| ▲ | bix6 12 hours ago |
| 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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| ▲ | nnevatie 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > 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? |
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| ▲ | decimalenough 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | nnevatie 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, this must be it. There's no experience like driving a manual with a two-plus ton vehicle. | | |
| ▲ | brailsafe 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | krashidov 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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 | | |
| ▲ | kube-system 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | hvb2 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sure, but this isn't a Tesla... If you're going to drive this slowly you might as well buy a Tesla | | |
| ▲ | andsoitis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > 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. | | |
| ▲ | KaiserPro 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The casio watch is more accurate than a mechanical watch, it doesn't mean I should like it more |
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| ▲ | amarant 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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... | | |
| ▲ | pavlov 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Tesla Model S is discontinued. Whatever its merits, there wasn’t a market for it. | | |
| ▲ | amarant an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Just pointing out that, technically, if you're gonna drive slow, the Ferrari is the appropriate choice over the Tesla. | |
| ▲ | lmm 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Which suggests that a similar but worse product shouldn't sell either? | | |
| ▲ | pavlov 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | pclmulqdq 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | ChadNauseam 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | ehnto 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | decimalenough 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | codebje 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | aaronbrethorst 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's a $650,000 car. These are not anyone's top priorities with it. | |
| ▲ | binkHN 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > energy efficiency matters more with EVs This is correct, but I really don't see why Ferrari would care. | | |
| ▲ | simondotau 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | MitziMoto 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | p1necone 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | parpfish 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | an eletric lotus would be a blast, but having a big heavy battery seems antithetical to their entire car building philosophy | | | |
| ▲ | MitziMoto 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | So a Tesla Roadster? :) |
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| ▲ | LanceJones 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Just 280+ mile EPA range on a 122 kwH battery. 5100 pounds. 2.5s to 60. Not insane by any standard, ICE or EV. |
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| ▲ | anvuong 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah that's actually rather inefficient. Tesla Model Y has 84kWh battery and a range of 300 miles. | | |
| ▲ | thrownthatway 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Does it really? | | |
| ▲ | margalabargala 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | No, but we're comparing the EPA ranges here, which is the point of them. | | |
| ▲ | thrownthatway 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | margalabargala 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
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| ▲ | amarant 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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! | |
| ▲ | rootusrootus 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not really, no, except in narrow circumstances. |
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| ▲ | overfeed 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > 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) |
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| ▲ | nradov 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | A lot of Ferraris are driven less than 280 miles per year. | | |
| ▲ | bathtub365 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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 | | |
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| ▲ | dyauspitr 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| 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. |
