In the 1970s a cheap technology arrived that told the time better than any mechanical watch, and it nearly killed Swiss watchmaking overnight. More accurate. Cheaper. On every rational measure, quartz simply won.
The Swiss survived by understanding one thing: they were never selling accuracy. They stopped competing on function and retreated into meaning — heritage, craft, the emotion of a made object. Today quartz owns the volume. Mechanical owns the money, and all of the desire.
The electric car is quartz.
It is the better daily driver — cheaper, quieter, quicker, simpler. On function, the combustion engine will lose, and no amount of nostalgia will save it. But here is the lesson most carmakers are misreading: the prestige was never in the engine. It was in the meaning. Ferrari doesn’t command its price because of combustion any more than Patek commands its because of an escapement.
So the electric Ferrari isn’t the betrayal. It’s the test — of whether the meaning was ever in the engine, or whether the engine was just what the meaning wore for a hundred years.
You already live the answer.