The Tesla of Italy, Aehra’s Sexy EVs Now Have Names

ByAehra, the company that calls itself “Italy’s first pure EV brand,” has two uncommonly attractive vehicles in the works, the Impeto SUV and the Estasi sedan. The designs were first shown in 2022 and 2023 , then unnamed. Pricing for both vehicles is expected to be in the vicinity of US$170,000.

Aehra has some private resources, but is also awaiting government funding. It has submitted a €1.2 billion (US$1.3 billion) development plan to Italy’s Ministry of Industry (controller of the country’s Automotive Fund) to underwrite construction of a 200,000-square-metre plant, which it plans to build at Mosciano Sant’Angelo, in the Abruzzo region of eastern Italy. Aehra says it will create 540 jobs in the region, and 110 more at its headquarters in Milan.

The Estasi with its doors open
Courtesy of Aehra

Hazim Nada, Aehra’s U.S.-born but Italy-raised CEO and founder, tells Penta he expects the Automotive Fund to be capitalised with €2.5 billion next year.

“The government is quite enthusiastic about this project, and we don’t see anyone else with significant production plans,” he says, adding that automotive start-ups are thin on the ground “in Europe, not just in Italy.”

Nada says the company had originally planned to build its cars via an existing contract manufacturer such as Magna Steyr in Austria, but he says finding a plant that could handle the special carbon-fibre process Aehra plans to use proved difficult. “It’s been a busy year, focusing on the location for our assembly line,” he says. “I hope to move soon to working on consolidating our dealer network and sales process.”

The company likes Abruzzo because it’s not only the centre of Italy’s lightweight carbon-fibre industry, but also a hive of EV expertise at the University of L’Aquila. As its plans changed, Aehra has had to push back its start date. Nada says the company aims to be through the building-permit process by the end of the year or early 2025, then start construction of the plant—a 1.5- to two-year process.

A rendering of the Aehra Estasi interior.
Courtesy of Aehra

Cars should start issuing from the plant in 2027, Nada says. The plan is to eventually scale up to 50,000 vehicles annually. He says Aehra does not intend to produce anything but battery EVs.

“Our focus is to build cars you can’t create with a thermal engine,” he says. “That’s our core. We couldn’t achieve the same results with hybrids.”

The designer of the cars was Filippo Perini, a veteran of Audi and Lamborghini. The cars are certainly beautiful, and closely related in their very streamlined designs. Nada says “the platforms are identical below the beltline.” The vehicles have frameless upward-opening doors (the company calls them Dihedral Facing Doors) that leave a large opening and ease entry and exit. The target is for them to have a very low coefficient of drag, 0.21, which means they should slip easily through the air.

Aehra’s modified styling for its Impeto SUV.
Courtesy of Aehra.

The announced statistics are impressive, with a 500-mile range (close to certain versions of the Lucid Air) via 120-kilowatt-hour Miba Battery Systems packs and a top speed of around 165 miles per hour from the 800-horsepower powertrain. Zero to 62 miles per hour should take less than three seconds in the Estasi sedan, aided by a target curb weight of around 4,850 pounds (low for an EV with that size battery pack). A 10% to 80% fast charge should take 15 minutes.

Like the aforementioned Lucid, the Aehras are intended to be roomy inside. The SUV “will effortlessly accommodate four full-size National Basketball Association players while leaving room for a 6-foot adult in the middle of the rear-seat row,” the company says.

Aehra is targeting North America, Europe, and the Gulf States as markets for its cars. Nada thinks the Impeto SUV might have a sales edge.

“The SUV is easiest in the current market, but we expect to see some surprises with the sedan,” he says.

The Apple growth and profit machine is wavering, and the boost from price increases might not be enough to keep it going at historic rates. That dials up the pressure on Apple’s new chief executive, John Ternus.

The company saved the bad news for its earnings call, an hour after it posted its results for the September quarter, projecting that for the current quarter its high-margin services business will continue to slow and that its widely watched gross profit margin will continue to fall.

Apple AAPL -1.83%decrease; down pointing triangle shares had been flat in post-close trading but declined as much as 4% after the company made the projections, which fell short of Wall Street estimates.

The impact of high memory costs are weighing even more heavily on the company, Ternus and Apple Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh said on the company’s earnings call. Apple has stockpiled cheaper components purchased earlier, but those inventories are dwindling.

When Ternus took over as Apple’s third chief executive of the past 29 years on Sept. 1, he inherited sky-high expectations. The men he followed were among the most successful company leaders in American business history. Steve Jobs revolutionized consumer devices multiple times. Tim Cook expanded Jobs’s creation to spectacular heights.

The expectations are reflected in Apple’s huge valuation. Oppenheimer analyst Martin Yang noted that Apple stock trades at 36 times next year’s expected earnings, a premium to the overall market, even though its earnings are only expected to grow 1%, which is slower than its tech peers.

“We see insufficient upside to justify the premium,” Yang wrote in an investor note, adding that Apple needs to boost iPhone sales growth and turn around its slowing services business to make him more bullish.

Investors have bid up Apple shares because it has been a port in the AI storm—a reliable and capital-efficient business that stands apart from rivals which are spending hundreds of billions of dollars racing to the AI frontier.

While others invest in data centers, Apple has been pouring its own cash into buybacks and dividends. But that safety may be challenged if Ternus can’t speed up Apple’s innovation engine.

Apple’s lagging performance in AI was evident when its new “Siri AI” chatbot arrived this past quarter. Its long-maligned assistant was already stale the day it arrived, surpassed by agents such as Instinct and Muse that can complete multistep tasks for consumers, while Siri still sets kitchen timers.

Apple needs to give people reasons to buy its devices as they get more expensive. The company raised prices across the board last quarter to help offset higher costs. Without compelling new features, a big question is whether consumers will slow the frequency of iPhone upgrades.

The new iPhone Duo appears to be a bright spot. Consumers are scooping up the $1,999 foldable smartphone despite mixed reviews—so many that Apple can’t keep up with demand. Shipping dates jumped out to January soon after the device went on sale, a disappointment for the normally reliable Apple supply chain.

Apple said its revenue grew 12% in the September quarter, slightly ahead of Wall Street’s expectations. Its widely tracked gross profit margin, at 47.9%, also came in just ahead of analyst estimates.

Apple will need to find new growth avenues because a reliable engine during the Cook era—the services business—is slowing. Courts and regulators worldwide have limited Apple’s ability to charge developers big fees to distribute apps through its App Store, the biggest component of the company’s services segment.

One of its most lucrative App Store fee generators has been the ChatGPT app from OpenAI. Around the time Apple accused OpenAI of trade-secret theft this past summer, OpenAI began redirecting potential subscribers to pay via its website instead of the App Store, skirting Apple’s tollbooth.

Apple’s valuation has bumped up against a ceiling in recent weeks. Six times it traded above a $5 trillion market capitalization intraday before finally closing above the threshold, which it has already fallen back below.

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The Tesla of Italy, Aehra’s Sexy EVs Now Have Names

Apple’s growth engine is showing signs of slowing, as rising costs, weaker services growth and AI competition challenge its profitability. With John Ternus taking the helm, the pressure is on to reignite innovation and sustain investor confidence.