Has anyone torn out the hybrid parts?

The 296 Challenge is not the same basic car as a road going 296. It's made by Michelotto for Ferrari. It is a new car designed specifically by Michelotto as an ICE race vehicle. They don't "tear" the hybrid out as it's not even in the basic Michelotto 296 Challenge car that's delivered. Michelotto has had a decades long relationship with Ferrari for race going vehicles like the F40 LM, etc. This is how it became a 296 Challenge.

Also, it would be a total disaster to "tear" out the hybrid in road-going Ferrari 296. There is no tearing out of the hybrid parts. The "parts" include software and controllers all built to include hybrid power delivery as part of their active performance. They are everywhere, not just batteries and electrical motors.

All of the various ECUs, etc plus transmission, exhaust, are set up to include the electrical power interleave. This includes tuning and data feedback going all the way through all the sensors in the exhaust system. Therefore, the ECUs will detect that the system is malfunctioning. The ECUs must be reprogrammed; otherwise, the car will not operate. This only addresses the surface issues. Forget about ever taking this car for service. At best, it will be a hobbled Frankenstein with failure points everywhere. Why do this? It is a fallacy that the hybrid system is a huge failure point. If it was, you would be hearing about all of the failures with SF90s and 296s. And that is not happening.

 

TCM alone makes this impossible

 

I am of the opinion that like the manual conversions currently popular for some early F1 shift models or non-fuel cell F40 fuel tanks, when these cars age there will be comprehensive conversion kits made to eliminate the hybrid systems. Any system can fail, but the cost of replacing a vintage Ferrari hybrid system when the car is 15-20 years old will result in a market opportunity.

 

Would better off buying a challenge car and making it road legal. There’s at least a 458 challenge road legal registered in UK. It’s within the same ballpark price range as the standard car as well

 

After a few years the challenge cars even tend to be less expensive than the road cars, since they become obsolete for racing and there are not many customers for them (most are bought for track days, but it's a niche market).

 

No. FUD.

 

Street car's software and entire architecture is based off a hybrid, so I would imagine it's impossible

 

What does FUD stand for?

I expect that a wiring harness and ECU with a lot of ingenious thinking will make a conversion possible. There should be a lot of commercial motivation to make a kit when the cars get old.

 

Fear, uncertainty and doubt.

 

Sorry to say, but my judgment here is that you understand so little about this car’s technology that you think this will be easy to do. Or will do it for a small target market.

You’d need a full suite that replaces Ferrari’s engine, hybrid, DCT, ABS/ESC, brake‑by‑wire, and body ECUs, plus new mechanical interfaces and cooling, and it still wouldn’t be street‑legal. That’s not a harness swap. It’s a ground‑up powertrain re‑engineering. There is not just 1 ECU! All of the above have dependencies on each other.

Since this line of thinking still pervades this thread, I know will write more specifically.

1) The e‑motor and clutch pack sit between the V6 and the DCT. Remove them and the engine no longer mates or talks to the gearbox.

Separate point: deleting the hybrid hardware still breaks the engine‑to‑DCT connection because the e‑motor and TMA clutch live between them. You’d need a new mechanical coupler and full software to make any gear, including reverse, work.

2) Everything is cross‑checked over multiple ECUs. Engine, DCT, hybrid controller, ABS/ESC, e‑diff, brake‑by‑wire. One standalone ECU won’t keep the rest happy. You get faults or limp mode. There is no one ECU.

3) Brake‑by‑wire is calibrated with regen in the loop. Delete the motor and you lose the brake maps that give stable pedal and stopping distances. New ABS/BBW calibration and validation would be required.

4) Cooling is integrated. Battery and inverter have their own circuits, sensors, and monitors. Pull them and you must re‑plumb and spoof safety checks.

5) The HV battery and its mounts are part of weight distribution and monitored hardware. Removing it changes stiffness and triggers missing‑component errors.

6) Emissions and OBD: gutting hybrid systems is illegal tampering. You won’t pass OBD readiness or inspections. Not legal for road use.

7) a state of the art and eng tech group would have to build this. For a small market. They’d need a complete suite: engine ECU, DCT controller, brake‑by‑wire/ABS, body network management, plus new mechanical interfaces. That’s a safety‑critical program with tiny TAM and brutal liability. No business case. Whoever built this would be sitting on a liability bomb.


But what do I know…my team only designed the Nintendo 64 on contract from scratch which included all of the hardware on board (CPU,GPU, Rambus interleave, firmware, and low level OS…basically everything but power supply and then was a 25 year tech venture investor).

(mic heard landing on the floor)

 

Agreed, I have no electronics tech background. I drive a 78 BB512 carb car and a 1980 Countach with points ignition. I have driven a 296 (pleasant in traffic with good a/c) but would never buy a hybrid Ferrari.

I cannot doubt what you say - maybe it is impossible. Which is kind of sad, as the car may be next to valueless when it gets old.

 

I disagree on the car being valueless in the future.

I understand the point of view that is sad to see the inclusion of the batteries and other e stuff. It goes against the notion that these are mechanical beasts. But I see the e stuff as go-faster technology. That makes me feel better

In addition to the excellent post by @gzachary above, I think you could simply do a little logical thinking: How is it that you can be driving along, press a button, and then the whole car seamlessly can run on the electric motor and battery? Every system remains functional: throttle, brakes, steering, HVAC, stereo, you name it. Press a button again and now the ICE is in the mix- while never missing a beat. All systems still working. It’s quite impressive. Without his knowledge of whats going on, I think we can use logic to come to a realization: the hybrids are running on the e motor and battery first, and then inserting the ICE into the mix when requested. In effect, we are already driving the Ferrari EV. Just one with an ICE attached. Thus, it strikes me that it would be quite some job to remove the hybrid. However, it might be easier for them to go the other way, and that notion does make me sad. The ICE is very important to my enjoyment of Ferrari.

 

Yeah let’s take the best part out, I daily mine and I drive it 30 to 40% in electric, love it!

 

It’s easy! Replace the hybrid bits with gerbils on treadmills which will give the car a nice analog feel!

 

Total FUD. The 296’s maintenance costs will likely never be as much as an engine out Ferrari (512 BBI). Ferrari’s quality and workmanship have never been better- the car is so well made- and you will likely never understand as you aren’t a customer for this product. Ignorance is bliss. The 512 (and Countach) are comparatively junk- and I respect and admire them for what they are and represent in history. The 296 is a $300- $500k cars. In the unlikely event that a battery needs replacing it will like cost around $30K (estimate- probably less). In the USA the battery is warranted 7 years by federal law. If they last 5- 10 years, we are not talking about real money- relative to the value of the vehicle and the frequency of the issue.

 

The issue with "too" modern cars is not necessarily the cost of the parts, it's the complexity of the systems that sometimes become out of the control of the manufacturers. We all heard about the "ghost braking" of the cars pretending to be smarter than they actually are; it's only electronics and software but if the issue is not immediately corrected (and it's not), it proves that the manufacturers do not know how to solve it. A "junk" 512 may have any part failing, but the diagnosis will typically be straightforward, and the correction could be time consuming but will never be out of reach for lack of understanding.

 

Most current generation Ferrari owners do not work on their cars. Older cars may be simpler (also substantially inferior in performance and reliability- old things break/ wear out), and their maintenance costs are way, way more expensive than newer ones.

You are projecting all sorts of issues based on FUD and your own ignorance. You are purely speculating. You might be right. You also might win the lottery. Good luck.

 

I have an old car that has some kind of electrical gremlin that is draining the battery. The darn fuse box is up under the dash somewhere and when I was 18, it was easy to get to. At 65, not so much and I can not see the darn thing anyway with my bifocals (multi-focus, actually). All that to say that while I can probably eventually find it, I will also have to probably get a new window motor or switch because the passenger window won’t roll up. In its day, it was quite the muscle car, but brakes are awful and so is the suspension and I can hardly believe we drove 80 mph on the highway at night with those headlamps that barely lit the road immediately in front. LOL. Still, it is a project of love to keep it going and it sounds amazing and looks awesome (to me). In no way, is this one a car I would drive today like I did in 1978.

when people gripe about not being able to work on current cars, I just laugh and remember how bad tire technology was back then and how we had to have a bag of essential tools and a flashlight when going on a trip. Yes, they are way more complex and when things go wrong, it takes a computer geek (apologies to our nintendo friend) to figure it out. But failures are rare compared to the old days. There are trade offs.

So, I have modern cars to enjoy driving and a couple of old school cars to (primarily) work on when I have the time. I’m just so glad I don’t have to rely on those to get me places.

 

All cars will break when they get to be 30+ years old, especially if daily driven when they were young. My BB and Countach are ancient tech, fragile, not as fast as anything modern (not the reason to buy one) and can be expensive to maintain generally due to parts prices, but the drivetrains are at least simple and straightforward to fix when something breaks.

The problem I see with the hybrid is that parts prices will never be cheap either, there are many more parts to replace when they reach service limits and the complexity of the system will limit the eventual restoration to a set of very, very skilled technicians familiar with then ‘old’ technology. This may lead to someone trying to innovate to simplify the cars to the extent possible. None of this is a problem for current owners, but a few owners later will face these kinds of issues.

To me anyways, this suggests fewer of these cars will get restored, more will be parted out when they become uneconomical to restore. My 91 Testarossa is to an extent like that - a victim of its own complexity and service cost vs. its relatively low value.

Other vintage stuff I have only gets parted out after an accident (or in the case of the Countach, not even then, their relative value makes them possible to rebuild).

 

Who cares? That’s tomorrow’s problem and your tomorrow is never guaranteed. Have fun living with ’‘what ifs?”

I get it if you are a mechanic and you enjoy that sort of thing but if you aren’t let mechanics and techs do their job, I would rather stick to what I know.

 

Bricked cars (as well as the ghost brakings I mentioned just as an example) are real and cases are documented, they are not speculation. Sometimes it takes weeks to have the issues solved, on almost new cars for which the manufacturer has a responsibility - what will happen when the cars will be old and of no interest for the manufacturer ?
You elect to deny facts instead of providing real arguments (which may exist btw, unlike some I do not claim that I have the knowledge and others are ignorant), so good luck to you also.
Btw I do not really care either, I just provide my point of view, as long as it's still allowed by the enlightened and non ignorant people

 

There’s no free lunch. If you don’t want costs, dont do anything. But, doing nothing, actually does have a cost.

 

There needs to be a cost/reward balance - the funny thing is, if used 296 prices would be as low in Europe (and France) as in the US, I'd be seriously tempted...

 

Ferraris are not cheap. They actually want (MSRP) close to $7K for the mats which begin to fall apart at 3,000 miles of use. Technology advances and prices actually decline (not Ferrari’s- LOL). Rinse and repeat. Progress.

Cutting edge performance is always expensive. If it’s too hot, get out of the kitchen.