The technology he’s referring to is Ferrari’s Kinetic Energy Recycling System (KERS), which is part of the requirements for the 2009 Formula One season. This move to make racing more efficient is partly driven by EU regulations forcing car manufacturers to reduce their fleet-average emissions to less than 130 grams per kilometer by 2012.

Still a Ferrari?

In case you were worried that a hybrid or electric Ferrari might not be a real Ferrari, when asked about this the answer was “Yes, of course. It’s the best sports car in the world. It’s still fundamentally a Ferrari.”

And, of course, cars like the Tesla roadster and the Wrightspeed X1 clearly demonstrate that electric power is no impediment to performance and handling. The problem for an F1 car is likely to be the range – an F1 race is about 190 miles long. With a Formula 1 research budget, especially from one of the largest and most successful teams in the sport, and some of the brightest automotive people in the industry on their team, it will be interesting to see what they can come up with. This technology could well trickle down into cars for the rest of us over the next decade too.

For those interested in a cleaner Ferrari, the company expects to have something in a production vehicle around 2015 – giving you plenty of time to start saving up for it.

[Via Inhabitat]