Why EVs Have Floundered in the Ultra-Premium Segment
By Edward A. Sanchez — March 13, 2025
Just last week, Maserati announced it was pulling the plug on the “Folgore” EV version of its MC20 supercar. Bugatti is slow-walking into the EV space, despite being headed up by EV supercar genius Mate Rimac. Mercedes-Benz has announced its “EQ” sub-branding is going away in a pivot to offering EV versions of its “regular” models. Porsche Taycan sales, once one of the brand’s best-selling models, have cooled substantially.
The traits that electric powertrains bring to the premium segment were once coveted and rigorously pursued by luxury brands in the ICE era, stuffing cavities, door pillars, and other nooks and crannies with acoustic foam. Engines were smothered in foam-lined plastic covers and acoustic hood liners to silence the engine noise. Electric motors bring inherent smoothness and low noise to the table, as well as plentiful, linear torque, something internal-combustion engineers agonized over with throttle mapping, spark timing, and boost management, now made much easier by means of software tuning and power management.
So why has the ultra-luxury (Let’s define it as $150,000+ for the sake of this argument) segment been lukewarm to EVs, by and large? I believe a lot of it is the perception by some of the ultra-wealthy that EVs fall into the same category as Priuses – efficient, boring, slow, and OK for the unwashed masses, but “not for us.” The tech-forward early adopters that bought the Model S Plaids, Taycans, and EQSs don’t represent the majority of luxury buyers.
The cost of premium fuel, and the multi-thousand-dollar service bills of these cars is of little care to these eight-plus-figure net worth individuals and households, who often have “help” to take care of the more mundane tasks of household maintenance (including cars). Long story short, EVs aren’t seen as “special” anymore, if they ever were.
The analogy I’m about to make may seem like a bit of a stretch, but bear with me. I see internal-combustion cars becoming more like horses. Over the course of about a decade at the turn of the 20th century, horses went from being the ubiquitous means of transportation and propulsion in the industrialized world, to being only used for some police patrols, parades, and as a hobby for the ultra-wealthy. The versatility and economics of the internal-combustion engine simply trounced the care, feeding, and maintenance necessary with horses.
Likewise, internal combustion engines will probably be around for decades to come. The advent of so-called e-fuels (synthetic liquid hydrocarbon fuels) may prolong their life even further. The fact that e-fuels don’t really make a lot of sense economically at the moment, especially in comparison to electrification, is of little consequence to the ultra-rich. Even if they have to pay $10-15 a gallon so they can hear the rumble and pop of their bespoke-built engine in their exotic, it will be a small price to pay for the sensory pleasure.
To break it down further, I think the sensation and thrill of internal combustion only matters to certain segments of the ultra-premium space, namely, sports cars and high-performance variants. For brands like Rolls-Royce, electrification is a perfect fit for its brand in terms of near-total silence and unmatched smoothness. But for brands like Ferrari, Lamborghini, the harder-core Porsche 911 models, BMW M models, and Mercedes-AMG, the aloof, slightly anti-social noise made by V-12s, flat-sixes, and flat-plane V-8s projects a certain status that remains appealing to that specific market segment.
Do I think that appeal will eventually fade to the point where the sales numbers become irrelevant, and the rational business case effectively disappears? Yes. I do feel near-complete electrification of the transportation sector is ultimately inevitable. But the last rumble of ICE may be after my lifetime.
