Ferrari to unveil first ever electric car priced at half a million pounds

The Italian brand will launch an electric car later next year and is planning on throwing its full effort into making the model cater to its luxury audience.

The already high price point, which doesn't include features and personal touches, makes it one of the most expensive EVs to hit the market.

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Its competitors have a much lower price for their electric car range with Porsche's electric Taycanstarting at around £84,000.

Ferrari plans to inaugurate its production plant in its hometown of Maranello, northern Italy, later this week on Friday.

The factory which delivered fewer than 14,000 cars last year, will “eventually allow production capacity to rise to around 20,000,” a source told Reuters.

Fabio Caldato, a portfolio manager at AcomeA SGR, which holds Ferrari shares, said: "There is an increasing demand out there for Ferraris, and they have room to meet part of it without compromising exclusivity."

Caldato added: "That is not getting any shorter. Being in the waiting list is a status symbol.”

The new factory in Maranello will enable Ferrari to produce its electric vehicle offering alongside its existing petrol and hybrid cars.

The site will reportedly be fully operational in three to four months.

A second EV model is also being mulled over by the Italian brand is in the early stage of development.

The brand's CEO Benedetto Vigna told shareholders in April: "The state-of-the-art plant will assure us of flexibility and technical capacity in excess of our needs for years to come".

Lamborghini, another competitor to Ferrari, plans to offer its first EV model by 2028.

The car maker's CEO, Stephan Winkelmann, told Reuters "It was more important to have the right product than to be first".

Mediobanca analyst Andrea Balloni added that Ferrari's new EV would need to have a high price tag to help "preserve margins", compensating for the development of the new fully-electric technology and the larger number of parts sourced externally.

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Balloni said: "I expect the new EV to be a niche model, accounting for just over 10 per cent of annual sales."