Ferrari to slash sports cars' carbon emissions
Posted: 06 July 2008 0436 hrs

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BERLIN : Sports car manufacturer Ferrari intends to cut its vehicles' greenhouse gas emissions by nearly half and is working on developing hybrid vehicles, the company president said Saturday.

"We want to reduce our CO2 emissions by 40 percent between now and 2012," said Luca Cordero di Montezemolo told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, in an interview to be published Sunday.

But he insisted that any future hybrid Ferrari would still be "fundamentally a Ferrari."

"We are currently working on the development of a Ferrari that will use alternative energy sources and which will be based on what we are doing at the moment in Formula 1," he said, referring to Ferrari's Kinetic Energy Recycling System (KERS), which is designed to draw extra power from the brakes.

Such a vehicle would be ready to go on the market around 2015.

Asked about the likelihood of fans of the powerful red sports cars buying a Ferrari with a hybrid or electric engine, the boss of the famous racing machines answered: "Yes, of course. It's the best sports car in the world. It's still fundamentally a Ferrari."

- AFP /ls