Ferrari goes electric with its most powerful street-legal car ever

Ferrari just launched Its most powerful street-legal car ever — a 986 horsepower road bullet with three electric motors.

The SF90 Stradale marks Ferrari’s first plug-in hybrid that’s not built for the racetrack. It’s powered by a 4.0-liter turbocharged V8 that generates 769 horsepower, but gets another 217 horsepower from three electric motors — one powering the rear wheels and two for the front.

All that extra juice helps the car do zero-to 62 mph in a mere 2.5 seconds and reach a top speed of 211 mph.

It’s not exactly the first plug-in Ferrari, famed for its thunderous V12 internal-combustion engines. The $1.5 million La Ferrari supercar, only 500 of which were produced, used electric motors to give a little boost to its V12 and push it to 950 horsepower. Ferrari’s Formula One racers also use a hybrid motor-generator system.

The “SF90 Stradale” name comes from the automaker’s 2019 Formula One race car, the SF90 in honor of Ferrari’s 90 years in racing. The word “stradale” means “road” in Italian.

It’s fast but don’t count on driving too far in battery-only mode since the all-electric range is only 16 miles.

But Ferrari’s engineers had to solve some complex problems by adding a hybrid system, which added an additional 595 pounds. Ferrari shaved off some of those pounds with carbon fiber but also came up with some clever innovations.

By using the hybrid system for reverse, Ferrari was able to take out the reverse gear from the eight-speed gearbox, which saves weight. It’s also all-wheel drive, to better utilize the hybrid system. And the two front electric motors also control the torque, making driving at high speeds “much simpler and easier,” according to Ferrari.

Ferrari also had to work on new aerodynamics to create more downforce and efficiencies. So it lowered the engine cover and created new diffuser and front-end systems.

The big question Ferrari has yet to answer is price. Ferrari dealers say it will be less than the La Ferrari but likely more than Ferrari’s previous V8 mid-engine, the $350,000 488 GTB, which was recently replaced by the F8 Tributo.

Either way one thing is certain: the waiting list for the SF90 Stradale will be long. Deliveries are expected to start in the beginning of 2020.