Ferrari says no to electric cars

By Dan Whitworth
Newsbeat technology reporter Ferrari's glamorous cars have millions of fans around the world The chairman of Ferrari says he does not believe in electric cars and that his company will never make one.

Luca di Montezemolo's comments will anger many who say electric cars offer the only environmentally-friendly future for the industry.

He said: "I don't feel they represent an important step forward for [fighting] pollution, CO2 and the environment."

He said instead that the company was working on other alternatives.

"We are working very, very hard on the hybrid Ferrari," he said.

"This should be the future and I hope in a couple of years you'll see it."

More efficient Ferraris

Despite a slow take up of electric motor technology the car industry has over recent years begun to invest heavily in it.

Nissan is one of the big manufacturers to commit to the idea with its Leaf design one of the first to go into mass production.

German car maker BMW is among the latest to announce its plans.

It recently unveiled two new models which will launch its new electric motoring division BMWi.

The i3 is an all-electric small city car, while the i8, a powerful sports car, combines an electric motor with a three-cylinder combustion engine.

Despite dismissing a fully electric model di Montezemolo says he is ready to embrace any technology that will make Ferraris more efficient.

"We have improved fuel consumption 30% and we are working day and night in this direction," he said.

"[Also] the Kers (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) that we are using in Formula 1 is an innovation that we will put in our cars very soon."

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Ford has no truck with Ferrari using F150 name

10 February 2011 Last updated at 17:10 GMT Ferrari says there is unlikely to be confusion between its F1 car and Ford's truck US motor giant Ford has said it is suing Ferrari over the Italian carmaker's use of the name F150 for its new Formula 1 racing car.

Ford argued that the use of the name detracts from its own F-150 brand of best-selling pickup trucks.

It has also said the Ferrari F150 logo looked similar to its own F-150 logo.

But Ferrari has announced that it would alter the name of its new car to "Ferrari F150th Italia" in an effort to avoid dispute.

Ferrari said the new, "complete" name refers to this year's 150th anniversary of Italy's unification.

The luxury sportscar maker said it had written to Ford pointing out that F150 would only be used as an abbreviation of the full name of a racing car project and not as a brand to market cars.

"[F150] never has, nor ever will be used as the name of a commercially available product - indeed there will definitely not be a production run of single-seaters."

Ford claims that Ferrari wants to profit from the recognition it had built up for its F150 truck brand

"Ferrari believes that its own contender in the forthcoming F1 championship cannot be confused with other types of commercially available vehicle of any sort whatsoever, nor can it give the impression that there is a link to another brand of road-going vehicle.

"Therefore it is very difficult to understand Ford's viewpoint on the matter."

"Ferrari has misappropriated the F-150 trademark in naming its new racing vehicle the F150 in order to capitalize on and profit from the substantial goodwill that Ford has developed in the F-150 trademark," said Ford in its complaint to the US District Court in Detroit.

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