Expert comment: Ferrari's first ever electric car sells for a record $40m

Vahid comments: “Forty million dollars for a car that will not be delivered until next year tells you the collector market has decided electric Ferraris are history rather than novelty.

“It also creates a problem nobody has had to solve before. This car carries 210 battery cells, which makes it the first serious collectable with a consumable part inside it. A 1960s Ferrari can be kept alive indefinitely because every component can be remade by hand. Lithium cells cannot. They lose capacity whether the car is driven or left under a dust sheet, and the cell format will be out of production long before the paint fades. That is a reality for every electric car, not just this one.

“Whoever bought this car can postpone the question for thirty years. But anyone using an electric car from any brand for work and family life faces it now, in the UK and worldwide. Ask people why they hesitate over a used electric car and the answer is rarely the driving. It is the battery: how much life is left in it and what happens if it needs replacing. That uncertainty is already pulling down second-hand values, and it grows every year as the fleet ages, and we need to be ready for it. 

“The fix is not complicated. It needs a trustworthy, independent way of measuring what is left in a battery, and someone prepared to stand behind that number when the car changes hands. Forty million dollars has just gone on one battery. The millions of others are the real challenge and we need to find an answer for our economy.”