Maserati Plugs into Formula E

Maserati is written into the history of motorsport. The legendary Juan Manuel Fangio won the F1 World Championship with Maserati in 1957. Maria Teresa De Filippis, the first woman to qualify for an F1 Grand Prix, was driving a Maserati car. And between 2004 and 2010, the Maserati MC12 won 22 races and picked up 14 titles in the FIA GT Championship. Now, after more than a decade off the track, Maserati is back at the races.

Rather than slugging it out in F1, to mix sporting metaphors, Maserati has debuted in the 9th Formula E World Championship, the first Italian brand to enter the all-electric series. And it’s not there to make up the numbers. Maserati has taken to the field with the new Gen3, the fastest, lightest, and most powerful Formula E racing car to date.

For the luxury Italian car maker, the move is a declaration of intent. F1 may still pull in the crowds but it’s increasingly an anachronism, a celebration of soon-to-be-extinct engineering, a high-speed death spiral. Formula E is an innovation lab where the future of electric mobility—the future of cars—is being engineered and coded.

Away from the track, Maserati is the undisputed champ in the grand tourer class, cars designed for the high-speed, high-style long haul. And it has just launched its latest grand tourer, the GranTurismo Folgore, appearing first with an electric powertrain, with a combustion engine version to follow.

For Maserati it is a clear opportunity to own a category. No luxury car maker, certainly not one with its credentials, has launched a luxury electric grand tourer. But it is also a challenge. Range is the Achilles heel of electric vehicles, and the grand tourer is all about the long, epic drive.

Giovanni Tommaso Sgro, head of Maserati Corse, says that close attention was paid to Formula E while the Folgore was being developed. “We were looking at what formula E was doing from an engineering standpoint, what the cars were capable of and how we could use that as inspiration to what we want to produce.”