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Hello and welcome to Business Daily. I'm Theo Leggett. In today's full throttle edition, we'll be hearing from a man whose job is to guide an Italian icon through a period of unprecedented change. His name is Benedetto Vigna. He's a physicist, an inventor, well known in Silicon Valley, and he's also the chief executive of Ferrari. So please plug in your seatbelt and enjoy the ride.
First of all, let's go back nearly a hundred years. In 1929, a young Italian from Modena set up his own team to compete in the still relatively new sport of motor racing. The cars of the age were big, powerful, difficult to drive and fiendishly dangerous. The man's name was Enzo Ferrari.
After the Second World War, Ferrari struggled to fund his motorsport, so he set up a business selling high-performance luxury road cars. They were fast, they sounded furious, they carried his name, and they exploited every ounce of their racing cousin's DNA.
And for decades, that's how Ferrari has continued to operate. Its exploits on track in Formula One and other series have given the brand a mythology and red-blooded glamour that wealthy petrolheads have been all too happy to buy into. Today, it's a multi-billion dollar business. But the world's changing, and the motor industry is undergoing what amounts to a technological revolution.
So where does Ferrari go from here? To find out, I went to meet the man whose job is to steer the company into the future. Today I'm sitting in a car dealership, but not just any dealership. It's in Barclays Square in the heart of London's well-dressed and very well-to-do Mayfair district.
I'm surrounded by motor racing memorabilia, trophies and photographs of heroes from time gone by. And in front of me, resplendent in polished scarlet paintwork, a Ferrari Roma sports car. And with me is the man in charge of it all, the Ferrari chief executive. Benedetto Vigna, welcome to Business Daily Meets. Thank you. Nice seeing you. It's often said that every Italian schoolboy wants to either drive for Ferrari...
or build Ferraris. What was it like for you? I'm Italian. It's true for, you said, it's true for all Italian. When I was going to the elementary school, I had a blue handbag. It was a red Ferrari. And the driver had a yellow helmet. I would like to find it. I don't know where it is. Some years have gone, 50 years.
But it's true. I mean, you want to be related to Ferrari. And I think when you were 14, you went to your first Grand Prix without your parents knowing about it. Tell me about that. May 1st, 1983, there was a team of people older than me. They had a car.
I was the fifth one that joined the crew, so I went to see the Grand Prix, and there was a good race. That was, for me, the first time. But your parents were 500 miles away, and they didn't know where you were. There was no cell phone, so they did not know where I was for, I don't know, what was it, Saturday, for maybe 30 hours, a little bit more.
When I came back, my father told me, look, in your life you can go wherever you want, but tell me where you are. Because if something happens, I need to know where I have to come. So the passion for cars was there. And I think as a teenager, you were preparing your own Fiat and things like that and nipping around the countryside. Yes.
The passion was there. It's still an old car, 1967. I remember that we had also some car that we were cutting to go from Coupe to Spyder. You were cutting the roof off the car? Yeah. So there has been always this love with the car also, because if you remember at the time, you did not have the PC, the iPhone, the tablet. So the most technological thing...
at that time were the cars. Think about that. It was the 70s and the beginning of 80s, so it was also a way to get more in touch with technology. But despite his obvious passion for cars, the young Benedetto Vigna didn't start his career in the motor industry, and nor did he study engineering. Instead, he focused on physics, a decision prompted in part by a notorious disaster of the 1980s.
And liftoff, liftoff of the 25th Space Shuttle mission and it has cleared the tower. On a cold winter morning in 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off into a deep blue Florida sky. But little more than a minute later, it exploded, tragically killing all seven astronauts on board. Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction.
It was the response to that catastrophe and the role of the Nobel Prize winning physicist Robert Feynman in finding out what actually happened that inspired Mr. Wiener to become a physicist himself. You remember in 1986 the Challengers exploded in the air and they called a lot of people to understand what was happening. At that time there was also a call by Reagan to Richard Feynman.
He was the guy that, talking to the people on the field, the operators, the blue collars, not spending time in meeting room with PowerPoint chart, Excel file, understood that the issue was the O-ring. You may remember that O-ring linkage was the issue. So what I liked, the way he was working. Be close to the reality, work with the people, don't spend a lot of time in meeting room, I mean, in a virtual world.
So I liked this, he was a physicist, and I started to study physics. After graduating from the University of Pisa, Mr Wiener joined a Swiss technology firm, ST Microelectronics. He became an expert in microelectromechanical systems, tiny devices including both electronic and moving parts.
He was responsible for developing a pioneering range of motion control sensors, one of which ended up forming the basis of the popular gaming system, the Nintendo Wii. Others found their way into mobile phones and safety systems in cars.
And after a move overseas, Mr. Vigna became a well-known figure in Silicon Valley. Since the boss was afraid to lose me, because I could have been staying in Silicon Valley without coming back, he told me, Benedetto, you have to promise me you don't leave. And I told him, I will never resign till my business reach $1 billion. Indeed, I resigned when my business was $6 billion. And he was calling me every day. Every day for two years, he was calling me. But
But you're also something of an inventor, I think. During that period, you had 200 patents of your own? No, no, not only during that period. Also later. Also in Ferrari, I had two, three patents. I think it's important when you are on new things and you understand what is the real problem, you may have ideas that fix the problem. Because a patent, very often, it's an innovative solution to a problem. And I want to push this culture of patent also in the company, in Ferrari.
In the last years, we did a lot of patents. In the last, in 24, we did more than 200 patents. I think it's important because patenting has a double meaning. One, it protects the IP of the company. Second, it is a boost of motivation for the engineers. After two decades in the tech business, Benedetto Vigna was a well-established and respected senior executive.
Even so, in 2021, it shocked many in the motor industry when Ferrari came calling. The man himself admits he didn't seem to be the natural choice to be boss of a supercar maker. It's very strange because I remember that when my name got out, a lot of my previous co-workers were called by people in the financial community that were trying to understand which kind of person I was.
And they were asking me, what should we tell? I said, you don't have to ask me. You tell them what you think about me. So I had the people in my team from Hong Kong to Japan to US that were called. I think that I consider myself lucky because when I joined in the previous company, I got the opportunity to start something from zero. And when you start from zero, you need to understand the client. So I was talking to the client.
I had to do this because I was pushing new ideas. The idea to put sensors in mobile phones, at the time they were not smartphones, in the game controllers, was an idea that came out after talking with a final client. And I was also lucky because in Japan I got clients that trusted what I was telling them. And why Japan? Because in Japan...
The managers of companies are inside the business, not outside the business. In Japan, people, managers, are inside the business. So I remember March 5, 2005, I was in Nintendo in Kyoto, showing something to them, and the CEO at the time trusted what we, a small team of people, were saying in Italy, far away from Kyoto.
So I had some success over there with the collaboration and the strong support of the team. And then my name maybe became evident to the chairman, to the board. They conducted some interview and I was elected. That's the way. I mean, without Japan, without the success I got, first with Japanese client and then with other companies, I don't think they would have been picking me up. You're listening to Business Daily on the BBC World Service.
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Federally insured by NCOA. To receive any advertised product, you must become a member of PenFed Credit Union. I'm Theo Leggett and today we're hearing from the chief executive of Ferrari, Benedetto Vigna. Ferrari is not just a luxury car business. Its heritage and its origins in motorsport have given it a unique place in Italian society. It has emotional resonance.
But according to Mr Vigne, it's also a technology business, and the two fit perfectly well side by side. If you take one of our cars, there are a lot of technologies in it. You have quantum devices, the chips. You have mechanical devices, you have software, you have chemical components. So the car is a summary of all the technology, and there is the luxury.
And the luxury is about the human touch, the emotional side of the client. And I feel myself really lucky because when you work in a company such as Ferrari, you can work on things, on cars that are touching the two sides of our hemisphere.
The rational part, and you touch it with the technology. And the emotional part is about all the communication and the attachment, what is transmitting to you. So, yes, in Ferrari, you can do products, you can develop products that address and satisfy and generate emotion while, I can tell you, a chip does not generate any emotion, right?
The Nintendo Wii, that we have been working together with Nintendo 20 years ago now, it made easier life, no doubt. But a car, when you get in the car, you can feel the car with all your body. You cannot fit in a chip. So you can't feel the emotion of a silicon chip, but those silicon chips in the car contribute to the emotional experience of the car. Yes, yes. But being chief executive of any company means answering to shareholders.
And at Ferrari, they include John Elcan, who's a sign of the Agnelli dynasty, the Turin family that are as close as you can get to Italian industrial royalty. There's also Piero Ferrari, the son of the company's founder. So what pressures does that bring? I mean, here, the shareholder happens to be Agnelli and Ferrari, but each company has its shareholder, and it's part of the job.
If you want, here in the role I'm doing, there is John and Piero, from whom I'm learning a lot of things. That's John Elkann. John Elkann and Piero Ferrari. And they are teaching me a lot of things because the board is adding value to what we are doing. So there is a continuous dialogue.
So I'm working very well. Do you feel like an empowered chief executive? Yes, absolutely. I think John was very clear when he said the responsibility of being the CEO, it's your responsibility, so you will be responsible of the result. Ferrari's brand has been built on emotion and heritage, symbolised by its traditional scarlet paintwork and screaming engines. But times are changing.
The industry is undergoing a revolution, moving rapidly towards whispering quiet electric cars. It's a change Ferrari can't avoid, and its first all-electric model will be unveiled later this year.
So I asked the chief executive, how will Ferrari keep relevant in a very different future? There is only one thing we can be certain about the future, that it is uncertain. The good point, when you come from semiconductor companies, is that you understand that things are moving fast,
And you have to be fast. You have to try, you have to learn, you have to adapt, and everything must be done nimbly. So this is something that I brought with me from the previous professional experience.
Moving to the automotive industry, the car industry, you can see today there are companies that are struggling and companies that are not struggling. Why? Because you have to embrace the change. It's the way you see the future. I think that Ferrari, this has been done since the beginning when the company was born, we continue to do the same. In the 40s and 50s, our founder started with the 12-cylinder engine.
Then you move, then you have the turbo. Now we have this story of the electrification. But the electrification journey in our company started in 2009. 2009, first F1 cars with the electric engine. The hybrid power. Hybrid, yes. Then 2014, you have the LaFerrari that was the supercar with one electric engine.
I like to say electric engine, not motor, because it's closer to thermal engine. Then you have, in 19, we started to offer our client the possibility of hybrid model. So you have the SF90, you have the 296 Cooper Spider. And a few months ago, what we did? F80, that is hybrid. But we've all the key strategic component done in-house.
So the next is going to be the electric Ferrari that we will announce in Q4 of this year. So this is a journey that the company started. So for me, the change we are having in this period, in this decade, is the change I like.
But you can build an electric car, you can build a high-tech electric car that does wonderful things, you can paint it red. Will it still be a Ferrari? The problem is not to build an electric car or to paint it red. The point is to understand how to harness the new technology in a way to deliver unique emotion to the client. We are doing innovation that is emotion-driven innovation.
It can be natural aspirated, it can be turbo, it can be hybrid, it can be electric. We have to start from what we have in our head. In our head, we have, you know, the rational part and the emotional part.
And we have to be able to stimulate both. But for many of your clients, the emotional part is the noise. Ferraris have always been linked to screaming V12 and V10 engines, barking V8s. How will a whispering, quiet electric car appeal to those people? That's true. I believe we will have an existing client that will not take our electric Ferrari. There will be an existing client that will take also our electric Ferrari. And there will be new clients joining us.
Think about this. In 2019, when we announced the first hybrid car, there were a lot of rumors saying people will not take hybrid cars. Well, last year, 2024, 51% of the cars we sold were hybrid. Where do you see Ferrari in 20 years' time? I see a company that keeps always audaciously pushing, redefining the limits of what's possible.
It will be with, let's say, electric traction, it will be with hydrogen traction, it will be with whatever traction they want. There will be four wheels on the ground, there will be four wheels on the air, I don't know. But what is important is that it's a company where the people keep alive this will to progress that is fundamental.
to continue to redefine the limit of possible audaciously. That's where I see the company. And I was chatting there to Benedetto Vigna, physicist, inventor and Ferrari chief executive. That's it for this edition of Business Daily. The programme will be back on Monday. I'm Theo Leggett. Bye for now.
When you have bars in the sky, onboard showers and award-winning in-flight entertainment, it's no surprise that Emirates was recently named the best airline in the world. We fly you to over 140 destinations, and with partners across the globe, we connect you to another 1,700 cities across six continents. So when we say we're also the largest international airline, what we really mean is...
If you're going there, so are we. Book now on Emirates.com. Fly Emirates. Fly better.