Pagani postpones electric supercars as research shows battery packs have a major issue

Italian supercar manufacturer Pagani has postponed its electric vehicle ambition, as the four-year study of the company suggested electric powertrains are very heavy for supercars, Motor1.com reported.

Pagani Founder Horacio Pagani has recently told Autocar that he organized a team to make an electric vehicle, but after four years, they haven’t found any interest in electric supercars. 

After the study results, the company decided to postpone manufacturing an electric supercar and started working on a V12 engine.

“I own a Tesla to understand EVs, and it’s not necessary to have such high performance in them,” Pagani said and continued, “The challenge is to make an EV that gives good emotion like a normal ICE. Pagani isn’t going to do something just with good performance, as you can do this [now], but to give emotion to the driver.”

And of course, as a supercar manufacturer, Pagani cares for emotion, and Horacio Pagani thinks electric vehicles lack driving emotion.

The primary concern of Pagani is the weight of electric vehicles. The company’s study suggested that a viable electric supercar would need to use a 1,323 lbs (600 kg) battery pack. Considering that’s more than half of the weight of its Huayra R, which weighs 2,359 lbs (1,070 kg), it didn't seem likely to continue the process of manufacturing the car.

Horacio Pagani said he envisions a 1,866 lbs (1,300 kg) electric vehicle, but it's not possible with current technology.

He explained the environmental aspect of the vehicles: "At the moment, 90 percent of energy is produced without renewables. It's silly to think that only a few supercars [in the world] with [an internal combustion engine] can have a negative impact on the climate when 90 percent of energy is produced in a bad way".

Instead, the company will continue to produce V12-powered supercars that it sources from Mercedes-Benz, as Pagani previously announced in 2019 that it would use the Mercedes V12 engine through 2026. The engine will power the new Pagani C10 debuts in September. And the first 100 of C10 are already sold out.

The regulators of the European Union have allowed small-time manufacturers registering fewer than 1,000 vehicles per year to continue making internal combustion vehicles until 2035. That gives the manufacturers six more years to go fully electric than those producing in volumes.

As much as we love electric vehicles, there is something about driving mighty internal combustion engines.