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While Ferrari isn’t going all-in on electrification just yet, the brand is already working on solving the ever-existing packaging issues created by bulky batteries
by Robert Moore, onBack in 2019, Ferrari decided it was going to delay its plans for electrification and, despite rumors that it had anything to do with financial stability, that just wasn’t the case. The brand was actually trying to decide just what kind of company it wanted to be in the future. Almost a year later to the day, Ferrari came right out and said that while the plan was to go all-electric by 2030, the brand will, in fact, never go full-electric and will try to keep the iconic V-12 alive by any means necessary. Almost a year after that, Italy started poking the European Union to allow for exemptions from the proposed engine bans of the future for both Ferrari and Lamborghini. This doesn’t mean that Ferrari will abandon electrification altogether – after all the SF90 Stradale is hybrid. But, what about the Ferrari EV that’s supposed to arrive in 2025? Well if this patent is any evidence, it won’t stray from the mid-engined driving dynamic offered by so many of Ferrari’s best cars.
Introducing the Ferrari Mid-Battery Design
When automakers started building EVs, one of the biggest problems to tackle was the packaging of bulky, heavy batteries. For those that sell mainstream cars like sedans and SUVs, this isn’t that hard to accomplish in a reasonable way – at least when compared to the research and development required by automakers like Ferrari or Lamborghini. See, the typical passenger car or daily driver just needs to complete a simple job – travel to and from work, go to the store, etc. Something with a prancing horse badge, however, has to be fast, nimble, engaging, and it can’t lose the level of quality and handling that made the brand so famous in the first place. How does a brand like Ferrari start incorporating big, bulky batteries into cars where electric propulsion isn’t exactly practical? It gets creative, that’s what it does, and this patent is proof that future electric Ferraris will be just as good as their ICE-powered counterparts.
This patent, which depicts what we’re dubbing as the “mid-battery” design, is described as representing an “electric or hybrid sports car.” As you can see from the images, it’s clearly of the mid-engined design, similar to something more recent like the Ferrari 488 or the Ferrari SF90. The breakdown is like this. Where the traditional engine would be located behind the front seats, there will be a large battery with cells in a stacked formation. This is part of a modular design, though, so there are several supplemental batteries between the main battery “BT2” and the front wheels. Based on the other images, we can tell that this battery set is designed to be attached to a special subframe or chassis of sorts. With such a modular design, it seems as if Ferrari is hoping to use the same sub-frame structure and battery arrangement on a number of cars – simply building unique body structures around the entire battery/sub-frame chassis.
The big question about this design is where Ferrari will place the electric motors and/or even a small engine for a hybrid setup. We’d assume that a powerful electric motor would be positioned in the rear at the rear axle, right between the tail and “BT2.” There’s also the possibility for a smaller electric motor in the front, however, because of packaging issues, the amount of cargo room – which was never ample in Ferraris, to begin with – would be minimal at best. The other option to think about here is that Ferrari could simply use this design, in a more compact, nature to help improve the efficiency of its current hybrid design and perhaps add more usable range. Either way, it’s clear that Ferrari is already being its usual obsessive self over its electrified future, and that’s a good thing.
Source: The Drive
