Italy wants a pass on the EU's combustion ban

Tuesday, 7 September 2021

As the European Union eyes a total ban on internal combustion engines, currently set for 2035, a few countries are fighting back. One of those is Italy, which may not come as much of a surprise, considering it is home to more than a few supercar manufacturers.

According to Bloomberg TV, Italy’s minister for ecological transition, Roberto Cingolani, is seeking exemptions for the proposed ban, at least temporarily.

'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.'

Ferrari’s latest plug-in hybrid, the 296 GTB. There won’t be a fully electric Ferrari until 2025 at the earliest.

Italy is still in favour of phasing out combustion engines as a general rule, but Cingolani said that there are ongoing discussions with the EU Commission on how the new rules would apply to carmakers like Ferrari and Lamborghini that sell a much lower number of vehicles than more mainstream makers.

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Despite Lamborghini having previously said a fully electric model won’t be here until 2030, it can fall back on electric Audi and Porsche models for help.

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He added that the number of vehicles affected by an exemption would represent a fraction of a market that numbers in the millions.

Of course, it’s easy to put some blame at the feet of Ferrari and Lamborghini, as well as smaller builders like Pagani, none of which have a fully electric vehicle on the market and have generally been slower to adapt to electrification.

It also pays to mention that Cingolani is a former non-executive director of Ferrari.

The Prancing Horse is scheduled to release its first battery-electric vehicle in 2025 while Lamborghini is even further behind with a due date of “before 2030”. Both brands will deliver more hybrid and plug-in hybrid models in the meantime, however.

Italy isn’t the only country opposing the 2035 ban. France is resisting the European Union effectively phasing out combustion-engine car sales by 2035, instead asking for a more lenient target for the end of the decade, longer for plug-in hybrid models.