While the Clean Car Scheme is a relatively new proposition here in New Zealand, the European Union has been dishing out emission regulations for quite some time now, but the proposed combustion car ban is the most extreme to date.
Set to come into force by 2035, this ban looks to stop automakers from producing cars that are powered by a combustion engine of any sort. Unsurprisingly, Italy's high-performance brands aren't a fan of this.
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Speaking to Bloomberg, Italy's Minister for Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani (who also happens to be a former Ferrari board member) said that the country is in talks to create an exemption for low-volume car manufacturers.
Mr. Cingolani stated that this exemption could allow Italy's iconic brands to keep building ICE-powered vehicles. Considering the brands already build in low-volumes, nothing would need to change on that front.
It was noted that the likes of Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Pagani would have a hard time switching to all-electric platforms as these brands won't reap the same large-scale EV benefits as more mainstream brands.
For context, Lamborghini managed to sell just 14,000 Huracans in its first five years on the market, and before the Urus came along, this was the brand's most popular model. Compare this with its stablemate - the Volkswagen Golf, of which close to 240,000 were sold in the US alone during that same period.
“Those cars need very special technology and they need batteries for the transition,” Cingolani said. “One important step is that Italy gets autonomous in producing high-performance batteries and that is why we are now launching the giga-factory program to install in Italy a very large scale production facility for batteries.”
It will be interesting to see what happens with this exemption, as the CEO of Porsche has already spoken out against it. And given that the iconic German brand has spent an unholy amount of money on developing its own electric platforms, we can't imagine they'd be wanting any rivals to get a free ride.