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Automobili Pininfarina teases electric hypercar, credits Tesla’s Elon Musk for “electric vehicle movement”
Automobili Pininfarina, the Munich-based carmaker with deep roots in both the luxury market and Formula E recently teased its upcoming electric hypercar, code-named PF0 (Pininfarina Zero), set to debut in August at the exclusive Pebble Beach Concours in Monterey, California.
Its sister company Pininfarina is the legendary design house responsible for revered supercars like the Ferrari Testarossa, GT 250, and Enzo. In fact, the only street legal Ferrari’s not designed by them are the 1973 Dino 308 GT4 and 2013’s LaFerrari. They’ve also designed cars for Fiat, Alfa Romeo, BMW, Maserati, among others, and manufactured cars for GM, Mitsubishi, and Volvo. Another fun fact -Pininfarina had their own full-sized wind tunnel in 1972, eight years before GM had one.
Automobili Pininfarina has also assembled some impressive talent from across the automotive world. Their executive group includes former Jaguar / Land Rover, Bugatti, Volvo, and Audi employees, to name a few. Their lead designer, Luca Borgogno, previously led Lamborghini’s Turin design studio for Pininfarina, while Formula E driver Nick Heildfeld will be joining the team next year to help deliver a ‘race-bred’ hypercar.
The venture into manufacturing their own car is a sort of rebirth for Pininfarina. The company had fallen on hard times with debt restructuring in the late 2000’s and reductions in their workforce. Then in 2015 Mahindra & Mahindra stepped in to purchase a majority holding. If you aren’t familiar with M&M, they are manufacturer based out of India and one of the founding ten members of Formula E. They are India’s leading electric vehicle manufacturer.
Mahindra Racing
I spoke with Automobili Pininfarina’s CEO Michael Perschke, Chief Brand Officer Dan Connell, and Design Director Luca Borgogno from their July 12th North American brand launch event in New York. My first question was why they chose to go fully electric, with so many established luxury automakers tepidly looking to hybrids for their first venture into electrification.
Michael was quick to give credit to Tesla and Elon Musk. “We wouldn’t be sitting here today if Elon hadn’t started the electric vehicle movement”. He said that to put both technologies on board means you are not committed to either and you don’t start designing a brand new high tech hypercar based on technology that’s over 100 years old. “You don’t want to get stuck with combustion engines,” he said. “The point of no return has been crossed, combustion engines are aging. They can be further improved but they are not a leapfrog technology”. These comments are important to take note of, as someone who has spent his career with companies like Audi and Mercedes, Mr. Perschke’s views on where the industry needs to go are telling.
Manufacturers and the oil industry often claim higher efficiencies are possible with combustion, but to achieve that requires greater complexity and expense, with depreciating returns – all while electric vehicles are making a big gain in performance and cost.
“If you want a brand that’s relevant in 2050, you don’t start with a drivetrain that’s been used since 1890” – Michael Perschke, Automobili Pininfarina.
Automobili Pininfarina North American Brand Launch – New York July 12th, 2018
The car industry has seen several EV startups, with bold claims, but I think this one is legit. They have the right mix of experience, innovation, talent, and financial support. They are certainly targeting some impressive performance figures:
Release Date: 2020
0 – 100 km/h (62 mph): < 2 seconds
0 – 300 km/h (186 mph): < 12 seconds
Top speed: > 400 km/h (250 mph)
Range: > 500 km (310 miles)
You’ll notice that both the timing and the performance figures are conspicuously similar to Tesla’s coming Roadster, but any speculation of competition with Tesla was quickly shot down. “We are complimenting the offering that Elon has launched…. with a focus more on the European supercar design styling heritage”. On the raw specifications, this vehicle seems an obviously competitor but that’s oversimplifying the market. With a reported price tag exceeding $2 million dollars, they are obviously targeting a different segment of the market – it’s a European hypercar after all. And while that may seem to limit its direct impact, I’m excited to see what it can do and how it will influence the performance luxury vehicle segment. As Elon has noted, we still need to fully remove the “performance halo” surrounding high-end combustion cars. That’s Tesla’s goal with the new Roadster and I hope Automobili Pininfarina can help do that for Italian supercars as well. How many posters and computer desktop backgrounds still depict gas burning supercars? It’s time they were replaced.
Luca Borgogno, their design director, shared some of his insights into the design with me.
“We have two key words,” he said “purity and beauty”. He said it was important that all design elements serve a purpose, that form and function must be joined together for a purity of design. Their intent is for the PFO to convey both the legacy of European sports cars and link it to the modern technology that’s behind it.
For the exterior, he said, low drag was obviously important for a vehicle capable of going over 250mph. Keeping the middle of the car as a clean, unobstructed line improves the aerodynamics he said. To do this the rear of the vehicle will have a split rear wing, with each side capable of individually articulating for improved downforce and even provide for air braking. It certainly has a sleek looking profile.
They aren’t releasing any images of the interior yet but he says it again follows the same purity ethos, with clean simplicity and a high degree of seamless digitization. It seems this is a new approach Tesla has pioneered. To add beauty to the interior through simplification. I’m certainly supportive, the interior of my Model 3 is beautiful and immediately relaxing. Automobili Pininfarina seems to be embracing the idea as well.
Luca also noted that purity wasn’t just about interior design but also in the materials they use. That means using as much sustainable and natural materials as possible.
It became apparent that they were designing this car, not just because they loved cars, but because they see where society is going and that we need a more sustainable approach. “Sustainability should not be a buzzword,” Michael said. “For us, it will be the full 360 degree approach. It starts at the tailpipe… but we must also look at the manufacturing, the battery second life, and using renewable energy”. They are currently working on their roadmap to full sustainability and will have explicit targets for it, with more information coming this fall. They complimented Tesla as leaders in this area as well, including their solar installation at the Gigafactory.
The technology to make this car possible seems to be right around the corner. Tesla already has their prototype driving around and reportedly “breaking the laws of physics”. If Automobili Pininfarina can integrate some of their parent companies Formula E tech, then there’s no reason to think this car won’t meet their goals. They are producing the car in small volumes, so mass production “hell” isn’t a concern, but they did note more vehicle models will come, specifically that SUVs are in their future. Is this the start of a new all-electric luxury brand in Europe? One can hope.
It seems they have the right mix to be successful and I hope we see them soon.
Afterword:
At the end of the interview, I asked them if they drive electric cars or which ones they particularly enjoy. Michael quickly noted test driving the Tesla P100D with ludicrous mode was his favorite so far and that’s probably the one he’s going to buy. He also said he’d look at the Volvo XC90 plug-in hybrid as a family car. A Ferrari, he said, would also likely be needed – although I assume that’s at least until their PF0 is available.
News
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
SpaceX filed with the FCC for Starship Flight 14, its first true orbital launch attempt.
SpaceX has asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to fly Starlink terminals during Starship’s fourteenth flight test, and the filing lays out a genuine trip to orbit, something the program has never attempted.
Every Starship flight so far, including Flight 13’s successful splashdown in the Indian Ocean on July 24, has flown a suborbital arc that ends with the ship reentering the atmosphere within the same hour it launches. The FCC paperwork describes a mission profile built around an actual orbital insertion instead.
The payload is the other half of the story. Flight 13 carried 20 production Starlink V3 satellites, but because that mission never reached orbit, the satellites reentered along with the ship rather than joining the constellation, something Teslarati covered in detail after SpaceX released footage shot from one of those satellites as it drifted away from Starship in space. Flight 14 is designed to close that gap. If the orbital insertion holds, the roughly 20 V3 satellites onboard would separate into an operational orbit and could eventually go into service, each one rated for about 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity by SpaceX’s own account.
SpaceX announces new Starbase for ‘thousands of Starship launches annually’
Elon Musk first flagged the orbital attempt during SpaceX’s August 4 earnings call, the company’s first as a public entity following its June IPO under the ticker SPCX. He also floated catching the ship with the Starbase tower on the same flight, an idea he walked back on August 20, saying the catch attempt would more likely come “in a few months,” as Teslarati reported at the time. Flight 14 will instead target a splashdown for the ship in the Indian Ocean, the same recovery method used since Flight 12.
Hardware has been catching up to the ambition. Booster 21 completed a full 33-engine static fire on August 28, and Ship 41 finished its own six-engine test the week before. An airspace briefing circulated to pilots on August 20 listed September 15 as the target date, later than the end of August window Musk mentioned on the earnings call, though SpaceX has not confirmed a launch date publicly and Starship schedules routinely slip while hardware and FAA paperwork line up.
The FCC filing itself does not guarantee a launch date. It covers communications authority, and not flight readiness, considering SpaceX still needs Ship 41 fully stacked and cleared by the FAA before Flight 14 can fly. But the filing is a real marker of intent and it puts a specific regulatory process behind what had so far only been Musk’s word on the earnings call.
Tesla is set to launch Cybercab on Thursday at an event in Austin, Texas, which will officially bring the company’s first steering wheel-less and pedal-less vehicle to a limited number of consumers for the first time.
The event, which is invite-only, is still thin on details: we’ll be there, and it seems the event will be held at Gigafactory Texas, but the launch of this vehicle truly relies on it being operational outside of the factory and on public roads.
🚨 Close-Up look at Tesla Cybercab without steering wheel: pic.twitter.com/9TXCDeDCz7
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 3, 2026
Nevertheless, there are some big things to expect, and other things to temper expectations on. For what it’s worth, we believe this event could be perhaps the biggest indication that Tesla is ready to truly enter a new phase and chapter in its historic story.
Tesla Cybercab’s First Foray into the Public with Real-World Riders
Cybercab will likely hit the streets of Austin and the surrounding areas, likely in the established geofence that Tesla has expanded on for the past 14 months. Just yesterday, Tesla expanded it once again by 9 percent.
Tesla will put, for the first time, a vehicle without any manual controls on public roads, likely without any help from teleoperators. This is a truly groundbreaking development if it comes through in this fashion: it would be groundbreaking for Tesla to roll out a truly driverless ride-hailing vehicle.
Cybercab Has Already Been Unveiled
This is not an unveiling event. Cybercab has been released for nearly two years, as Tesla first showed it to the public on October 10, 2024.
FIRST LOOK: Tesla ‘Cybercab’ Robotaxi makes its global debut
While there is some small speculation that Tesla could release the Roadster at the event as a surprise, it seems more likely the focus will be on the Cybercab and the huge accomplishment that will come with releasing a vehicle with no manual controls.
There Will Be a Lot of Hype
What’s important to remember about the Cybercab event is that Tesla will continue to prioritize safety and the rollout will likely be slow, just as it has been with Robotaxi.
One of the biggest complaints about Robotaxi is vehicle population, and the fact that the wait for a ride, at least in some instances, has been longer than most want to admit.
It will take time for this project to truly scale. It will take time for Tesla to roll this out in a large fashion. The important thing to note is that they are doing it, and they’re doing it with a vehicle that is completely engineered and built internally. That’s something no other ride-hailing service can say.
Elon Musk recently restated a fact that still defines SpaceX’s origin story: if Falcon 1’s fourth launch had failed, the company would not exist. The comment answered a reminder that after three consecutive losses, SpaceX had money for only one more attempt.
On X, Peter Diamandis said that the present-day acknowledgement of SpaceX’s success does not discount the rough start the company had. “Almost nobody remembers that Elon’s first rocket failed three times, and there was money for exactly only one more attempt.”
Musk said, “If the 4th launch had failed, SpaceX would not exist.”
If the 4th launch had failed, SpaceX would not exist
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 30, 2026
In late 2008, the firm was nearly out of cash. Another failure would have ended payroll, closed the Hawthorne factory, and left the Falcon 9 and Dragon programs as unfinished drawings.
The first flight lifted off from Omelek Island on 24 March 2006. Thirty-three seconds later, a corroded aluminum fitting on a fuel line leaked. Kerosene ignited around the Merlin engine, control was lost, and the vehicle came apart. The small DARPA payload, FalconSAT-2, survived the short flight only to land on a storage shed near the pad. Investigators later traced the fitting to a materials mix-up that should never have reached the rocket.
Flight 2, on 21 March 2007, looked far better at first. The first stage burned cleanly and handed off to the Kestrel-powered upper stage. The vehicle crossed 100 kilometers and reached a peak of about 289 kilometers. Then propellant slosh in the second-stage tank started a circular coning motion that grew until the engine shut down. Telemetry faded as the stage tumbled, and SpaceX had reached space but not orbit. Over the next year, the team redesigned everything from the ground up, including tanks, baffles, and the new regeneratively cooled Merlin 1C.
That engine flew on Flight 3 on 2 August 2008. The first stage performed almost perfectly and reached 217 kilometers. After main-engine cutoff, leftover fuel in the cooling channels produced a faint residual thrust, roughly 10 pounds per square inch of chamber pressure. On a Texas test stand, the effect was invisible beneath ambient air pressure. In vacuum it was enough to push the spent first stage back into the second stage after separation. The stages collided, the upper stage spun, and the mission was lost. Musk later said a slightly longer delay before staging would have saved the flight.
Six weeks later, the team assembled Flight 4 from remaining parts and flew it on 28 September 2008 at 23:15 UTC. The payload was Ratsat, a 165-kilogram aluminum mass simulator built in-house. Staging was delayed so residual thrust could decay. The Kestrel ignited, the fairing split away, and nine and a half minutes after liftoff the vehicle was in orbit. After a coast, the second stage restarted, settling into a 621-by-643-kilometer path at 9.35 degrees inclination. Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach Earth orbit. Musk called the insertion “middle of the bull’s-eye.”
SpaceX restores a Falcon 1 rocket for 10th anniversary of first launch success
That success unlocked NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services award later that year. Without it, there would have been no Falcon 9, no reusable first stages, and no Dragon cargo or crew flights to the International Space Station. Launch prices would have remained far higher. Starlink’s constellation would not exist; broadband from low Earth orbit would still be a paper concept.
Ride-share markets, high launch cadence, and the current pace of lunar and Mars hardware would be years behind. Communications, Earth observation, and the cost of putting anything into space would look more like the 2000s than the 2020s.
One extra second of residual thrust in August 2008 would have written a different decade.
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
Tesla Cybercab Event: what to expect from Austin
