Ferrari marketing director Emanuele Carando says the right sound can be just as important as performance

Expect Ferrari‘s first EV to make some noise. Literally.

The storied Italian marque wants enthusiasts to know that its first battery-powered model will be a true Prancing Horse. And just because the car won’t have a combustion engine under the hood doesn’t mean it won’t produce a roar drivers have come to expect from the brand over the decades.

Ferrari’s first EV remains on pace to debut late next year. Little is known about the project at this point, but in a recent interview with Drive, the company’s product marketing and marketing intelligence director Emanuele Carando said it is intent on building a vehicle that produces the same sensation as one of its sports cars.

“Whenever we talk about a car, we talk about the driving thrills, which is a combination of power, force, weight, brakes [and] sound,” the executive told the Australian publication.

The marque isn’t interested in building a new kind of Ferrari; it wants to build a true Prancing Horse, just with an electric powertrain. Because of this, drivers shouldn’t expect to see a huge jump in acceleration or power from the EV—at least not at first. Performance is paramount, but so are design, driving feel, and sound. Carando didn’t detail how the company planned to recreate the roar of one of its fabled V-12s but was adamant that the upcoming EV would sound just like the brand’s other vehicles, including the just-unveiled 12Cylindri.

“[The sound is] always authentic in a Ferrari,” he told the magazine.

Ferrari isn’t the first automaker to set out to build an EV that sounds just like a high-performance gas guzzler. Dodge’s upcoming battery-powered Charger Daytona will feature a synthetic “Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust” system that will mimic the sounds created by the Hemi V-8 in its past muscle cars. It remains to be seen if the Maranello outfit will use similar technology or come up with an entirely different solution.

No matter what Ferrari’s EV sounds like, or how popular it ends up, the combustion engine’s days are not numbered in Maranello. In another interview with Australian website Car Expert, Caranado echoed previous comments made by product development head Gianmaria Fulgenzi that the company will keep putting V-12s in its cars as long as it is legally able to.Ferrari’s first electric car will have an ‘authentic’ roar, exec says

This story first appeared in Robb Report USA