Ferrari's CEO Praises The Tesla Roadster: 'We Have To Keep Dreaming'

Benedetto Vigna singles out the Roadster’s upside-down stunt, outside design help, and bold staging as a needed jolt for electric supercars.

2028 Tesla Roadster

Photo by: Tesla

Brian Potter

By: Brian Potter

Oct 24, at 9:00am ET

Add Motor1.com as a preferred source in Google

Comment

Benedetto Vigna does not hand out perfect scores regularly. But that is exactly what Ferrari's CEO did this week, rating Tesla's redesigned Roadster a flat 10 out of 10, twice, for both its technology and its presentation.

Vigna made the comments during an interview at a Quattroruote automotive conference, just days after Tesla showed off the car's reworked underpinnings in Texas. His praise arrives as Ferrari pushes ahead with its own electric plans, including its first battery-electric model.

Vigna's rating, reported first by Reuters, came with a line that read almost like a thank-you note. "As a European, thank you for showing us how that, even in an old world, you can still innovate and dare," he said, describing the Roadster reveal as proof the industry has not run out of ideas.

Tesla Roadster Earns 10 Out Of 10

Tesla unveiled the next-generation Roadster at SpaceX's rocket test facility in McGregor, near Waco, Texas. The demonstration leaned hard on spectacle. The car drove up a ramp and stayed attached while upside down using a powerful suction fan system, then launched off, turned in midair, and landed with help from compressed-gas thrusters derived from SpaceX hardware.

Coverage of the event framed the Roadster as a 2028 model and described that date as Tesla's target for bringing the car to market. That timing is a goal, and it arrives years after the Roadster was first promised.

Vigna did not address the delivery date or the financial noise around it. His score was narrowly about the show itself, the engineering on display and how it was staged.

"It certainly shows that also in the automotive world there is still a lot to be done," Vigna said. "We have to keep dreaming." That line, paired with the perfect score, is doing most of the work in turning a single executive's opinion into a wider talking point about the industry's appetite for risk.

Gallery: 2028 Tesla Roadster

Tesla Roadster performs autonomous flying stunts

Source: Tesla

Vigna's Comments On Tesla Innovation

Vigna also pointed to something less obvious than the stunts: Tesla's choice to bring in outside help. He noted that working with an external design studio pushed the Roadster somewhere Tesla might not have reached alone. That process, he said, mirrors what Ferrari went through on its own electric project.

"If we had worked on our own, we would not have done what we did," Vigna said. He described how outside observers forced Ferrari to confront questions it had not considered. Ferrari partnered with Jony Ive's design studio, LoveFrom, on its first fully electric model, the Luce, which Vigna has defended publicly since its debut.

That debut was not painless. Ferrari's stock dropped in May 2026 after the Luce reveal, and the car's reception has been picked apart in detail by people watching Ferrari's shift into electric power.

What do you think?

View

Comments

Ferrari has continued building out its electrified lineup since the Luce launch, including a renewed push on biofuels alongside its battery-electric efforts.

Vigna's praise for Tesla's willingness to gamble on a radical reveal suggests he sees that same instinct for taking a public risk as something his own industry could use more of right now.