Ferrari: 'We don't care' about autonomous vehicles
Benedetto Vigna became CEO of
Ferrari in September, 2021.
Giorgio Panacci/LiveMedia/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Ferrari’s CEO says the company doesn’t care about self-driving technology.
Benedetto Vigna told a car summit hosted by the FT the group had the tech in place to build EVs.
Ferrari plans to release its first luxury EV by 2025 but maintained its cars would remain exclusive.
Ferrari doesn’t care about technology for an autonomous vehicle, its boss says, reinforcing the company’s intention to never build self-driving cars.
At the Financial Times Future of the Car Summit, Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna was asked whether the company’s push to make luxury electric cars would require it to look outside for software capabilities.
“In a cabinet, there are four kinds of software. There is performance software, there is comfort software, there is infotainment software, and there is autonomous,” Vigna said.
“The last one, we don’t care.”
Ferrari, one of the world’s biggest luxury carmakers, has historically kept the bulk of its production in-house. He suggested the company’s shunning of self-driving software helped the group mostly stick to that tradition.
The CEO said the company had the requisite software intelligence in-house to make its EVs. He added the group had also made the necessary partnerships with battery developers to produce an EV by a 2025 deadline.
Vigna, who became Ferrari’s boss in September 2021, told reporters last year that the company would never build an autonomous vehicle after it unveiled its EV strategy.
“The AI guys had a ride with our test driver,” Vigna said last June, per Bloomberg. “When they got out from a Ferrari they told me, OK Benedetto, our presentation is useless.”
The company’s stance on EVs clashes with other companies building self-driving cars, like Ford and Tesla.
Vigna, who often spoke about the “soul of the car” during the summit, also reinforced Ferrari’s focus on exclusivity even as it moved into the EV space. The company typically manufactures far fewer cars than are in demand.
This too diverges with price wars raging in the wider car market, driven by Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s decision to up production in a bid to gain bigger market share.
