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Ferrari gets Solar Power

If you can't make your cars more environmentally friendly, you might as well focus on the factory they come from. Italian supercar manufacturer Ferrari has installed a massive solar array over its factory to reduce its carbon dioxide footprint. The company says the panels will provide 210,000 kWh annually.


The solar panels will help power Ferrari’s Engine Mechanical Machining facility. Ferrari is keen to emphasis that it's doing as much as it can to reduce its CO2 output, but really Ferrari, apart from the need for a "green image", does anyone actually care?

To give you an idea, the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti produces 475 g/km of CO2 emissions, it also uses about 20.7L of fuel for every 100km. Now compare this to the humble Toyota Corolla which puts out 172g/km of CO2 emissions and uses 7.3L of fuel per 100km.

Of course it's ridicolous to compare a Ferrari 612 to a Toyota Corolla, but it's also a tad ridicolous for Ferrari to attempt to gain a green image.

The company is also expected to install a tri-generation plant which will be operational by the middle of this year. The idea is to further cut the company's CO2 emissions as the new plant will cover virtually all of Ferrari’s electricity requirements.

Ferrari estimtes that the tri-generation plant will cut its CO2 emissions in 2009 by 25-30 per cent compared to the present levels.

Additionally Ferrari has increased the size and number of green areas both inside and outside its various factories, with over 200 trees planted around the factory in the last six months alone.

Now lets do a little maths here. Take a single Ferrari  612 and say it does an average of 25,000km/year, this means it will produce about 12,000kg of CO2 emissions per year (based on its CO2 emissions per kilometre). So how many trees does it take to offset just one Ferrari 612?

59 trees per year* are needed to offset a single Ferrari 612, so the 200 trees planted in and around the Ferrari factories can perhaps cover 4-5 of the Ferraris made there each year.

Brownie point to Ferrari for trying, but stick with what you're good at, making awesome, fast and ridiculously beautiful cars. Leave the planet-saving stuff to the rest of us.

* Tree offset calculation is based on a tree planted in the humid tropics absorbing on average 50 pounds (22 kg) of carbon dioxide annually over 40 years  - each tree will absorb 1 ton of CO2 over its lifetime;

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