Do you remember the Italian car brand Aehra? The premium brand presented an electric SUV in October 2022, followed by an electric saloon in June 2023. The design experts have now come up with names for the cars and the production plans are becoming more concrete.
The SUV will be called Impeto, while the saloon will be called Estasi. Impeto is reminiscent of the word Impetus and is apparently intended to symbolise the momentum of the new model. The model name Estasi was derived from the ecstasy that is supposed to come over you when you look at the car.
According to the Aehra website, the two models are around five metres long and have an identical wheelbase of 3,052 mm. The drive is provided by three electric motors, one at the front and two at the rear axle. The system output is specified as 815 PS. This means that the 62 mph sprint should take less than 2.9 seconds for both models; the top speed should be 162 mph.
The 120 kWh battery should provide enough power for a range of 500 miles. Charging is to take place at up to 350 kW, which means that the cars should have an 800-volt system. This means that the usual charging stroke of 10 to 80 per cent should only take 15 minutes. The cars are to be sold in North America, Europe and the Gulf States.
The brand has also announced that it has submitted a €1.2 billion plan to the Italian Ministry of the Economy for the construction of a plant. In other words, it has applied for subsidies. Approval does not seem out of the question, as the Meloni government is endeavouring to keep as much industry in Italy as possible. This endeavour is also reflected in the new name of the Ministry of the Economy, which is officially called Ministero delle imprese e del Made in Italy (Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy, Wikipedia).
The 207,000 square metre production facilities are to be built in Mosciano Sant'Angelo, a town near the Italian east coast, roughly on the outskirts of Rome. Aehra plans to create 650 new jobs, 540 of which will be at the plant and 110 at the company headquarters in Milan. The ground-breaking ceremony is set to take place this year, with production of SUVs and saloons set to begin as early as mid-2026. Production is to be ramped up to 25,000 units per model per year. There is room for expansion so that later Aehra models can also be built there.
The planned plant is located in Abruzzo, the "home of the Italian carbon fibre industry", as Aehra describes the rather economically weak region. The region therefore offers good opportunities for the production of the carbon monocoque of the two planned models. This should limit the weight of the two models to just 2.2 to 2.3 tonnes.
In addition, the electric car competence centre at the University of L'Aquila is located close to the planned plant. A partnership has already been initiated. Aehra also has a similar partnership with the Milan Polytechnic.
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The bottom line
Aehra apparently wants to produce luxurious and particularly lightweight luxury vehicles that will certainly cost a lot of money. This will put the brand in competition with Lotus, Porsche and Mercedes. However, we are now sceptical about new electric car brands. Too many projects have come to nothing, just think of Faraday, Lightyear, Sono and Fisker. But there are also counter-examples such as Lucid, Rimac and Togg. So let's wait and see what happens to Aehra. The launch is scheduled for two years from now, which means that the market launch has already been pushed back by a year compared to the end of 2021.
Source: Aehra (per E-Mail)