Italian car company Lancia is being reborn as an EV-only brand
Lancia, the Italian car company owned by Stellantis alongside Fiat, Chrysler, Citroën, Vauxhall, and Peugeot, is being revived as an electric car brand. The company announced plans to produce three electric vehicles between 2024 and 2028: a new Ypsilon, new Delta, and an unnamed “new flagship.” The brand is also getting a new logo, the eighth in its 116-year long history, which harks back to its 1957 design.
By 2028, the plan is for Lancia to exclusively sell electric vehicles. But, as Electrek notes, the company only sells a single car (the Ypsilon) in a single market (Italy). So it shouldn’t be too hard to phase out sales of its combustion engine cars.
Alongside its EV plans and new logo, Lancia has also revealed a new design language that it says will guide the creation of the upcoming three cars. It’s literally built a physical sculpture to serve as a “three-dimensional manifesto” of these design principles (pictured above). Lancia’s CEO Luca Napolitano calls the sculpture, which has been dubbed “Lancia Pu+Ra Zero” a “work of art in which the past and the future are in continuous contact, in which elegance is balanced with the radical spirit of forms.”
Apparently “Pu+Ra” is short for “Pure and Radical,” in case you were wondering.
Lancia’s announcement was short on details about the electric cars themselves, but Autocar notes that they’re likely to be based on Stellantis’ STLA small electric platform which is also being used for the Peugeot e-208 and Vauxhall Corsa Electric. The new Lancia cars are expected to be sold in Italy and a handful of other European markets to start, before expanding over time.