Alfa Romeo will make future Quadrifoglios into EVs: exec

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Of auto giant Stellantis’ 14 companies, it’s Italy’s Alfa Romeo that stands to win the race to full electrification in North America. The plan is to electrify the current Giulia sedan and Stelvio SUV, then have them joined in 2023 by the smaller Tonale SUV, which will drop with a plug-in-hybrid option, then two other yet-revealed vehicles. The first fully electric vehicle is scheduled to arrive by 2025, and everything should be battery-powered by 2028. 

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Alfa Romeo has now confirmed via an executive interview with Motor Trend that it will not be forsaking its high-performance Quadrifoglio designation as it transitions to a battery-powered future, and that battery-assisted versions of both Stelvio and Giulia future iterations will bear the four-leaf clover.  

Like Mercedes’ AMG or Cadillac’s V-Series, the Quadrifoglio badge (meaning “four-leaf clover” in Italian, and often abbreviated “QV: for a clover’s green [verde] colour) signals a special build-out with boosted performance, tech, and tricks. But unlike some of its competitors, Alfa Romeo feels it important to distinguish its high(er)-performance vehicles with a significant power boost. 

“Getting into a Quadrifoglio today, you are talking about more than 500 horsepower versus 280 horsepower. A lot of the AMGs, M types, they don’t have that level of performance difference,” Dominique told Motor Trend.

Dominique also confirmed that the upcoming 2023 Tonale SUV, which is available as a plug-in hybrid, will not be granted the QV designation right away. “Right now, we are not launching Tonale with a Quadrifoglio version,” he said. 

QV products account for less than three per cent of Alfa Romeo’s total sales, but saw a sharp rise in demand in 2021.