Maserati CEO Davide Grasso on the Company’s Push for Quality—and Electrification
3 min
Maserati is sitting out the auto shows—at least most of them.
“The world is changing, and we made the decision about auto shows in 2019 or 2020, when the pandemic happened, and we’ve stuck with it,” CEO Davide Grasso told Penta in an interview. “No more auto shows, except Shanghai. We make an exception for Shanghai.” It helps that China now has the largest auto market in the world.
Indeed, at Shanghai on April 19, Maserati unveiled its second electric Folgore model (after the redesigned GranTurismo, which was also being introduced to China). The new entrant is the SUV Grecale Folgore. “It’s a new beginning for the brand,” Grasso said in Shanghai. “We’re celebrating Folgore, the electrification plan that has become a reality and is ready to pave the way in this revolutionary era. I’m very excited to be here in Shanghai, which is not only an international exhibition but also a global platform for innovation. It’s the ideal place to unveil the first electric models in the history of Maserati.”
When it released the Grecale Folgore, Maserati said it would be built in Italy with a 105-kilowatt-hour battery and “all the true Trident performance elements.” These include more than 500 horsepower with 590 pound-feet of torque. The top speed will be over 124 miles per hour. There are now three versions of the Grecale: the GT, with a four-cylinder mild-hybrid powertrain and 300 horsepower; the Modena, with a three-litre, 530-horsepower V-6 related to the Nettuno engine in the MC20; and the Folgore, 100% electric with 400-volt technology.
Grasso saysMaserati is thriving as part of the 14-brand Stellantis, headed by hard-charging CEO Carlos Tavares—a stickler for quality.
“The quality issue is important,” Grasso says. “Carlos is a great believer in the potential of the Maserati brand. To succeed as a luxury brand, you have to focus on quality, not quantity. So we are putting a lot of effort into upgrading our processes. We took the time to ensure that the Grecale would be pristine..”
Maserati had a 24,269-vehicle global year in 2022. That was not the loftier goal set by the company in 2018, but it was quite a successful year nonetheless
The company’s full-year profits were US$221 million, nearly double of 2021“Maserati is back, doing the right things in the right way,” said Tavares in an earnings call. Unlike Tavares, Grasso did not come up through the auto industry ranks. Before Maserati, he was CEO and president at Converse, and prior to that was chief marketing officer at Nike. But shoes or cars, the core principles are basically the same, Grasso says.
“The pillars are brand marketing, customer service, residual value, and human resources. Without all these things and the right mindset, managing a luxury brand won’t work. You can have the best marketing team, but if you’re bad at servicing—if we don’t give you a loaner, if we treat you badly—it all falls apart,” he says.
Grasso also says he was happy with the electric versions of the GT and Grecale.
“The electric GT is heavier, but the cars are still very responsive, with 2.7 seconds to 60 mph and 760 horsepower on tap,” he says. “We are in full execution of our electrification strategy now, and we’re excited by the level of performance. We will have an electric Quattroporte in early 2025 on a brand-new platform, redesigned from the inside-out. Then the new Levante. We will be only electric by 2030. The plans are coming together, so it might even be earlier than that.”
Although SUVs dominate today, Grasso sticks up for the sedans and two-seat sports cars (the MC20) in Maserati’s lineup.
“It’s never all SUVs,” he says. “There’s the comfort of a sedan versus the off-road capability of an SUV. Maserati was born on the track, so we combine speed and luxury. Many of our owners have multi-car garages, so they can own different types of vehicles.”
Maserati has been aggressive in establishing its U.S. dealer network, and now has more than 100 outlets. “We are right-sizing it, and there are some locations where we don’t need to be,” he says. “We have to be where the customers are. And going forward, the stand-alone dealership is the model. We have to make sure that the dealerships are aligned with our core values, treating the customers with courtesy and streamlining the buying procedure. But we don’t want to woo people with bells and whistles if it’s not matched with excellence in the rest of the operation.”
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From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
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