- Stellantis pulls investment into future Maserati products
- Aston Martin will cut jobs and delay debut EV… again
- Luxury car industry continues to struggle with electrification
Both Aston Martin and Maserati are reevaluating their plans for future electrification models, as budget and job cuts force the businesses to decide whether there is an appetite for future EVs bearing the recognizable performance badges.
Earlier this week, Aston Martin announced plans to cut 5% of its workforce following hefty fourth quarter losses at the tail end of last year, according to The Guardian.
Supply chain issues and a cooling of demand in China have been cited as reasons for the poor financial performance.
Although the marque hasn’t linked the jobs cuts directly to its future EV launches, Adrian Hallmark, the current chief executive, told The Telegraph that electric cars are “too extreme a step” for many of its customers and that we won’t see a fully-electric Aston Martin until “the latter part of this decade”.
We were due to see the British marque’s first attempt at electrifying its line-up this year, but the model was later postponed until 2027… and now looks like it might be delayed even further.
Instead, Hallmark told The Telegraph that plug-in hybrid vehicles will be a priority, because “you get more torque in the phase of acceleration but you still get all the benefits of combustion engine when the electric motor becomes less efficient at the higher performance range.”
Luxury Italian sports car manufacturer Maserati is also experiencing increasingly worrying sales figures, with its sales dropping by over 50% last year, falling from 26,600 in 2023 to just 11,300 in 2024, according to CarScoops.
The company, which only recently announced its Folgore range of EVs that includes the GranCabrio, GranTurismo and Grecale SUV, will have to limp on as its owner Stellantis pulled the plug on a planned £1.2billion ($1.6billion) investment this week.
The money had been earmarked to create new and exciting models, including an electrified Maserati MC20 supercar and EV replacements for the Quattroporte and Levante models.
According to Autocar, Stellantis’ chief financial officer Doug Ostermann, again blamed performance in China, noting that the company had higher expectations regarding the luxury market and how quickly it would transition to electrification.
Luxury brands continue to face EV struggles
While it is disappointing that both Aston Martin and Maserati have had to scale back their future EV plans, they aren’t the only luxury automakers struggling as the world pivots towards electrification.
Porsche said that it would cut 1,900 jobs by 2029, according to The FT, as it struggles with poor demand for its electric vehicles, even going so far as to mull over the possibility of shoehorning internal combustion engines, which it says it will continue to develop, into models that it previously stated would be all-electric.
Lotus Cars, which is currently owned by Chinese multinational Geely, was resurrected as a highly electrified brand, but it says it will bring back gas power next year with new “Hyper Hybrid” technology.
European CEO Dan Balmer told Evo Magazine that he is “reading the room” when it comes to determining the best powertrain to appease an ever-evolving market.
Unlike smaller and cheaper electric vehicles, buyers in the luxury market have been put off by eye-watering price tags and even more painful residual values that battery packs and electric motors bring with them.
Add to this the lingering sense of range anxiety and the lack of sonorous V6, V8 and V12 petrol engines, and it is proving a recipe for disaster for those in the business of making desirable performance machines.
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