Supercar manufacturers such as Ferrari have found it harder to reduce CO2 emissions by switching to electrified vehicles due to the disproportionate effect of battery weight and customer reluctance to give up the characteristic noise of V engines -8 or V-12.
McLaren and Ferrari have both launched plug-in hybrid versions of their best-selling mid-engined supercars, but customers are unlikely to achieve the claimed CO2 figures when driving in the real world given the limited range of the battery.
The waiver extension is a win for the European Small Volume Car Manufacturers Alliance (ESCA), which represents brands such as McLaren, Aston Martin, Bugatti, Pagani, Koenigsegg, Ineos Automotive and Rimac (but not Ferrari or Lamborghini) .
The Brussels and London-based organization argued that special rules need to be applied because supercars have a longer life cycle, they have a limited overall impact on emissions and brands have limited resources.
Small-volume automakers have announced plans for electric vehicles in recent months, most recently Lamborghini, whose CEO Stephan Winkelmann told the Le Sole 24 Ore newspaper this week, the Volkswagen Group subsidiary would release an electric car by the end of the decade as part of a $1.8 billion electrification investment.
Ferrari, meanwhile, announced earlier this year that it would unveil its first electric vehicle in 2025.
The push for supercars to run solely on battery power makes little sense for purely environmental reasons, said Phillippe Houchois, global automotive analyst at investment bank Jefferies. “Putting a big battery in a supercar has a negative impact on manufacturing emissions because they are driven so little [to offset the extra emissions in producing the battery]he told Automotive News Europe.
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