EV startup Aehra asks Italy to help fund €1.2B production plan

MILAN — Startup Aehra has asked the Italian government to partially fund its €1.2 billion plan to develop and build two ultraluxury battery-electric vehicles in Italy.

Aehra aims to start production of the Impeto (Italian for impetus) SUV and Estasi (Italian for ecstasy) sedan in Mosciano Sant’Angelo in the Abruzzo region of central Italy in mid-2026, with its factory scaling up to annual output of 25,000 units per model.

The startup says the Impeto and Estasi are designed and engineered to deliver an 800-km (497-mile) driving range. Propelled by one front motor and two rear motors making 800 hp, the vehicles will have a top speed of 260 kph and will accelerate from 0 to 100 kph in less than 3 seconds.

Both vehicles were designed by Filippo Perini, who previously worked for Alfa Romeo, Lamborghini, Italdesign and Genesis.

Aehra said its plans to create 540 jobs at the plant in Mosciano and additional 110 jobs in Milan, where the company is based.

Aehra said the requested funding includes the development of the two vehicles and the construction of the new manufacturing facility.

"It will be immensely gratifying to have our application for funding endorsed by the Italian government and to be selected as a project of national strategic importance," Aehra founder and main shareholder Hazim Nada said in a news release on Aug. 6.

"This will further validate Aehra's mission to redefine ultra-high premium sustainable mobility by exploiting the latest engineering, battery and manufacturing technologies," Nada added.

Nada is a 40-year-old U.S.-born Italian citizen who is the son of an Egyptian banker living in Switzerland. His previous job was in commodity trading, through his Swiss company Lord Energy.

Another founder is Sandro Andreotti, a former paratrooper in the Italian army and founder with Nada of AeroGravity, a vertical wind tunnel company.

Aehra has not announced final pricing details for the two cars, although it said at the SUV's unveiling in 2022 that it would likely cost between $160,000 to $180,000.

The Italian government met in Rome on Aug. 7 with automakers, suppliers and unions to discuss plans to increase vehicle production in Italy to 1.3 million units, up from 750,000 built 2023.

Minister of Industry Adolfo Urso is trying to convince Stellantis, which owns the Italian brands Fiat and Alfa Romeo, to increase the group's annual vehicle output in the country to 1 million by the end of the decade. The automaker last reached that number in 2017.

Urso is also wooing foreign automakers including Chinese automakers. Reports say the government is in advanced talks wiith Dongfeng about building an vehicle assembly plant in Italy.

In 2021, the U.S.-Chinese joint venture Silk EV unveiled a €1 billion plan to build supercars in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region — an area known as Italy's Motor Valley, which is home to Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati and Ducati. SIlk dropped the project in 2023 after failing to get enough financial backing.