For the majority of mortals, considering costs such as consumption or maintenance are a must when purchasing a car. And if we talk about buying an electric car, although the maintenance is less, there is one operation that makes the difference: changing the battery. Depending on the brand and model, prices range between 4,000 and more than 30,000 euros. That’s for EV cars, but hybrids aren’t exactly cheap either.
But there are cars and cars and obviously, The Ferrari LaFerrari plays in another league. The firm’s first hybrid hypercar offers performance typical of its range: it is capable of going from 0 to 100 km/h in 2.9 seconds and exceeds 350 km/h thanks to its 963 HP. But no matter how Ferrari it is, it does not escape suffering from the weak point common to hybrid technologies: the battery.
If we take into account that there are only 499 examples of the Ferrari LaFerrari and that each one was launched with a base RRP of 1.3 million euros (with the passage of time, it has gotten worse: they are around four million on the second-hand market), the Price of its battery is not far behind: exceeds 200,000 euros.
Ferrari’s lucrative solution: replace the entire battery
With barely 1,440 kilometers traveled, one of the few and exclusive owners of a 2014 Ferrari LaFerrari in Croatia discovered how his precious car ran out of traction battery. The first diagnosis indicated that the hybrid battery was out of service. The solution proposed by Ferrari was to replace the entire battery pack at a reasonable price: from 213,000 euros, not counting labor.
So the owner decided to explore other cheaper options, reaching EV Clinic, a Croatian workshop specialized in electric and hybrid vehicle batteries. After an exhaustive analysis of the state of that group of batteries, with 120 cells and weighing about 60 kilos, they identified two failures: defective cells and a defect in the manufacturing assembly.
Good news. The battery was not a brick, but had a localized fault that could be fixed without having to perform a complete replacement. Although the price of this meticulous and precision work has not been released, the owner had his LaFerrari back saving the price of the entire package.
What of ask for quotes from other workshops It is always a good idea, whether you have a Dacia Sandero or a Ferrari. And if not, tell the owner of this Bugatti Veyron, who was asked by the company for 11,000 euros to change the button for the electric adjustment of the rearview mirror when the workshop in his town did it for less than two euros.
Fortunately for those who own a hybrid Ferrari, last year the Italian firm launched an additional extension warranty, so that it will replace the traction batteries of the cars covered in this service in years 8 and 16 of their life.
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Cover | Ferrari, EV Clinic
