Sammy Hagar's LaF!

And THIS is why GTO's, F40's, F50's and Enzos are finding favor over LaF's....

 

Not just b/c it creates hole in balance sheet, but also drainage clock starts ticking whilst sitting idle, before being installed!

 

I really struggle to understand how any of the latest technology cars will be maintainable 40 or 50 years down the line. Low production volume + scarce need for one-off electronic circuit boards does not seem like a recipe for long-term maintainability. Not sure where you are going to get an "ashtray ECU" for a modern Ferrari in few decades. Okay, they presumably don't have ashtray ECU's (yet ), but there is large number of one-off electronic doodads in the latest models -- I can't imagine anybody reproducing replacements a few decades down the line for the handful of one-off ECU's/circuit boards that will fail.

 

So, if the article is accurate and the battery has an 8 year lifespan, it looks like nearly every LaF is in line for a new battery. I can't imagine paying over $1M for a car that if the battery dies is unusable for six months or longer!

I know these new hybrid Ferraris are impressive, but old-fashioned petrol cars are looking better all the time!

 

So, will need another one in 8 yrs from now. Will they even be making them in 2032? If so, how long is the wait then? That battery tech is already obsolete, will be ANCIENT in another 8 yrs. Imagine owning a $4m car with these types of issues. Insane.

 

Maybe part of reason a 315 mile SF90 didn't bid over $475k at Mecum Kissimmee auction... who needs those kinds of problems.

 

Just thinking about allocating 35K a year in reserve for your supercar battery.

 

AND, this is why the SP3 was built - essentially a LaF, without the battery.

can you imagine spending X millions on a car that can then brick itself?

the SF90 is just a 10% example of that.....

 

The battery is very complicated and stitched together by hand. Also needs fancy water cooling and plumbing. That's just the battery. The high voltage switching electronics are the real problem years down the road. When they go bad nobody will produce them. High voltage electronics engineers are the hardest talent to recruit in the industry. They can name their price.

 

It's worse that that. The aftermarket manufacturers are actually *forbidden* from reverse engineering anything that has software encryption on it. So even if the hardware can be replicated or replaced, the software/ROM/firmware cannot. And if the car makers follow Apple or HP techniques, the CAN bus and similar won't acknowledge anything that isn't an OEM part.

Manufacturers who sell in the US have to support the cars for a decade, and after that, you're on your own, sucker. I don't see any modern Ferrari as a decent long-term collectable -- unless the intent is static display only.

 

“Planned eight-year lifespan”. Well isn’t that cheery? ….. and you’re probably exactly right about the proprietary locks.

Same gloomy outlook for SF90, 296 and all future hybrids?

…..or will they be higher volume, more of a commodity….and there will be a Ferrari battery section at Fred Meyer’s?


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Or any hybrid Lambo, McLaren, Pagani, etc. for that matter.

 

it's an interesting issue, no one drives the cars anyway and ideally if you were planning to keep it long term then it'd make sense to just disconnect the battery and have a replacement ready to go on just prior to sale

unfortutently that wouldn't presumably work though as without an annual service history (regardless of if its being driven) it would lose loads of value

 

You won’t be owning a 4 mil car anymore. More like 2 mil, if that.

 

I imagine disconnecting the battery unfortunately won't be the solution as the car will almost certainly just won't move because the software will likely limit it.

Frankly speaking I find it disgusting that Ferrari hasn't been building/ordered replacement battery packs. The vast majority of LaFerrari's goes for an annual service, so they'll know what the battery state is of each of them.

That being said, the most difficult part of these batteries is the casing and likely opening them up will cause warranty/insurance issues, I'm pretty sure ordering similar sized/spec batteries is easily possible and from there on it'll be a case of just swapping out loads of batteries, simply put. If you're going that way, even a battery upgrade (lighter by more powerful batteries so fewer needed for example) is possible.

Other option is to remove the battery entirely and map the ECU to ignore all the faults, something that would be a lot harder to do (unless a complete ECU change to aftermarket, which again means losing certain bits in the software/electronics.Athe very least you're not carrying the dead weight of batteries then...

Either way, all of that is definitely not what should be expected from Ferrari.

 

Could be the LaFerrari will still be considered cool going forward, and restoration people will near-undetectably fill original housings with latest tech at carbon cupholder prices and off ya go ...?

 

Interestingly enough (to me), Facebook memories show it's 9 years to the day when a bunch of us locals went to see the first LaF in the area. Here's my comment from the discussion thread back then




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for comparison Mclaren actually did work on the P1 battery 10 years later and developed one that's a full 113lbs lighter than the original !

 

They’re essentially adapting the battery from the Speedtail. It’s significantly lighter but has much less pure electric range, which I suspect very few owners will even notice.

It’s $150k which I believe this is half of what a LaF battery replacement costs?

 

See post #2.

Marcel Massini

 

i wonder if it would be possible to simply remove the battery from the Laf and adjust the ecu to match - maybe the same ecu as the SP3. and just eliminate the extra weight?

 

It's my understanding Ferrari hand builds those battery packs. Have none on shelf as they already sold to other "in-need" owners. Every single LaF will need a new one. Then 8 yrs later, again. That backlog may be "perpetual" in nature....

It's like Sisyphus....


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Subject car... vid made 2 mos ago so battery failure recent!

 

I thought I heard or read somewhere that it's around $300k. Perhaps that was bad info, I'm imagining things or the price has since fallen to $200k?

 

$233,452.31 for KERS battery, plus $7,047.62 shipping, plus $XX,XXX.XX labor to install:

https://www.scuderiacarparts.com/part/246224/ferrari/312503/compl-kers-battery.html