No oil burning for the prancing horse, Ferrari rejects diesels
Ferrari has set itself an aggressive goal of reducing the carbon dioxide emissions of its cars by 40 percent over the next four years. The company will have to make some pretty drastic changes to its powertrains to achieve that reduction from 400 g/km to about 280 g/km. One change it has no intention of making is adopting diesel engines. Instead it will go to smaller, more efficient engines using technologies like direct injection and turbocharging. The company just announced its first direct injected engine in the new California GT. Another option the company is looking at is hybrid drive. The Formula 1 team is currently developing a hybrid system for use starting in the 2009 season and that technology could be adapted to production. One direction not mentioned is biofuels. The company showed a biofueled version of its F430 Spider at last January's Detroit Auto Show.
[Source: The Telegraph]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ian 2:09PM (10/29/2008)
Hmmm...tall highway gear and pushrods, perhaps? :P
Or, giving them more credit, since they do like to innovate on engine technology, maybe they could come up with some extremely aggressive cylinder deactivation.
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Mark Kiernan 6:50PM (10/29/2008)
Blah! 280g/km rubbish. I live in Italy and I don't even like Ferrari. Why don't they go electric? A Tesla will currently leave a testarossa in the dust.
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JamesWB 7:21AM (10/30/2008)
"A Tesla will currently leave a testarossa in the dust."
No it won't. And even if it did the last Testarossa is at least 12 years old now, so not that big a deal.
LPG/CNG on the big GT's would be nice. Cylinder deactivation would be good, if GM can offer it in the Camaro I'm sure Ferrari could afford to do it.