Maserati's First Electric Vehicle Will Be 'Very Different'

#Maserati has confirmed that its first all-electric vehicle will be very different from anything else on the market.

While speaking with Car and Driver, the company's engineering boss Roberto Fedeli admitted that the Italian marque will be the last in the luxury segment to release an EV and that it won't simply follow the bandwagon of creating a Tesla rival.

“We will be last (with a production EV), and we have to arrive to the market with something different. Very different,” he said.

“A Tesla fighter probably [is] not a good idea. I don’t think that Tesla is the best product in the market...the execution and quality of the products of Tesla are the same as a German OEM in the 1970s. Their solutions are not the best.”

Fedeli has been instructed by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles chief Sergio Marchionne to create a Maserati EV as soon as possible and while the engineering boss failed to reveal just what form a Maserati EV will take, he did say one of the biggest challenges in creating the car will be injecting it with the marque's DNA.

“[In an EV], you feel a lot of weight, more than anything else. Torque and power are interesting for a very few seconds but then the weight does not let you enjoy the car on a normal road. That’s inconsistent with the brand we are representing and needs to be solved,” he said.

One of Maserati's biggest challenges will be making the car feel like a Maserati even thought it won't sound like one, Fedeli concluded.