Maserati’s two-pronged march upmarket and towards full electrification will come to fruition in 2025 with the launch of an all-new interpretation of the legendary Quattroporte saloon, which will be the brand’s first ever EV-only model.
Speaking exclusively to Auto Express at the opening of the brand’s latest dealership in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, Bernard Loire, Maserati Chief Commercial Officer, said, “You’ll see the first electric-only Maserati in 2025 with a new Quattroporte. You will see that it’s a real Maserati and a real Quattroporte.”
As was evident from the brand now being sold alongside Lamborghini, Bentley and Ferrari at the new HR Owen site, Maserati is on a push to be parent company Stellantis’s luxury brand. As Loire explained: “Maserati is not aiming to be a volume brand. It’s aiming to provide exceptional cars with a very high level of quality and also making profit for the company, which has not always been the case.
“To do so, you don’t need to talk to everyone, but you need to be a bit different. And you will see the Quattroporte, which will be a full electric car only, it’s not going to look like an electric car at all – that’s the route that we are choosing.”
Loire also confirmed that the rest of the Maserati range will follow the Quattroporte in moving more upmarket. “There will be a move up,” said Loire. “Today we have the lower entry point to the brand and we will move slowly up by the launches of new product.
“We started already with MC20 and GranTurismo because those cars are quite high price, of course, and they are quite unique. Grecale is very good at getting new customers to the brand. Electrification is also an important way to bring new customers to the brand. We need to get the new audience in, but in the future we are very much seeing ourselves moving up to products like Quattroporte, Levante and the sports car. So really getting to the luxury world.”
Loire wouldn’t be drawn on what platform the all-electric Quattroporte would use, but Auto Express expects it will be one of the first new models to make use of the advanced new Stellantis STLA range of platforms. In the case of the Quattropprte it’s most likely to be the STLA Large platform with a reported range of around 500 miles.
“Of course Stellantis offers us an opportunity of getting access to technologies and that’s extremely important when you know the investments that have to be made on the powertrains, on the batteries, on the software, et cetera,” said Loire. “For us it’s a chance to have access to that. And yes, we will try to build our cars on the most common platform taken from Stellantis, but it has to be kept as a Maserati.
“The way of managing platforms is more flexible than it used to be so we can different cars on the same platform. Of course, a Maserati has to always be a Maserati, so focused on the performance, on the driving pleasure, and on the design – there won’t be compromise on that.”
New electric Maserati Levante to follow
Following on from the Quattroporte will be an all-new, all-electric Levante, again likely to be based on the STLA Large platform. However, Maserati is avoiding the temptation to go larger with the Levante, with Loire firm that the brand will be avoiding the temptation to build a larger, three-row SUV.
“The product definition is not yet frozen, but certainly we are working on a new Levante. We are not going to build a boxy car just to have a roominess or package. We will build, in any case a Maserati – a compromise on the design won’t be made. And I’ve got a question for instance, will we have a three rows Maserati? The answer is no.
“We would like to provide the fantastic dynamic with the design as an Italian car and we cannot make a boxy car – then it looks like a station wagon and it’s not a Maserati anymore.
“I cannot talk about the dimension of the future, but the next Levante is not going to be that far away from the car of today.”
Loire also promised that future Maseratis would feature plenty of technology, but in a restrained manner without resorting to multiple screens around the cabin. “If you take the GranTurismo, you have very high level of infotainment, but we are keeping the environment of the luxury Maserati interior,” he says. “So we have not an objective to put as many screens all over the place – these are vehicles that you love to drive. There is the necessary infotainment with the highest technology, but it has not to be defined by proving that we have as many screens as we can do. That’s not our design strategy.
“We always keep a kind of timeless design or something which is not going to be exaggerated. GranTurismo is exactly this expression where we are reinventing the GranTurismo but keeping the DNA, we are not willing to go for something which is not Maserati. We are Italian luxury the one representation of Italian luxury in the industry.”
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