probably fixed the situation if he had not died suddenly in 2018. Those who took his place are not as good as he was (I'm only referring to the skills as businessmen of course)
    - melenaboija 5y ago
      Agree, but I did not mean technically. If Rimac has been able to create electric super cars I guess they should be perfectly able to do it, it was mostly that they are behind because of the company decisions.
- 5y ago

gfxgirl 5y ago

to add to this, Ferrari in particular wants their cars to be "for rich people only" or so the local race track claimed that they can only buy used Ferraris because Ferrari won't sell them cars as that would let non rich people drive them. Lamborghini on the other hand they could get new.

ThePhysicist 5y ago

I highly doubt that all parts of a Ferrari are produced in Italy. As far as I can tell they e.g. use plenty of electronics components sourced from Bosch.

znpy 5y ago
That's probably true, but that doesn't help the narrative and so people lobbying for an exception to the rule will ignore that point. Frankly, even though I'm Italian, I think that there should be no exception. If that production chain didn't bother with an electric conversion until now it's really their fault.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
peoplefromibiza 5y ago
> As far as I can tell they e.g. use plenty of electronics components sourced from Bosch. Well, it's not literal, there are things they have to build using components made by others. But AFAIK electronic components in Ferrari are made by Magneti Marelli (I briefly worked for them, not in car manufacturing though).
- MichaelZuo 5y ago
  It also seems unlikely that all the wires and tubing are made in Italy.
- prova_modena 5y ago
  Marelli makes some electronics for Ferrari, but Bosch makes a lot as well. For example, Ferrari has used Bosch fuel injection systems and ECUs since the 80s.
SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
Automotive EE here, more than 1/2 the electronics in a Ferrari are available in the Fiat base line. The 500 specially typically shares the same body, radio frequency hub, and engine controller is the same in the McClaren 570 (unrelated but personally interesting), and almost certainly somewhere in the Ferrari line, it’s a common part, software is different obviously. It goes on from there, window motors, steering angle sensor, airbag hardware, the electronic pedal is from the bla bla bla. Last I saw one of the Ferrari “Touring” models was hotter, nicer Maserati Levante for like $300,000 more. Basically the only things unique to supercars, past the body and chassis are the bad parts. The parts the drain the battery constantly and require you to store it with a trickle charger attached. Or have a rep fly out to unlock the battery panel because it refuses to open when completely dead (personal experience with a LaFerrari). Supercars, are not cars. If you have any experience with them you know what this means. The engineering that goes into a RAV4 is a lot more in hours and dollars. So this topic is a bit silly to me, they’re extremely niche machines. I wouldn’t classify them as transportation even if they fit all the checkboxes.

rakoo 5y ago

Then again the current electric vehicles frenzy isn't new, and it was pretty inevitable that it would come to this sooner or later. I can understand their position of wanting to remain 100% local but they're a private company, it's on them to adapt to the world and not the other way around.

et2o 5y ago
It seems obvious now but even 2-3 years ago I don’t think it was so obvious. Aside from Tesla, other auto manufacturers have just been dithering around.
- jeffrallen 5y ago
  Two years ago, I bought a Renault Zoe, which had been in production since 2012. Renault has been dead serious about electric for a very long time.
- urthor 5y ago
  I strongly suspect that BMW et al have actually timed it perfectly. Volume and demand for electric vehicles has not quite hit a tipping point, but just at the right time they've come out with the i3, which has really beaten Tesla in quite a few different aspects. Ditto the Ford Lightning or what have you. IMO the car companies are actually not quite as naive as we've come to think. They robably have internal roadmaps ready for the next 10+ years of electric releases. I expect they will ramp up to a "Tesla killer" at just the right time.

relativ575 5y ago

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.

peoplefromibiza 5y ago
> 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.
albertopv 5y ago
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.
Cosmin_C 5y ago
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc

agilob 5y ago

Volkswagen has a factory in Poland, Poznan. They produce parts that are shipped to Germany. The parts have embedded label "Made in Germany". I'm quite sure Ferrari doesn't literally produce all parts in Italy, but factories are supervised by Italians, up to Italian standards.

trollski 5y ago
is that legal?

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

It took Germany about 10 years to rebuild it's auto industry after WW2- much to the frustration of its neighbours.

satao 5y ago
10 years plus all that post-war american aid
- hnbad 5y ago
  I hate to be that guy, but the Marshall Plan only lasted 4 years and primarily benefited the UK, France and Germany (in that order) among other European nations. Its effect was estimated to be an increase in GDP growth of less than 0.5%. The US contributed the equivalent of $200 billion over the course of those four years. Note that they didn't simply dump money in Europe, the amount refers to goods and services (including shipping those goods to Europe and shipping exports back to the US). The US effectively provided European governments with goods that those governments could then sell to local companies. In Germany this was done under the presumption that the revenue would later have to be repaid to the US, though the share to be repaid was later drastically cut by the US. The biggest reason Germany benefited more from the Marshall plan than other European countries is that they expected having to repay it fully and thus were able to pay off the loans that were part of the Marshall Plan decades before other countries. But even so the overall effect has been overstated in the past and is not considered to be crucial to the economic development of Germany or Europe in general after WW2. Most of the "aid" after the Marshall Plan ended (because the US got involved in the Korean War and thus not interested in extending the program) went towards building European militaries and suppressing communism. While I think it's an exaggeration, there's some truth to modern critics of the plan saying that it mostly served for the US to get rid of excess production (as the US government paid its local companies in US dollars the treasury generated as part of the Plan) and stabilizing its currency (because the goods were then bought by European companies in their local currency from their own governments rather than in US dollars from the US companies directly) while also combatting the potential for a rise of communism and unifying Western Europe as an ally to the US in the Cold War.
5y ago

elil17 5y ago

The whole battery thing is BS because this isn't an electric car mandate. They can still make hydrogen fuel cells.

sawjet 5y ago
What drives the wheels on a fuel cell vehicle?
- akmarinov 5y ago
  Electric motors
- namlem 5y ago
  Ferrari doesn't have a problem with electric motors. It's the batteries that concern them.

lttlrck 5y ago

> 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. "SK Innovation to Supply Batteries for Ferrari Electric Vehicles" http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=36038 http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=3... So the SF90 Stradale is not a real Ferrari?

peoplefromibiza 5y ago
Yes, I'm aware of the SF90 strdale. But the SF90 stradale is a plugin hybrid, made for the 90th anniversary of the scuderia. They simply had no other choice. Don't take everything literally, you can have a Franciacorta or a Parmigiano that is produced with raw materials that sometimes are not exactly from the Franciacorta or Parma-Reggio area, but that's the exception, not the rule.
- orangeoxidation 5y ago
  > They simply had no other choice Why give them a choice now? They will still be able to stay in business and make great cars. They will be called Ferrari by them and the rest of the world. Some whining over them no longer being "real" Ferrari or Italian can be and has been ignored. Job loss over no longer being competitive with current / coming tech is a real problem. But I feel politics should not step in to protect obsolete tech, rather they should help stear away from it and support innovation.
  - peoplefromibiza 5y ago
    I think I owe an explanation. Ferrari making all of the parts of the car they can is not about nationalistic pride, it's about control. They make a luxury product and want to control everything about it. Ferrari's pride has always been engines and an electric engine is made by motor+batteries. Of course compromises are made, of course they don't manufactur absolutely everything, but Ferrari batteries are a plus for premium customers, just like Tesla batteries are what people buying Teslas want in their cars People owning Ferrari also own the leather bag set specifically made to fit that model. An example https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174824008379 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174824008379 of course made in Italy, Schedoni is based in Modena, where Maranello is. It's part of the experience. Apple is considered the Ferrari of computing because the majority of their customers only own Apple devices and accessories and wouldn't want anything else, especially if they are cheap off the shelf alternatives. They live the Apple experience in full. And Apple can offer it because of vertical integration, they are making their own CPUs for the same reason. How long did it take to Apple to make it happen? If Ferrari starts assembling core components from multiple retailers, it's not a unique custom made piece of ego anymore (and a show off of incredible crafting abilities if you ask me, a piece of art some would say), it's "just a fast car" I hope I've explained myself better. Anyway, I also think that the argument is somewhat silly from Italian politicians, but I can understand why they are pushing for it. Nothing says made in Italy more than a Ferrari. It's the most popular Italian brand in the whole World.

mschuster91 5y ago

> According to Italian sources, 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 And this right here is why it would have been so important for the EU to announce an EU-wide EV ban 20 years ago and provide research incentives for electric and hydrogen. That would have given everyone ample time to change course, to retrain workers and avoid building investment ruins. But unfortunately, the German car lobby was extremely influential, up until Dieselgate when even the EU Parliament wasn't amenable to bribery any more. Now, climate change is forcing everyone's hand and everyone is off worse as a result of that inaction.

peoplefromibiza 5y ago
> And this right here is why it would have been so important for the EU to announce an EU-wide EV ban 20 years ago and provide research incentives for electric and hydrogen This!
obedm 5y ago
Knowing that so many things are being changed for good is amazing. "climate change is forcing everyone's hand" Everyone should see it this way. Like, there's no leeway, just do whatever it takes to tame climate change.

Cipater 5y ago

Is there a reason Mercedes don't qualify in youæ¹¹1r book? (regarding manufacture of chassis and engine in F1)