Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Can Ferrari go all electric? Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. I'm Travis Hoy. I'm joined today by Lou Whiteman and Matt Frankel. And guys, one of the big items over the weekend that I think we got to start with is Ferrari introducing their all electric Luce, if I'm saying that correctly. correctly.
We have a pizza luche down the street from me. Probably not related, but this is something that we've seen at least the guts of. Johnny Ives' company, Love From, designed some of the internals, so we saw a little bit of that, but we actually saw the outside The reaction from the media, from, you know, influencers and people like that, Matt, was not all that positive.
So what do you think about Ferrari making this step into the EV space?
I mean, I could have told you before they made this product announcement that the market was going to react negatively. It's going to be really tough. for Ferrari to differentiate itself in the EV space.
Chapter 2: What is the significance of Ferrari's new electric model, Luce?
The company's own executives seem to think that this is the future of the company, and I don't buy it. People buy Ferraris for specific reasons. One, they sound different than every other car on the road. They have race car-like handling, which is almost impossible with an EV because your batteries weigh 2,000 pounds. I mean, there's a lot.
People who buy Ferraris don't care about being able to drive 3,000 miles in a clip. The average Ferrari goes about 2,000 miles a year.
Yeah, they're not actually for driving as much as they're probably very fun to drive. I've driven one once, but they are more of kind of a showcase than anything else.
Yeah, I think I was there when you drove your Ferrari. Yes, that's right. And being able to carry five passengers in their luggage. No one buys a Ferrari for that, especially a $600,000 upscale version. And with EVs, being able to do zero to 60 in two and a half seconds is not a differentiator. You could do that with a Tesla Model S Plaid for one-fifth of the price, less if you buy one used.
It's not as much of a differentiator as it is when you're buying a sports car. A Ferrari sports car is noticeably faster than a Camaro. It's not noticeably faster than my wife's Cadillac EV because it has instant power delivery. So I feel like the market's reaction is correct in that the EV focus is a bit of a misstep for Ferrari. The plug-in hybrid they released not long ago was a big success.
And I think that's really the direction they're going to end up going.
Yeah, Lou, what's so interesting about this is the design is so different than most Ferraris. And we've seen this before. If you remember Porsche, when they came out with their SUVs, that was actually a huge success for them financially that arguably saved the company. But this one almost seems to go a little further in that direction.
I said in our show notes that it reminds me of Apple's unapologetically plastic iPhones. It kind of has that sheen to it. So it just seems like it's so far off. that that's what's throwing people off. That all said, I still kind of like it.
Yeah, you know, Matt saw this reaction coming. I didn't, because to be honest, I'm surprised investors care. This to me feels like a placeholder. You're a European automaker. You're an automaker in general, but especially a European automaker. You have to have something in this segment, period. Just so the politicians don't bug you when you call them up. I don't think this is a needle mover.
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Chapter 3: What challenges does Ferrari face in the EV market?
But look, I'm not going to say that there isn't a market for five passengers with luggage. I wouldn't have thought the Porsche Cayenne would work either. There are people who will pay ridiculous amounts to brag about what they're really when they're just buying a. And Cayenne kind of looks like the Kia, if you ask me, in a lot of ways.
But, you know, so there is always a market out there for this, maybe. But for the most part, you know, they're not trying to differentiate there. They're not trying to do anything more than check the box, get something in this market and then let it evolve from there.
Ferrari's big differentiator is that they have the best in class margins. They don't lose money on new models. They do a great job of keeping demand just ahead of supply, even on all their new model launches. And like we said, they have a giant wait list for most of their models. And the Porsche Cayenne was not a $700,000 vehicle, is a big thing to point out.
Much more mass market than Ferrari has ever been. Right. And I don't have the number in front of how much they spent developing this. But I think the investor reaction is that it won't produce the kind of margins that Ferraris used to, that they're not going to get the ROI on that spending that they do on the plug-in hybrid, which sells for, I think, like $800,000 and has a long wait list.
So that's really what we're seeing here, that they're not going to get the ROI on their spend, not just the look of the vehicle, but just that they're not going to make their money back.
This is such a R&D intensive industry. And again, I don't know how they can avoid, I mean, nothing Matt said is wrong, but I think it misses just the reality of you have to be doing something here and do it sort of their terms. You know, I don't know. If the market was surprised by this, I think the market's got better gripes with Ferrari right now than this. I'll just say that.
Then maybe their F1 team did have a pretty good weekend, at least with Lewis Hamilton. So maybe that's not something that they're griping about. Mercedes also came out with a concept that's not as close to production as it seems like the Luce is. But is that something that it's not quite as...
off the kind of traditional style of a mercedes vehicle is that maybe going to be a little bit more successful or does that even matter is it just this this placeholder that you need to kind of check the box and say you're involved in evs but you're not necessarily looking to sell a lot of these
Kind of same answer, but I do think there's probably more opportunity for sales there just because of the nature of their customer. Look, I looked at that one too, and that looked like my neighbor's Audi. So I don't know how you really differentiate yourselves anymore. And to be honest, I mean, you know what differentiated itself in the market was the Cybertruck.
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Chapter 4: How does the design of Ferrari's Luce differ from traditional models?
I think it was like a two-year span. We raised interest rates tremendously. Is this what you would expect to see is, hey, yeah, maybe this is the beginning of the end of this conflict and the economic impacts, but we're going to be feeling this for quite a while?
Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure Jerome Powell wishes he could take that word back transitory when he said it. We never we we still have not gotten back to the two percent target. It's worth mentioning even now, you know, inflation was the highest it's been since 2023 last month. It's not just energy. There are other contributing factors as well.
When we came into 2026, I thought tariff uncertainty was a thing of the past, and then boom, it just shot back up. It's not just the energy price inflation. I think it's going to take a little longer to cool off. I think the Fed's going to be a little bit more deliberate in acknowledging that it's going to take a little longer to cool off than they had been before.
I still think over the next two years that the general direction of inflation and interest rates is lower, but it's going to be a much more steady and slow decline than a lot of people think.
Yeah, and maybe lower from the peak, but I don't, I question what the forces are that's going to really push, put pressure on rates and put pressure on inflation. We talked, I mean, wouldn't it be great, Travis, if we could just go back to talking about things like the deficit and stuff like that as driving things, but it is really, really hard to see the bond market believing that we are in a,
above average credibility market, even if all of these external factors go away overnight. I think more normalized inflation relative to the beginning of this decade should be expected. Is it down from the highs? Probably. But we aren't going anywhere near the lows. And if anything, I think we should learn to live what we've had the first few months of the year.
I think this is going to feel more normal than a few years ago.
Yeah, and we are stock investors, but just a reminder that bond investors run about 10 times more money. The bond market is much, much bigger than the stock market. So it is important from time to time to listen to what they're telling us with what's going on with rates. And it seems like those expected rates are going higher, at least later this year. Something to keep an eye on for investors.
When we come back, we're going to talk about a potential slowdown in AI spending from some of the big tech companies you're listening to. Motley Fool, Hidden Gems Investing. Welcome back to Money Fool Hidden Gems Investing.
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