Maserati is one of just a few brand holdouts that haven’t yet offered a single model with a charge port.
That’s due to change very soon, with the arrival of the GranTurismo Folgore in the fourth quarter of 2023. But to prepare for that, Maserati needs to get its dealerships ready with chargers, so that it can service EVs and get them charged up for customers.
For that it’s turning to Michigan’s Future Energy, for customized DC fast-chargers—which appear to be 60- to 180-kw Blink modular DC fast-chargers, skinned for Maserati—plus software to automate and manage them for energy use.
Maserati DC fast-chargers for dealerships
The GranTurismo Folgore essentially subs in three-motor electric propulsion in place of the GranTurismo’s vocal, rev-happy twin-turbo V-6, and it manages a 50/50 weight distribution and 0-60 mph time around 2.7 seconds. With a 92.5-kwh, T-shaped battery pack stocked with Polish-sourced LG Chem batteries, the Folgore EV leverages 800-volt charging, so it should charge very quickly at roadside stops, given high-power hardware.
Maserati is doing things a bit differently than the other brands of its parent company Stellantis. Maserati committed earlier this year to use Bosch charging services behind the scenes of its EVs, allowing drivers of the GranTurismo Folgore to easily find and navigate to charge points using either the in-vehicle interface or in-app payment details.
At that time, Bosch claimed that by mid-year 2023 its services would include 700,000 charge points in Europe, North America, and the Asia-Pacific region, so there will be no shortage of potential charging stops included in that data. Bosch typically also includes phone support, too, which might be branded for Maserati.
Stellantis earlier this year committed to aggregated EV charging and smart route planning under a single business called Free2Move Charge, but for now it appears Maserati won’t use this service.
Maserati Grecale Folgore
The second EV, the Grecale Folgore, will arrive in the first quarter of 2024.
Those two models fit in with plans from the parent company Stallantis to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 and be “a world leader” in sustainability. Maserati in 2022 announced plans to offer a fully electric version of each of its models by 2025, with an all-EV lineup by 2030. And recently it also committed as one of the seven automakers forming a new high-power U.S. fast-charging network.
Maserati’s electric-vehicle announcements have for years sent mixed signals about both its level of commitment to electrification and its future product portfolio—partly because of the changeover of its parent company from Fiat Chrysler to Stellantis. So the actual arrival of a Maserati EV would resolve years of sometimes conflicting comments.
Maserati Grecale Folgore
The brand’s executives in 2015 said that a battery electric Maserati made no sense. Less than two years after that, then Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne said that Maserati in particular made sense for full electrification. Even well after a 2018 plan suggesting that there would be four new battery-electric models starting in 2022, remarks from Maserati’s North American chief seemed to fly in the face of the brand’s announcements, saying it was “a brand that needs combustion engines.”
With chargers going out to dealerships now, and those Maserati EVs arriving soon, it seems the brand looks poised to do just fine without them.