Elettrica-ifying! Ferrari Shows Off the Tech Behind Its First-Ever EV

We can’t show you what the first-ever electric-powered Ferrari looks like as the company is keeping details of the car’s interior and exterior under wraps until the first quarter of 2026. But during a lengthy technical deep dive in Maranello, Italy, chief product development officer Gianmaria Fulgenzi revealed that the new Ferrari EV will have four doors and four seats. It will feature a cab-forward driving position, with the driver located close to the front axle, much like the storied automaker’s mid-engine sports cars.

A Different Look

The new EV’s exterior, styled in collaboration with former Apple designer Jony Ive and Australian industrial designer Marc Newson at Ive’s Silicon Valley design collective LoveFrom, is said to be a radical departure from traditional and contemporary Ferrari forms. “It takes time to absorb it,” concedes Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna, a former tech exec who came to know Ive when the three-dimensional motion-sensor concept—a concept Vigna invented for automobile airbags—was reworked to control the iPhone’s screen rotation.

Though many manufacturers of luxury and high-performance vehicles are backing away from EVs, Ferrari believes its electric car—for now called the Elettrica, though that will not be the production version’s name—will expand its existing customer base. Vigna says the Elettrica is being designed to be a more comfortable-riding car than the Purosangue and it will appeal to people who may not normally consider buying a Ferrari. And he says existing customers have also expressed interest in owning the first electric-powered Ferrari. “We wanted to create a car that could be used by family and friends,” says Vigna, who adds that customers said they wanted a vehicle that was bigger than a sports car.

Not a Traditional Supercar

The Ferrari Elettrica will thus be close in overall size to the V-12-powered Purosangue, with a 116.5-inch wheelbase that’s just 2.3 inches shorter than Ferrari’s “not-SUV” model. The cab-forward design means it’s likely to have much more interior room than the Purosangue, however, particularly for rear passengers. It will be relatively light for an electric-powered four-door, too, with a predicted curb weight of 5,070 pounds thanks to its aluminum-intensive chassis. Though roughly 600 pounds heavier than the Purosangue, the Elettrica will accelerate quicker from 0–60 mph while having a similar top speed (193 mph).

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“This is not a supercar,” Vigna says. And Fulgenzi dismisses the idea Ferrari should have made its first EV such a thing. “It’s easy and simple to create a lot of horsepower with an e-motor,” he says, “but you need big motors and a big battery, and those cars feel like elephants to drive.” He explains how the decision to make Ferrari’s first EV a multi-passenger vehicle was driven by internal research that said the current state of battery cell technology would not deliver enough of a performance benefit over the company’s existing sports-car lineup. “But compared with the GTC4 Lusso and Purosangue, there was a big improvement,” he says.

Here’s what else we know about Ferrari’s new EV.

Four Motors, All-Wheel Drive, and More Than 1,000 Horsepower

The Ferrari Elettrica will be powered by a four-motor powertrain developed entirely in-house at Ferrari’s Maranello headquarters. The radial-flow permanent-synchronous magnet e-motors have their magnets arranged in what is called a Halbach array, a setup used in Ferrari’s F1 powertrains that directs the magnetic flux toward the stator to maximize torque density. The two e-motors at the rear axle each develop a maximum of 416 hp and 243 lb-ft of torque, while the two front e-motors, which disconnect while cruising to increase range, each develop 141 hp and 89 lb-ft.

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The e-motors are designed to spin to very high revs, the front pair at up to 30,000 rpm, and the rear pair at up to 25,500 rpm. This allows for a top speed of more than 193 mph without the extra weight and complexity of the two-speed transmission used by Porsche and Mercedes-Benz to give their EVs high top speeds. The magnets in the e-motors are held in place by thin, ultra-light, ultra-strong carbon-fiber sleeves, not the least because at maximum revs the centrifugal force acting on each three-ounce magnet in the front e-motors is equivalent to three tons.

122-kWh Battery Pack and More Than 330 Miles of Range

As with the e-motors, the Ferrari Elettrica’s 122-kWh battery pack was developed in-house in Italy. The pack comprises 15 modules, each with 14 pouch cells. The cells are from Korean supplier SK On, but the design and the configuration of the battery modules and all the attendant electronics systems is Ferrari’s work.

Thirteen modules are located under the floor, with the other two under the rear seat, which means 85 percent of the battery’s total mass is located under the floor. This lowers the car’s center of gravity by 3.1 inches compared with the internal combustion engine Purosangue.

The battery layout, along with the smaller motors and inverter at the front axle, means the Elettrica with have a sporty front-to-rear weight distribution, with 47 percent of the car’s mass on the front axle and 53 percent on the back. The battery is designed so individual modules can be replaced, and the entire battery, which is located to the chassis with 20 fasteners, can be upgraded easily in the future as improved chemistries offer increased range and performance.

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The battery’s cooling system consists of a set of internal pipes and three cooling plates (two fastened to the housing plus a smaller pipe cooling the upper modules). Though contained within the battery itself, the battery-cooling circuit is integrated completely into the primary vehicle-cooling system, and it incorporates the coolant flows for other components from the front of the car to the rear and vice versa.

Active Suspension and Rear-Wheel Steering

The Elettrica rolls on Ferrari’s new Gen 3 active suspension system. Essentially an evolution of the suspension used on the Purosangue and the F80, the Gen 3 system features a 20-percent longer pitch on the electric-motor-driven recirculating ball screw that’s at the heart of each damper. This longer pitch means less inertia is transferred from the road surface into the suspension, improving ride quality, but the electric motors used to rotate the ball screws in the opposite direction react quickly enough to ensure good body control.

The rear-wheel steering system can independently turn each rear wheel a maximum of 2.15 degrees, countersteering to the front wheels to improve low speed agility or steering in phase with the front wheels to improve high-speed stability. Carbon-ceramic brakes, with 15.4-inch rotors up front and 14.6-inch units at the rear, are standard, though they won’t be used much in even relatively spirited road driving as the Elettrica’s powertrain will deliver up to 0.68 g of lift-off regenerative braking.

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The four e-motors, overseen by high-performance silicon-carbide inverters of Ferrari’s own design, allow torque vectoring across the front and rear axles. This, combined with the active suspension and rear-wheel steering, make the Elettrica the first Ferrari in history where vertical, lateral, and longitudinal forces can be controlled at each individual wheel. With all the powertrain and dynamic system outputs overseen by a single computer, the Elettrica will feel lighter and much more agile than its size and mass suggest, Fulgenzi says. “The car’s handling is frankly unbelievable,” he says, with a grin.

A Steering Wheel with Two Manettinos and Paddles Behind It

The Elettrica’s steering wheel will feature two manettinos. As in Ferrari’s regular internal combustion engine models, the Manettino on the right-hand side of the wheel is used to select the car’s dynamic control systems’ settings. In the Elettrica, settings range from Ice mode, which maximises stability and maintains all-wheel drive for very low-grip conditions, to ESC-Off mode, in which only the active suspension and front-axle torque vectoring are enabled, leaving the rear e-motors free to punch out smoky drifts through corners. The Elettrica also debuts a new Dry mode. Conceived for day-to-day driving, this mode slots in between the traditional Wet and Sport modes.

On the left is the new eManettino, which controls the settings of the car’s energy architecture. The powertrain’s output, the number of driven axles (RWD or AWD), and the maximum performance available differ depending on which of the three modes is selected.

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The paddles behind the steering wheel allow drivers to shift between five power and torque levels, those levels increasing sequentially every time the right-hand paddle is clicked. When braking, the left-hand paddle can be used to replicate the behaviour of a progressively more intense engine braking effect. Ferrari calls the system Torque Shift Engagement.

An Authentic Electric Car Sound to Help You Drive Better

Ferrari says sound, along with powerful longitudinal and lateral acceleration, quick gear changes, and decisive braking, is one of the key factors in delivering driving thrills. But as other automakers have found, few drivers find the fake sounds used to disguise the faint whirring and whining from EV powertrains at all thrilling. Rather than disguise the fact the Elettrica is the first car from Maranello without an internal combustion engine, though, Ferrari engineers decided to celebrate it.

The Elettrica features a unique sound-amplification system that uses a vibration sensor at the rear axle to pick up and amplify the frequencies emitted by the powertrain as the driver accelerates and decelerates. The concept is much the same as that used on electric guitars, says sound engineer Antonio Palermo, who in his spare time plays both Gibson and Fender guitars and is a fan of legendary rock guitarists Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour, and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page.

“We are giving a voice to the first electric Ferrari,” Palermo says. “We are letting the [e-motor] components speak for themselves.” Palermo’s team edited out the annoying frequencies usually associated with electric powertrains, such as whine of the drive gears, but he says the sounds drivers will hear will otherwise be the actual sound of the e-motors at work, to the point where they will even be able to tell when the left and right motors are delivering different levels of torque.

“The sound will be authentic and functional,” Palermo says, “and it will change naturally because it is happening naturally. The vehicle will communicate with the driver.” As for when Ferrari customers will be able to actually communicate with the car, they should get a first glimpse of it early next year with first deliveries expected toward the end of 2026.