Makes sense from corporate perspective to hire the "Apple Designer" to craft the interior experience, it's fresh input from a very respected UX design-lead of another industry.
But handing over responsibility for the exterior is quite questionable IMO.
To me, the exterior has lost almost all of Ferrari's identity. It's a nice car-design, but if you'd tell me it's a Hyundai, Lexus or BYD I would believe you.
I wonder what political struggle was behind that within Ferrari. I can't imagine this design was received well, and I doubt that Ferrari actually asked for help on exterior design. It's more likely that Jony Ive demanded it...
(Also the fact that they presented the interior much earlier than the exterior could be an indicator for internal disagreements...)
To what extent is the design a response to the constraints imposed by the electric drivetrain? The car is built around the engine. An EV has a large battery and small motor(s), while a gasoline sports car has a big engine in the front. I'm curious how much of the Luce design is a direct result of having to work around the drivetrain (noting that the Mustang Mach E also deviated significantly from the classic designs of past Mustangs in some of the same ways as the Luce deviates from past Ferraris).
I lived through similar dynamics (though not at Ferrari, of course).
The management knows that they need something new and out of their comfort zone. Someone (from within or without) suggests an idea that would never been accepted in the olden days.
The management, for the sake of their company, would suppress every instinct they have built over the years, often over-correcting. This inevitably results in some questionable choices seeping in, in the name of openness to new paradigms.
And not every time this goes well.
I'm not saying this is what's happening here. These are world-class engineers and designers, but nobody is immune from a bad decision or two.
Exactly, I've experienced the same a few times, in different industries.
That's why I can imagine Ive's company wowing the management with an early interior concept pitch, but then demanding also exterior design ownership as part of the agreement because "it needs to be a coherent design, like an iPhone".
Sounds perfectly reasonable and easy to vouch for. Management feels like they are anyway in control because they decide whether to launch the product or not.
But if the product starts to shift over the course of the development, someone in management has to make the call. And that's a very expensive call to make.
I've personally been with companies which had such big-name collaborations that "deviated" from expectations in very advanced development-stages.
I've seen companies successfully intervening, but more often than that scale-down the project or cancelling the entire collaboration and ending the project, as no partial solution could be agreed on.
The latter was especially common with Design Companies (e.g. Porsche Design, Prada, the earlier LVMH), as their contracts were not phrased for collaboration but for creative control. I would assume Jony Ive sees himself in the same bracket...
When I first saw the third generation Nissan Primera [1] many years ago, this is the thought that occurred to me: some bold, enterprising designer somehow managed to convince the organization to push through a radical, risky departure from their usual aesthetic. The 2010 Nissan Juke too, felt similar (I owned one myself). In my view, both models worked out. I don't think Ferrari was that lucky.
I wonder whether the mere-exposure effect [0] could also be at play here.
For me, the first reaction to the Ferrari Luce was utter shock, but after looking at it again several hours later I'm starting to see some of its exterior elements differently (although my brain finds it hard to call the car "beautiful" in the same way as some of the other recent Ferrari models).
It looks like a decision was made to depart from the "modern"-looking Ferraris, but the direction of that departure seems to be very different from what the competitors are doing and what the general public is looking for visually in such a car (but it's worth keeping in mind that members of the general public aren't really customers of this car).
Just to clarify: I'm not saying the car is ugly, it's a good looking design.
But it's not a Ferrari design, it dropped almost all of the brands' identity and design language in favor of becoming a more "uniform sportscar design".
To me personally this is quite on-brand for Jony Ive's past work, where the exterior design of the product is diluted to the "least-offending version of its kind", a vessel to the high-quality interior experience which is focused to "excite the user".
In the mobile phone space this was disruptive, because (accidentally) it created the "normalized mobile computing platform" needed to transform the industry into a Smartphone industry.
But I'd say the sports car industry is different, I don't see a benefit in having the "most normalized sports car"...
> To me, the exterior has lost almost all of Ferrari's identity. It's a nice car-design, but if you'd tell me it's a Hyundai, Lexus or BYD I would believe you.
I think that is the idea. Ferrari presented a plausible EV exterior, albeit one that will not appeal to Ferrari's target market (and budget). The resulting non-sales could be used to justify the position that Ferrari's target market is not interested in EVs, should the need arise.
Ferrari already got their exception from the EU regulation for CO² reduction via the E-Fuel loophole, which was tailored for them and allows them to continue selling V8 and V12 ICE-based cars beyond 2036 if they only use synthetic e-fuels.
This secures their existing business model for customers who insist on ICE-based cars and are willing to pay the premium for it.
A portion of their addressable market shifts to EV-based sports cars though, they are shooting themselves into the foot by not establishing a BOLD identity in this space soon. A bland product with a "we used to be big in ICE" brand won't cut it there
"Look, we tried to create an EV and no one bought it. So we need to retain that carve-out in the regulations that mean we do not have to electrify our entire product line or we will go out of business entirely."
I'd totally buy this car if it looked like that and was from a mainstream manufacturer (i.e. priced normally), but yeah I cannot see a typical ferrari owner buying one.
I thought the same. If it had a Kia badge on it, it wouldn't shock me, and I think Kia make some quite nice cars now.
I don't like the interior. I think this style can work for some things, it reminds me of a NuPhy keyboard, blocky plastic that looks nice in some circumstances.
For me this is not a Ferrari-standard of car, Ferraris are strikingly beautiful, and this just isn't.
Never buy a Hyundai/Kia. They make the dumbest cost cutting decisions, like their recent immobilizer fiasco. The dealers are also, largely without exception, terrible.
Several Kia models produced around 2005 incorporated the questionable design of having the engine control electronics located below the oil sump - as I've seen first-hand what that does to the vehicle's maintenance costs, I'm inclined to agree with you!
I know a number of people with this view on Kia and Hyundai. "They were garbage back in 199X or 200X so they're still garbage now." Except that was twenty or thirty years ago and from what I've heard they made advances in design and quality since then.
Doesn’t matter as long as it isn’t ugly. Porsche made the cayenne and the panamera, too. The V12 buyer won’t even look at this, but the luxury EV buyer now has a new thing to consider.
Not really, I love the original Taycan. It's too bad the second generation looks a bit more like BYD/Model 3, I wish they would have stayed with the original design even if it means staying with lower range.
No, the V12 buyers will buy these in droves. Ferrari is incredibly elitest. You’ve got to buy multiple lower tier vehicles to even be allowed to maybe eventually buy a build slot for one of the high end cars.
Mm... yeah I guess except the weird front grill it's doesn't look exactly bad... but then you scroll down to the other Ferrari at the bottom of the page... "oh".
"(Also the fact that they presented the interior much earlier than the exterior could be an indicator for internal disagreements...)" - not necessarily, they did similar already back in the 1990ies, when the new line of front-engined GTs as successors to the mid/rear-engined Testarossa came up. At first some appetizers about the new way of building chassis (Ferrari had a decades old legacy of building rather outdated tubular space frame chassis), followed with tidbits about exterior and interior designs of at first the 456, and then the actual two-seater successor to the Testarossa, the 550.
Ferrari have long worked with third-party coachbuilders such as Pininfarina. I'm not sure how much autonomy Ive had over the final design, but if it's anything like the relationship with Pininfarina, etc. the design would have been a collaboration.
And the press-release [0] sounds like Ferrari had very limited creative control:
"Introducing a team from outside the Ferrari Design Studio led by Flavio Manzoni invited a new perspective and cross-fertilisation, enabling a new design language to be introduced."
"LoveFrom was given the creative freedom needed to define the design direction of the project from the outset, translating this design language into an authentic Ferrari experience."
I just feel they were required to start an EV offering to comply with EU standards, but have designed something of a joke entry to protest being dragged into the EV game.
That, or they truly have insight into where consumer trends will go, and like the F50 etc, this will be better received in a decades time than now.
As many legacy brands, Ferrari is looking to refresh itself in order to stay relevant to a new generation of buyers, and not "die out" together with their existing customer base. They need to do this rather sooner than later while still standing on a pillar of good legacy identity, to not end up like Jaguar does...
They can easily afford to pay the fleet emission fines even if they apply to them (I'm not sure since they are a small volume manufacturer and there might be exceptions for them). And they have produced hybrids since 2013 already.
It’s a brilliant design. Everyone here is complaining about it, and hardly anyone is saying “EV is no true Ferrari”.
The whole point of Ferrari is high enough volume to print money, low enough to make almost bespoke cars whose sheet metal can change quickly. If the platform is adaptable for that purpose, it will be a success.
If you don’t like it then you’re not the demographic they’re targeting. Let me say that I think it’s bland but I won’t say I don’t like it. The market they’re targeting is probably young and can’t afford it but those that can afford it will buy it to appear young, as if they belong to the demographic.
Incredibly boring on Ferrari's part, the design language is both trite and outdated. The type of car itself isn't something people go to Ferrari for. I'm sure it's a decent car, but not a decent Ferrari. They're headed for a few bad years.
I just hope it doesn't lose signal when you touch the metal.
For Dubai you gotta consider the resale value. Which doesn't seem very high to me once the initial hype bump is over. (Sir why dont you buy this famous ugliest ferrari ever for the bargain price of 500000)
If you look recently Ferrari is already getting killed on SF90 sales which was "just" a hybrid, this costs about as much ($750K out the door with options) and is a pure ev that looks unimpressive. These will not do well.
Every other expensive EV is doing awfully on the resale market, Rimac, Lucid, Taycan, Bautista, etc.
You’re confusing your taste to the taste of someone who is probably making a purchase solely on brand and it being an EV.
This thing might sell incredibly poorly but one thing I have always found to be true. The taste of HN commenters is wildly different than target demographics.
This will be a success. There is no need to sell an amount comparable to the Tesla Model S. It's Ferrari's first entry into the premium 5-seat EV sedan market. There are enough people who would pay any money to have an electric Ferrari. The fact that it's a rather everyday car—and not a supercar—makes it a very attractive option for rich people who need to show off. Design is also pretty good for the task. It doesn't compete with existing premium EV sedans but really stands out. It's unique, and that is its value prop. Should it look like a regular Ferrari but electric, it would compete with Ferrari's combustion engine supercars and would inevitably lose. It also shouldn't compete with the Porsche Taycan—a very nicely designed EV. The general public is not the target audience for this car to offer a generic design. So, Ferrari's unconventional design is the exact right choice.
P.S. It’s kind of like when Porsche entered the SUV market with the Cayenne, which didn’t have a conventional SUV look but still crashed the market.
I think this will flop. Even amazing halo car EVs have poor resale value, and this one isn't it. It will not keep value like an analog Ferrari, but may be better than Rimac because it's a Ferrari and if they limit supply.
I'm all for EVs by the way, I drive a Model 3 Performance and I love it. Just not feeling this design at all.
>There are enough people who would pay any money to have an electric Ferrari. The fact that it's a rather everyday car—and not a supercar—makes it a very attractive option for rich people who need to show off.
In case it wasn't clear, the Luce is a 1,000+ HP car and will cost over $300,000 USD.
> There are enough people who would pay any money to have an electric Ferrari.
Are there? That's a pretty bold claim.
I'm sure they think the same at Ferrari, but plenty of successful companies create products that flop miserably based on the wrong assumptions.
I would personally think that the public interested in high-performance combustion-engine luxury cars is not interested in generic-looking electric cars even if they come from the same company.
You do realise this is a 500k EUR car that we are talking about, right?
Hype, shock, and awe are everything with these kinds of cars.
I'm sure there are buyers out there -- with questionable taste -- but whether there are enough of them... I guess we'll live and see.
This car is what the Apple Car should have been in the 2010s, sold at around 40k USD. At that price point, it would've been just fine.
What it most certainly is not, however, is a 500k+ Ferrari.
I don't get how Ive is getting so much praise as a designer, after designing the worst iPhones ever and a Ferrari that looks like a Toyota Prius on steroids.
Corporations are afraid of taking chance, and Ives have been elevated to this design guru for his work at Apple. This is despite the fact that he clearly had some terrible designes approved at Apple, but no on had the balls or status to tell him to go back to the studio and make an actual good design.
Ives also had a ton of really excellent and classic designs, but maybe the world needs to stop pretending that everything that man touches is instant classics and best in class. Maybe consumer electronics design doesn't translate well into other fields. I still think it due to companies refusal to take risk, and in some cases, like with OpenAI, wanting to get some association with Apple. Better hire Ives, because then no one can critic the design, because everyone know that Ives is the world greatest designer.
For Ferrari I don't get it. They already have good designers and I think their customers would prefer an EV that looks like a Ferrari, not a Ferrari that looks like Mac.
The exterior looks like a sad compromise between aerodynamics and design. Though the white version looks least plasticky. That weird bumper looks like the consequence of getting a lower drag coefficient.
I think that this just emphasizes how much Ive needed Jobs as a constraint. The early stuff they did together was genuinely good and changed the industry for the better. But his later work after Jobs got sick seemed significantly worse. Definitely a relationship that needed both sides.
Couldn't agree more. Jobs' advice to say no to a hundred things sounds easy in a vacuum, but to actually go against the powerful people around you and gatekeep the quality and essence of your business over decades is incredibly hard, foolish and brave.
One of the perks of designing for cultist brands. Like, Apple could ship the next iPhone looking like the most ugly phone ever, and they will still make boatloads of money from their devoted followers. Same goes for Ferrari. If you want to find actually good designers instead of these celebrity designers, watch out for designs that don't have a cult-like following yet.
How can this make any sense when he designed every iPhone until 2019? None of which would have existed without his original design and all of which remain relatively close to that original design.
I know it’s Ferrari, but one of the interesting things about EVs is that there’s minimal technological differentiation marketed to customers after a certain point. As in: a buyer wouldn’t know or care about a Ferrari battery pack vs. a Tesla or BYD battery pack. Whether you’ve got 300 or 1000 horsepower, the brand of the motor la delivering it is mostly irrelevant.
The suspension may be cleverer (and more expensive) and the tuning (or coding) of the power delivery may be different, but underneath it all this does not have a 5x higher BoM than a Model S Plaid. And without the ‘benefits’ typically sold by Ferrari to justify their price point (e.g. heritage, F1 association, high-revving flat-pane crank engines, F1-derived gearboxes, handling, the typical Ferrari appearance) the price premium seems ever harder to justify.
Someone inside Ferrari had the terrible idea of greenlighting this and even more terrible lack of courage to not cancel this mistake because it was the baby turd of Jony Ive and Marc Newson.
Fortunately everyone will laugh and cringe, the usual car "journalists" will bite their tongues because they don't want to lose access, time will pass and it will be forgotten because Ferrari can afford to make these mistakes ( for now.. )
It reminds me of a rant that my friend sometimes goes on with regards to really low quality items, particularly about music...
someone wrote it, someone performed it, someone mixed it, someone approved it, someone developed marketing for it, someone helped get it on shelves, and then someone played it.
There were plenty of points along the way where the disaster could have been averted.
I don't understand the point of the rant. What disaster is having "bad music" out there? Is it stealing storage from "good music"? I understand this kind of rant for an iPhone, where a shitty decision brought along the chain of approval will impact million of people that are more or less stuck in the ecosystem. But music of all things? How do you even get in contact with "bad music"?
A lot of peple in this chain aren't paid to have a sense of ownership. They just do their job and their personal opinion of the work doesn't really matter.
Some of us care. Standing up and saying the product is crap leads to being asked to leave (fired). Or ends up on deaf ears, and the product is hated by people. Been in both situations, it doesn't seem there is a winning position.
I've been in the "someone performed it" and "someone mixed it" role for some tracks that I found utterly mediocre and yet ended up being some of the most successful stuff I've ever worked on. I mean, sure, previous works, marketing and hype can do a lot to alter the general perception, but most of the times it's just matter of being the right audience.
They are priced for wider appeal and a different target group. At my local dealer I have the impression it's mostly a certain kind of owners (who got it from their partner that bought a 911) but that's purely anecdotal. Don't think this works for Ferrari, but then again I see also quite some Lamborghini Urus which I will never understand
I think they have to make and sell some EV, just to have experience of it. If it isn't attractive, that doesn't matter. You can't, in this year, be so behind in EVs that you haven't ever sold one to customers if you are to be expected to make cars in the longer run, because in the medium term, even things like petrol stations are going to disappear.
"(for now)" is important, Jaguar used to have luxury-performance status by the neck - and they used their affordance of failed product luxury too excessively. Now, they're in a hole they cannot escape.
I don't get why Ferrari didn't make a sub brand for EV and other cars that doesn't fit in their 'dream car' philosophy. Enzo did it with Dino, it didn't work then, but could be a smart move today.
Regarding the car itself, it's great. It's obvious that car existed in sketches and concept long time ago (compare it to the other Newson car – Ford 012C), maybe it's an Apple car and just materialized with a few Ferrari signature details now. It's very cool looking and could be a banger with a $50-70K price tag produced by a Lucid or some other US car neo-brand.
I find it quiet disrespectful to ignore Italian craftsmen and Flavio Manzoni (head of design) particularly by Ferrari management as they assumed that they have to hire "tech" guys to make tech product as local engineers and designers couldn't solve so complicated task. Manzoni team would introduce something like 12 Cilindri in sedan form and it would worth every pence of whatever price tag they would place for it.
That car is awesome, though. Still waiting for some designer to prove themselves by making the VW Bug of EVs not yet another $100k+ plasticy looking rectangle of questionably utility.
When in school and we learn bits of history, (mostly day dreaming but sometimes information crept in) things like Shah Jahan cutting off all the hands of the sculptors of the taj mahal. I really wish Steve was alive and took inspiration, so that Jony wouldn't create trash like this.
I definitely think they could have made it more sporty, and that might have hit a sweet spot. Personally I love it, and that extreme difference in opinion is exactly why I think it'll be iconic. Also I wonder if you've earned the harsh criticism you spew. I doubt it.
The Tesla Model S Plaid has similar horsepower (1020 vs 1035), more torque (1050 lb ft vs 730), faster 0-60 (2.1 vs 2.4s), higher top speed (200 vs 193 mph), more range (358 vs 280 mi).
For roughly 17% of the price.
And it looks the same.
What an abomination!
(You can probably find similar Chinese EVs that also outperform similarly.)
The Model S is also a plasticky shitbox from the inside. This Ferrari will be colossally better in terms of build quality, ergonomics and handling compared to the S.
> This Ferrari will be colossally better in terms of build quality
Will it? I've owned a few Ferraris and I've driven quite a few others. They're lots of fun, but I would never describe Ferrari as a company with high build quality standards.
It's only since 2018 that they stepped up, but that's still not the focus of a Ferrari even with the Roma or Purosangue.
Even at low mileage, even for the new cars, wear and heat ruin the car extremely fast. Plastics and glues break down very soon on those cars, other surfaces become sticky and gummy.
Ferrari is a car made for the driving experience, if you're looking for interior quality you can get way better materials and build at a fraction of the price from other GT cars makers.
Buying an ultra-premium EV Ferrari over a faster, cheaper is a evolutionary broadcast (Costly Signaling Theory), proving the buyer possesses such immense excess wealth that they have no practical need to optimize their dollar-to-spec ratio.
Everybody drives Teslas, the highly exclusive Ferrari satisfies a deep human drive for elite group differentiation (Social Identity Theory) while perfectly mirroring the buyer's aspirational ego and public identity (Self-Congruity Theory).
Ultimately, this choice optimizes for intense internal sensory and emotional pleasure rather than objective efficiency (Hedonic Consumption Theory) by making (at least at the beginning) the owner feel that he is a super special dude.
That only works when the product is desirable and has credible high status.
The whole point of this fiasco is that this design doesn't work as a Veblen signal. It has none of the usual Veblen signifiers - overt use of premium materials and/or ironic fragility, sculpted elegance, conspicuous high-touch over-engineering and stat play, aggressive animal magnetism, high-effort minimalism, distinctive heritage design.
Instead it's nice - happy colours, toy car curves, improved ergonomics.
It's literally all of the things you don't want in a premium product.
Apparently they're aiming to produce about 2500-3000 Luces (Luci?) a year, and they're building about 14,000 cars total annually. So not too many in keeping with their scarcity strategy. That has worked great for them so far, but I doubt they can replicate it with the Luce.
Who is the customer for a Model S? What fancy full-size sedan would they otherwise buy?
Certainly not the person who'd buy a BMW 7er or a Mercedes S-class. Model S does not offer the basic comforts required to compete in this segment.
Perhaps the person who'd buy a BMW 5er or a Mercedes e-class? Possibly, but the Model S is still an uncomfortable, noisy and cheap feeling clunker compared to those two.
It's not like the full-size luxury sedan market is doing too bad. We've got at least:
Yeah! My first though about the design was "This looks like a Tesla SUV-type thing" and about as sporty as a minivan. It is 1544mm high. The Lotus Esprit (which is my standard for a cool sportscar) is over 400 mm lower. The batteries do need to go somewhere... but isn't there room around the cockpit instead of under? Or a way to have a thin layer of batteries below the entire car?
The iPhone 5C of Ferraris – and I am sure it'll have the same fate.
It's doubly a shame because Jony actually owns one of the all-time most beautiful classic Ferraris – the 250 Europa. I was hoping they'd do a modern re-imagination and revival.
What’s awesome about it? It’s not too bad (at least it’s not lit like a Christmas tree), but I’m not sure it’s an awesome UI. Looks like an extremely boring conventional one.
That G-force thing is a gimmick. You already know the ballpark without even looking, and unlike speed I’m not sure what’s the use case for precise readings.
The fact that it's extremely boring and conventional?
>That G-force thing is a gimmick. You already know the ballpark without even looking, and unlike speed I’m not sure what’s the use case for precise readings.
In this car? A gimmick, could maybe help someone who's trying to learn to drive a bit smoother. In a track car? Useful cornering data
An XY scatter plot of g forces on its own isn’t very useful, this is why multichannel analysis tools like i2 exist so you can look at things like lateral g vs yaw rate or steering angle.
I am not into cars and I will certainly not pay for a luxury car anytime soon, so not the most relevant opinion. Still, when I buy a car again, I'd love to have this interior design. The exterior on the other hand, I don't know what they tried to achieve here.
Designers seem to struggle with exterior electronic car design in general. Are they trying too hard to be iconic?
The G-force meter is just to put "something" there because it looks better than having only two gauges. Much like how high-end watches have three mini dials showing mostly useless things, just for the way it looks.
Original title called out the connection to Jony Ive, in case you’re curious why this is on HN.
Previously it had been known that Jony Ive was working on the interior of this car, but it seems his firm is responsible for the exterior as well[0].
> LoveFrom was given the creative freedom needed to define the design direction of the project from the outset, translating this design language into an authentic Ferrari experience.
It’s a more beautiful car from the outside for sure, but whatever is that abomination of a glossy user interface nightmare? Looks like straight from the early 2000‘s
Personally I do think it's ugly, but that's not what I don't like about it. Some Ferraris are actually ugly cars, but they are still Ferraris.
The Luce however has zero Ferrari design language in my opinion. It has no visual cues that say Ferrari. The powertrain obviously doesn't have it. The interior is like the ghost of Ferraris past, you can see the ideas there but it still doesn't say Ferrari to me.
The whole package feels like something in the $80-100k price bracket for sensible consumers - not someone looking to spend half a million dollars on a performance car that hawks back to racing pedigree.
I don't feel that this addresses anything a Ferrari buyer is asking for. However they'll still probably sell heaps of them because Ferrari buyers are often purchasing for clout.
I didn’t realize it was an Ive creation. The asthetics make more sense now. It just doesn’t really make sense as a Ferrari. Ferrari makes super cars and this is kind a a run of the mill ev under the hood.
The interior is very nice. The rest of Ferrari can hopefully borrow from this.
Yeah, I think that if this was the fabled Apple Car most people would say it was quite nice. People are probably mostly hung up on it not really looking like a Ferrari.
Yeah. What are people even talking about? The rear looks a bit too R34, the bottom part of front bumper looks a bit 992, and the car overall looks a bit too comical looking, but other than that, this is just completely fine. I can almost see beautiful placements of control points. I've never seen a car with a front wing that explains itself like this does, instead of obscuring the function in air channels and lid-looking cowlings. The B-pillar door handle is also a neat idea.
Ugly is the word for things like front end of Gen 1 Tesla or Gen 4 Prius, not for this. wtf.
It's far from ugly, it's just very standard EV. When you buy a Ferrari though you want it to stand it, you don't want it looking like a bog standard Tesla.
Agreed, I like the design. It just feels horribly misplaced as a Ferrari. It looks like a daily driver car, but the entire instrumentation looks (to my layman's eyes) to larp as race car.
If the dashboard was set up for a normal person and I could see this be a great sedan. But as it stands, it just seems horribly out of touch.
People are mad it looks a bit normalish as long as cars go. People are incensed it looks “Asian”. Yeah, someone literally wrote just that!
For me it looks like a nice “car” and I was shocked to see it was an Ive doing because I associate with him rather designing things for the sake of designing things far from reality and real world usage. Looks like he learned after all.
That car, just like the SUV, is more for people who want to brag they own a Ferrari than for people who want a good car. It isn't as ugly as the Nissan leaf (still my favorite practical car!), but it isn't winning any beauty contests any time soon.
This is just my subjective opinion, but it looks like the car has a Pixar aesthetic. I am not in to it, but I am glad Ferrari is willing to take some design risks. I am not sure who this is for.
I've seen a lot of explanations, including one by Marques Brownlee, stating that electric cars need large batteries in the floor, meaning they necessarily have to be taller and more SUV-like—and that, hence, a low, two-seater electric sports car is very hard to pull off with a decent range. But then, the Rimac Nevera is low and fast with 490 km of range—and that was released five years ago. I'm not sure why Ferrari couldn't have built something like that.
Horrible. I don't care if it was designed by Armani in his deathbed or Jony Ive himself. It's just horrible. The flat sides, not even reminiscence of the testarossa glorious days. Worse than the tesla truck and that's in the lowest levels of design.
Be careful not to take the Jaguar road for there is no coming back.
My first impression when the Leaf image loaded was that you were being overdramatic. The Ferrari website created the impression of a similar but fundamentally more elegant car (not elegant, just more elegant).
Then the Ferrari image loaded. Wow.
It really is a game of spot the difference. A difficult game.
edit: I don't want to reduce hypercars purely to their "Wow!" factor, but a huge huge part of their value is definitely the feeling they evoke when you see one out of the corner of your eye and your head snaps around. This Leaf/Luce side-profile similarity is completely antithetical to that "Wow!" factor.
I do think the Luce looks a little bit better in that comparison, but I think that is also at least partially due to the photographer being way better. The black parts at the bottom of the Ferrari like like a shadow in that photo, whereas on the nissan it looks like black plastic. But I'm pretty sure that's a trick of the light more than anything.
Huh? I know nothing about cars, but to me there's an obvious difference. If I saw the top car in the street, I'd say "wow that's nice"; while the bottom one just looks like a regular car. The top one looks like it went to the gym, the bottom one looks like it was puffed up through a straw. Idk if that justifies a 20x price difference, but that's my immediate reaction.
It looks like a car by someone who used to design consumer electronics and spent only a cursory amount of time understanding automotive history, design, aesthetics, etc.
"In a genius move, they hired design agency LoveFrom to handle the exterior and interior execution: that’s headed by former Apple chief design officer, Sir Jonathan Ive."
It’s another 24 carat gold Apple Watch. Makes sense in the design studio, if you have some insane blinkers on when it comes to how people associate with and interact with products in the real world.
The lanyard is.. plastic. They could have said it uses the most exquisite handwoven linen (this thing is never seeing seawater anyway) and they chose polyester.
It doesn't matter if it's ugly, it doesn't matter that the cyber truck is ugly, it doesn't matter if either are good cars.
I spotted probably the only cybertruck in Taiwan the other day. It was waiting to turn on a busy road, and people were jogging over to take a picture of it. "Woah cool! Awesome! Handsome!" Lots of stuff like that being said.
People share ai slop cat pictures on Facebook.
There's HN commenters, there's the subset of HN commenters smugly criticizing all the very obvious flaws of things like this... And then there's just the entire rest of the world which simply does not give a shit.
I have this observation with the influx of soulless SUVs on the road.
Every car group you see are always screaming out for manual, rear drive sports cars at an affordable price, but the majority of consumers just want a cube of car that has wheels and can go places.
And they buy a new cube every year or two to keep up with the Joneses.
Everyone then complains that the automakers aren't making what they want... But the blame isn't with the manufacturers, the blame rests with consumers and how mindlessly apathetic they are to... basically everything.
I'm one of those people that doesn't care for cars. They are equipment to me. I like "getting places", yes. But I don't like "personality" in my tools. Cattle, not pets. I don't want to drive around looking smug in my 650k shit bucket. Cars are an enormously wasteful, idiotic drain on the world, but the calculus is such that I am "forced" to own one. I find the idea that each of us is owning and maintaining our very own special little box that exudes "personality" preposterous and I'll bet the farm that future generations will think we were mental.
This is not apathy in my opinion. This is rational. Cars are just tools. Metal boxes to enable mobility. Car people have turned them into this cult of personality that I think is batshit insane. It's not just cars mind you, we do this with watches, shoes, you name it and it's all very peculiar, but cars are my pet peeve because they are so obviously wasteful and dangerous. Not just directly like killing 40k per year in the US alone, but also through obvious geopolitics.
People want to move around and they want to smile smugly and think they are better than others. Those two things are pretty much universal. I say we separate those issues. You can move around all you want but smiling smugly you do in some other way than in your "car". We'll have really good public transport and you'll assert your dominance in some other fashion. I personally recommend we reintroduce dueling to the death.
By the way I don't know anybody that would buy a new car every two year to keep up with the Joneses and I live in a pretty "Jonesy" place. That's a bit hyperbolic at least in my neck of the woods (Netherlands). Most people here keep their cars until they become unreliable.
Why do you see enjoying doing something, driving in this case, as being some sort way of “asserting dominance”? Some people just enjoy things because of all the activities and associations they have which involve that thing. I come from a place where we have both good public transport and a sizeable automotive enthusiast subculture, one doesn’t preclude the other. You seem to be pushing the idea that car enthusiasts enjoy cars because of the some status association, when most of the time people who are interested in car-as-status have little to no actual interest in cars beyond that.
Seems like chicken and egg. Buyers buy what's for sale, I feel like "the consumer" and "the market" are blamed for decisions made by people within these companies. We treat these people as forces of nature: "if the market tells them to make suv cubes, they'll make SUV cubes, they have no choice, their hands are tied!" But that presumes 1. that they're correctly interpreting consumer desire, 2. that consumer desire can even be determined at all from the market, 3. that consumer desire isn't being smeared into an averaging amalgamation that looks ugly and stupid to everyone.
The Cybertruck isn't ugly. It's gorgeous. You may not like its particular aesthetic, however that doesn't make it ugly. It's executed extremely well for the aesthetic it's going for.
Difference is that cybertruck is in the purposefully ugly category. Even if it could have been done lot better. This one is not supposed to be ugly. If you want ugly you need to properly lean into it. Cybertruck at least attempted that.
Fun fact: The original company was founded in 1930 in Turin as "Società anonima Carrozzeria Pinin Farina". "Pinin" means the youngest son of the family, and Farina is the family name.
Criticism is very valid, I don't want to mention the exterior however there are some very nice UX design touches which industry had to adopt 10 years ago?
I assume some of it will be adopted from the industry in the upcoming years. Now that regulators are pushing back on touch displays, the integration of tactile buttons with software will be the move forward you still need to have a physical mechanical button it is better in terms of muscle memory and cognitive load. I never understood the central display abominations that car manufactures keep pushing however the rotation and adjustment of the position make it a little more bearable, Audi[0] had figured this out like 20 years ago with the retracting screen in the dashboard, give the users the ability to hide the display it makes the whole interior cleaner and the driver can focus on the driving. I still don't understand the push with the piano black plastics it looks awful this material needs to go from the car interiors once and for all.
I think Ivy did its job great here despite some design decisions the vision and the direction is the goal here with this car the blending of software with mechanical parts.
It is somehow funny tho that it took a designer like Ivy to work on a car project to push for things like that, like who are the people working in the design departments at those companies, the cars that are releasing in the last 5-10 years in terms of interior design are to say at least uninspiring for their price tag.
I don't understand the idea of the doors opening that way.
How do two people get in at the same time? Both go for the door handle right next to each other then let the other get in first because there's not enough room for two to get in at the same time on one side.
"Sir" Jony Ive? Sure fine, recognized by the crown and all that. It looks like a Kia. Don't get me wrong, I like Kia's. If Ive was a lollipop he'd lick himself. When you get to a point that you can no longer do seminal & groundbreaking work, and you continue to cling to what you used to be, just stop; even if only in respect to the good stuff you've done already.
lol. Emotional Rescue was when I stopped listening, but I hope that Keith and Mick live forever, even as statistical outliers. I love folks that win the life lottery. It's a hope for all of us.
Specs are insane but why does it look like a budget sedan with a cool paint job?
This sounds kind of fun. It’s curious they weren’t allowed to drive though..
> But I can say that the Torque Shift Engagement system — which gives the driver five power levels on the right paddle and five engine-braking levels on the left — is one of the most intriguing ideas I’ve seen in an electric car. It doesn’t simulate gear changes. It creates an entirely new torque language controlled by the driver, introducing an active decision-making element to trajectory management that sounds like it could restore the kind of driver engagement that many enthusiasts fear EVs have lost.
> It creates an entirely new torque language controlled by the driver
Oh wow, sounds like some corporation BS if I ever read some. My EV works by pressing the gas pedal and the torque is right there - not sure what revolutionary new invention is required?
Driving manual/stick is considered "manly" and a lot of sports car enthusiasts would never drive an automatic. So I presume this multilevel "torque language" bullshit is basically a way to retrofit stick shift into an EV that has no mechanical need for it.
Agreed, I'm driving a ~2000kg truck atm with a stick shift from the 90s and a V8 in a hilly city and it's so much more fun than the arbitrary compact cars I've been borrowing for years. Super mega scary on gas, but fun nonetheless as on occasional leisure thing.
I will say, Teslas usually have too much torque because I feel very nauseous in them as a passenger. Having more fine grained control over the torque profile might be nice
The reason you feel nauseous as a passenger has nothing to do with the maximum torque output of the vehicle, but because one-pedal driving mode amplifies bad driving habits by people who never learned how to use the accelerator pedal on a car properly.
Way too many people stomp, release, and repeat. This works in Mario Kart when the A-button input is a boolean value but in a Tesla with one-pedal driving turned on you end up repeatedly accelerating or decelerating and never go a constant speed.
I think energy efficiency matters more with EVs, because it determines how frequently you have to charge on road trips, and more aerodynamic designs look a bit uglier.
Ferrari makes hypercars, they know a thing or two about making aerodynamics look good. It's a primary concern of all their designs and yet all their other designs look a lot better than this.
I think they are just falling into the same trap all other manufacturers do at first. They think the customer buying the EV is a different customer, who didn't like their other cars. So they make the techno-future mobile for a customer that doesn't exist.
Just make the same cars with an EV drivetrain, that's what the person who loves your brand but is in the market for an EV wants.
Legacy car manufacturers have done just that (forcing an EV into an ICE chassis). The results generally suck and the pure EV manufacturers like Tesla and BYD have kicked their ass in the market.
You can use a similar design to your existing fleet without a literal retrofit of an existing chassis to shoehorn a battery and electric drive train in there.
The retrofits usually are less preferable not only because of pointless inconveniences like transmission tunnels, but because they'll be the manufacturer's first toe dipped into the EV waters. The retrofit chassis speaks to either a rush to market, or a cautious approach not wanting to commit too many resources. The former says it'll have issues, the latter says they might bail on it and leave you stranded for service and repairs. Or both at once.
That was kinda different thing. It was legacy manufacturers scrambling to push out any EV they could get together so they are not left behind too much. But in meantime they started working on genuinely new designs (like Hyundai Ioniq, Mercedes EQS, BMW Neueu Klasse) or they adjusted their platforms to better accommodate electric drive trains (like Audi e-tron).
Aero efficiency means going faster and going for longer without making the battery heavier. The cost and packaging aspects of bigger batteries doesn’t matter to Ferrari, but speed & handling absolutely does, and weight is a definite speed/handling penalty.
Exactly! Many Ferraris of the past have gotten single digit MPG, no one cares. All of a sudden they have to make a Chinese looking EV because of "efficiency"? Give me a break.
Chasing "driver engagement" during regular driving at/below speed limit on regular public roads strikes me as a bit pointless. You're just trying to add friction to the process because there happened to be friction in the past.
And when you're not going the speed limit on regular public roads here's plenty of "driver engagement" to be had going too fast round tight corners (hopefully on a track, but we can't all be perfect ;)) regardless of whether there's some weird obfuscation between you and the actual mostly flat torque curve of the electric engine as long you build good suspension, body stiffness, put decent tires on it, don't make it too heavy etc.
I would love Lotus to make another road legal go-kart and slap an electric engine in it.
The actual number of the EPA range is imaginary, yes. But it's useful for comparisons.
But if we're talking about comparisons between two vehicles, the vehicle with a 122kWh battery and a 280 EPA range will go less far and is much less efficient than the vehicle with a 84kWh batter and a 300 EPA range.
I've done Stockholm - Oslo on a single charge in early winter, which is almost exactly that distance, so I'd say it does! Even kept me nice and toasty along the way!
Unsurprising, for a Ferrari. I suspect it's designed for performance and not efficiency. Atrocious mileage is par for the course in this segment (see the Veyron)
They’ve historically had eye watering regular maintenance bills, even outside of them generally having a reputation for being temperamental. Maybe Ferrari will continue pioneering in their own way and make an unreliable and expensive to own EV
I don’t understand the EU’s love for the stick shift. Auto transmissions have been better for a long time and with EVs you don’t need that abomination at all. Imagine needing to push a lever every few seconds while driving.
They only really became better (more efficient) when they ditch torque converters and use some form of direct shift automatic gearbox or CRV instead which adds complexity. Small and cheap cars are far more popular in Europe and both of the above add cost and complexity.
I've driven manual cars daily for years and once you get used to it, changing gears is not even something you think about.
To be fair, while I love the Hyundai you linked to, it’s mostly going to appeal to people raised on a diet of 80/90s cars, with a particular focus on Japanese exports and Initial D.
It has more character because it’s lower, has sharper, sportier lines, and more refined shape. Also the frontend just has a pleasant retro-futuristic design (as does the rest of the car). This ferrari, besides having none of ferrari dna, is an amorphous blob, high off the ground, and all the lines screaming family crossover. Even if someone likes the design, which I don’t doubt there are people that do, it’s objectively a worse looking sports car than the Hyundai mentioned above.
More subjectively speaking, the Luce’s frontend also just does not flow nicely together. It almost feels weird for the sake of being contrarian, to show how much it’s not tied to a „regular” car shape, due to being an EV. You can design a car from the ground up for the sake of being an EV and not have it look… like that
The only way this succeeds is because Ferrari buyers will be forced to buy this so they can also buy/be on the list for their ICE powered halo models. The exterior has lost all brand recognition and for a brand that is so focused on design I can't see this being anything more than a massive slip up
I 'm sorry, i am already laughing imaging 4 people trying to coordinate getting out of these doors in a averagely tight parking spot. They need an app for that.
> Sound waves are captured from electro-mechanical vibration in the axles that are equalised, amplified and delivered alongside visual feedback to inform the driver
I can’t decide if that’s dumber than generating a fake sound or not. Kinda think it is, just because it’s more things to break and needing fixing. Also “a cricket crawled in there so now my half a million dollar Ferrari sounds like a cricket” would be a funny possibility I think.
I don't understand why electric cars cannot simply stay silent, except maybe some pedestrian warning ambient noise. Are the operating noises of the electric car somehow repulsive?
Tangential, but I'm surprised that people here talk about looks as if it's something objective. I don't like how this car looks, but obviously there are other people with other tastes. I might be reading too much into people screaming "ugly" I guess.
Though, we do have to be very careful with interpreting online commentary as representative the collective, when trying to understanding whether something is considered good/bad.
Firstly because only a small proportion of people voice their opinion publicly at all - so only a small proportion of opinions get heard.
Secondly because opinions that are voiced are much more likely to be definitive in nature (it's great / it's terrible) as people tend to be less willing to comment "it's ok" - so vociferous voices tend to dominant online discourse.
Finally, because online communities often represent a niche/specific demographic and so if you only see the views from a particularly online community it's a fair bet they are not very representative.
That's my point. A single opinion is nothing on its own. Further, taste is such a thing where two people can have extremely different tastes, but both be right.
I guess my initial reaction was about presuming that some commenters here are presuming that their taste is the taste everyone has, but a more generous interpretation would have been that they are simply unhesitant to share their subjective point of view. So, I revise my take to the more generous one.
I looked at it and am unimpressed. I’ll take any Pininfarina designed Ferrari over this plain looking thing. Jony Ive did an okay job on the interior but the outside is just plain. The outside looks closer to an Amazon delivery van than a super car.
Sure it’s fast, but a Corvette ZR1X is faster. I’d rather take a ZR1X to a custom shop and have them redo the atrocious Corvette interior.
Edit: I’ll acknowledge that I’m not the kind of person to buy a Ferrari even if I could afford it, so maybe Ferrari doesn’t care about my opinion, but I feel like Jony Ive pulled an “emperor’s new clothes” on the Ferrari execs.
Imagine having Flavio Manzoni as Chief Design Officer but deciding that for the most revolutionary car you'll ever need to make you want someone that never designed a car
Worse in my opinion since the look is simply Tesla (whether one likes that or not), no one would have blinked an eyelid if Tesla released this car whereas Ferrari doing so comes off incoherent.
I thought the interior looked pretty nice - lots of retro physical switches, etc. The exterior doesn't look like a normal Ferrari but maybe that's on purpose. A "normal" Ferrari buyer would probably buy a normal Ferrari. Maybe this is more for someone who would have bought a Model S or X in the past but has a lot more money to shell out.
Yeah, if this was coming from say Honda at a sub $100k price I'd think something like "eh, not for me but it's neat Honda is willing to do something kinda fun and odd."
But starting at $600k for that?
It's clear they'd like to have a Lamborghini Urus like sales success that's not exactly a traditional style Ferrari but this thing seems like a total miss.
But Ferrari being who they are they'll do the same scummy crap of making dealers and customers buy the turd if they wanna get an allocation for the next highly collectable supercar.
The doors are dumb as hell. So I guess the front and back people have to take turns, because only one can squeeze through that gap?
Presumably the range is only a few KM, since Ive said, "You don't want a bigger battery."
And after ruining Apple's computers for years with his POS keyboard and embarrassing emoji bar, he's all about "tactile controls" now? Or was that the will of someone who ISN'T just a pompous hack?
Oh wait: Someone pointed out that there are KNOBS on the steering wheel. So there are wheels on a wheel. That has Ive all over it.
I guess Ferrari always preferred form-over-function to some extent. It was never the utilitarian's car but now you can't even get in a four door car at the same time. I'm really at a loss.
I've done Stockholm-Oslo without stopping to charge in December in my model y long range. Didn't really do anything special either, just obeyed the speed limits pretty much. Most of the drive was on autopilot(not fsd) because highways are boring.
Had a pretty healthy margin too, I charged on the outskirts of town on the way home 2 days later.
I honestly thought it was some sort of hideous joke. Growing up as a kid having been obsessed with supercars this to me looks like someone let Elon mash up a Model Y and a classic '96 355 using Grok. Looks pretty disgusting as someone who has followed car brands for decades.
Seems more like an accessory Ferrari for those that already own a gas-powered one. Looks like it may attract those that value a different design direction - not hardcore sports, more a leisurely weekend vehicle - that is still a Ferrari.
Really hard to grasp who would want one (I'm too far down the wealth ladder to understand how the rich think and work), but that's what stood out to me initially.
The car front looks ugly to me but, I do remember getting used to car designs that I previously found ugly.
It looks weird/ugly because electric cars no longer need to be longer and have enough space for massive sport engines. Maybe we'll get used to it over time, still I would prefer the front of a Ferrari 458
The interiors look really nice, I'm a fan of the dashboard elements, blending touch with actual physical buttons.
This happened to me, as well. Ironically, it was a Ferrari. The 1986 Ferrari Testarossa felt to my teen self to be a cheap Countach. But it grew on me.
They do need to be long but in a different way. ICE cars had longer hood/trunk overhangs, EVs have skateboard batteries with high belt lines (because the floor is thick) and very short front and rear overhangs with longer wheelbases.
I’m a big fan of the interior & Ive design (and am not always a fan if his). The exterior is pretty cool from the front and back … but from the side and at angles it just doesn’t register as Ferrari at ALL. Seems to scream for a longer wheelbase but that’s not the whole issue. It just looks very mid-market from those angles.
I don't love it either, but that's the whole point I think. Try to pull off an icon, rather than make existing designs works. Cybertruck did it, same with Jaguar.
Ultimately the probably should've gone with SUV tho - it's what people buy and looking at interior it what should've been - mass produced, luxury, performance car for everyone.
p.s. Car ethusiasts suck and nobody should listen to them. All they want is v8 manual from 80s with all the "character" which means it's impractical, unreliable and just terrible in every possible way, except the looks which you know what sort of buyer appeals to.
> p.s. Car ethusiasts suck and nobody should listen to them. All they want is v8 manual from 80s with all the "character"
I was generally with you until those lines.
Car enthusiasts are as varied as cars themselves. Whether it's F1 lovers or the V8 manual lovers (an experience to appreciate but I didn't care to own), the MX5(Miata) lovers, the offroad lovers or the lovers of classics like VW Beetles and Mini's or more esoteric cars.
There are dreamers who read the latest car magazine and fantasize about the latest Porsche, Ferrari or Mercedes S class.
Everyone has an opinion and unsurprisingly electric vehicles are a hot topic right now. You will get a range of both rational and emotional responses, depending on whom you speak to.
To derisively state "they suck and nobody should listen to them" is unreasonable.
Luxury car makers should look to handbags for inspiration. If Ferrari wants to expand the market and reach new customers they shouldn't be making something that looks like an upbadged BYD.
It's like if Hermes started making a Jansport backpack, absurd. Instead they sell lower cost, but still premium designs like the Picotin. The Lamborghini Urus might be one example.
The Jaguar redesign / rebrand has been a complete and utter disaster! A 97% drop in European sales. That’s not a misprint - 97%!!
No one would call the cybertruck a success either.
This design is a massive mistake for Ferrari. Looks at Porsche’s first electric, the Taycan. I can tell it’s a Porsche as soon as I see it. Look at Lamborghini- looks like a Lambo. Look at this car - looks like a Volkswagen. This is going to be a bomb.
Looking at the 849 Testarossa again, that car is stunningly beautiful. Any Ferrari will forever remain out of my reach but that car is one child me would dream about.
That is the criteria by which I judge these things and Ive's blue soap dispenser does not do it for me.
All the latest Lamborghini cars look like they gave access to CAD software to a 13 old in love with aliens and spaceships. But I agree the Temerario looks slightly better than the 296 GTB.
I'm not a car guy so please forgive me if this is a dumb question but with electrics do high performance cars even matter any more? Like Tesla had its ludicrous mode years ago, I suppose you'd need decent suspension but if they can churn out that then what do places like Ferrari offer now? apart from the brand I suppose.
they matter even more now. acceleration was the easiest way to make a sports car. now that it's so freely available, they have to put even more effort in the handling department. as another commenter stated, it's all about driving dynamics. How it handles the turns, if it's tail happy, how stiff the suspension is and many other things that affect how a car feels on the road
I always wondered about this. Who races their cars around like a madman on public roads? Very few I would imagine (and hope), and even fewer take their car to a track. For a Ferrari, possibly a bit more (still probably 99% of the time they are on public roads). But every car review discusses these things at length, as if normal people race around the countryside or mountain roads, putting the cornering and stiffness of their Toyotas and Fords to the test.
The interior is fine overall, but why did they not hire Chris Bangle for the exterior? He's known for controversial designs that end up being category-founding car designs. He lives in Italy too now. Or why not reach out to Frank Stephenson, who designed the iconic F430 which pretty much paved the ground for Ferraris modern history.
I feel like most Ferrari drivers are buying them as collector's items to be preserved rather than something to be driven.
EVs, by contrast, feel more like appliances meant to be used and enjoyed. And there will always be a more advanced model coming out just around the corner.
They've kind of hinted at the fact that this is meant to be more of an appliance than other models, with a more accesible price:
> “We were excited about a five-seater car that was flexible, versatile and inherently luxurious,” he tells TopGear.com during an exclusive walk-round. “Of course, the price point means it’s exclusive but it’s more accessible and relevant. That’s a new paradigm, and also the biggest challenge.” He gestures to the roof-line. “Imagine how much easier our job would have been if we’d been able to pull this point down two inches.”
Although I suspect the price will still be very much out of my range, there may well be some wealthy buyers out there who would love to have a Ferrari as a family sedan. Look at the success of the Cayenne - something that a lot of people snubbed their nose at initially. Honestly if I had the means I would be much more interested in this than any of their other cars. I'm definitely in the cars-are-meant-to-be-driven camp.
Edit: oh the estimated price is $640k. Yeah I don't think it will sell well at that price - though I also don't pretend to understand the market for super cars or the motivations of super car buyers.
The Cayenna has never been a bad looking vehicle.
Like other German SUVs from that time it elevated an established design language into SUV form. If anyting it was criticized as lazy and unimaginative.
The real beef was Porsche enthusiasts (911 purists) thought SUVs were for unwashed masses and soccer moms.
They thought Porsche was jumping on the the relatively new (at the time) premium/luxury german SUV bandwagen establised by the X5 and ML500 (GWagen excluded).
Once they got over that they became customers.
This..thing...on the other hand is a tasteless abomination. Aside from the badges and tail lights there's nothing in it that's inherently Ferrari.
Ferrari uses cars like this to test loyalty. If you want to get 'on the list' buying cars like this is one of the ways to do it, especially if you haven't spent considerable $ with them before.
I've heard about this in a clip with Jay Leno talking about why he's never bought a Ferrari [1]. It all sounds absolutely insane to me, but Ferrari buyers are a different breed I guess.
Rolex run a similar scam with watches. It’s supposed to prevent people flipping the objects in question which is important for anything with artificial scarcity.
Yikes. If you showed me this car and asked me to guess the brand I'd probably say Renault. Which isn't meant to be shade on Renault, and I don't exactly hate the design and might even take a look at it if I was in the market given the expectations I have around the price point of a new Renault.
This is absolutely not a car that screams "Ferrari" though.
I suspect this car is more aimed at people who want a Tesla with a sports car badge rather than people who want a sports car. And I think that’s why most on here don’t like it.
For the vast majority of people, a Ferrari is something aspirational. But for those who can afford one but would rather have “normal” car, this might appeal. It has the form of something practical while still signalling wealth.
Before now, that generally meant those equally-ugly but for different reasons 4-wheel drive and SUVs.
If you view this as (for example) something for rich mums to take their kids to school in, then it makes a lot more sense.
At least that’s the demographic I think they’re quietly going after.
> If you view this as (for example) something for rich mums to take their kids to school in, then it makes a lot more sense.
That’s why Porsche makes their SUVs which are really popular.
High end luxury brands should technically be able to serve both upper-middle and top end at the same time. The important thing is the products are good. And if they aren’t some Chinese or other brand will do it. The age of choosing between a couple 100yr old car companies might be ending soon.
> That’s why Porsche makes their SUVs which are really popular.
Indeed, that's why I referenced SUVs in my post.
My point was that not everyone wants the SUV form factor but still desires something that can be argued as a practical family car. This is why you see executive models like saloon or 4 door coupes. But those cars are often catering to a male-orientated market and have more attainable models (eg Audi A6) that cheapens the brand for the ultra rich.
The Ferrari badge is a bigger signal of wealth and there isn't a whole lot out there that signals that kind of wealth while still being a practical car. Austin Martin sell smaller SUVs (DBX) and 2 door coupes, but nothing like an Audi A5 or A6. Maserati have a few older models that fit this niche but they too have discontinued them for SUVs. Likewise with Jaguar.
The SUV design has basically killed off all other 4-door family cars in the mid-range luxury price range. But at least the Ferrari Luce is at a price point where they're already catering to a smaller demographic and thus they're not relying on the economics of mass production.
At least this is my assumption of Ferrari's target demographic. I could be completely wrong.
And on a personal note, this car isn't to my tastes either -- though as I said before, I'm not the target demographic. But if I had the kind of money to buy a Luce, I think I'd rather by an older Jaguar for the school run and have a modern Austin Martin (2-door coupe) for personal trips.
Interesting fact from the page: "The lowest drag coefficient in Ferrari history, achieved through aero-styling convergence, active air shutters, and ride-height logic that lowers the front by 10 mm even while cruising"
I guess not having large air intakes and generally a slightly larger frontal area helps with that (the coefficient of drag is always multiplied by the area, so this might not be the most aero Ferrari ever, that's a different claim).
It's looks less interesting than the cars Xiaomi and BYD have been making. Let's hope that the performance is something special. Though why they chose Mr thin and light instead of someone like Pininfarina I don't know.
Is it their first EV? I presume the tech is outsourced or bought from competitive players that have put in the R&D. It feels like buyers will be buying the brand.
The Mercedes GT EV is faster than it, so the performance doesn't stand out.
it's their first pure EV but they have been "dabbling" with electric motors for a while, the F1 has had an hybrid powertrain for a while, and they had hybrid/KERS enhanced cars for a few years, e.g. the SF90 Stradale from 2019
At first I thought it was a Ferrari custom built for Jony Ive made just to his specifications. But once I saw the first image I could easily understand it was designed by him. It's a talent to be an industrial designer with such a clean recognizable style that it's like a signature, easily recognizable as to who it belongs to.
Personally, I think a My Little Pony silhouette would look great instead of the Ferrari logo. It has a completely different vibe compared to the wild horse image
Feel like this is an answer to the Lamborghini Urus which, at the time, I remember the internet not being fond of either. But in the real world, they are now a massive status symbol
No, the answer to the Urus (an SUV) is the Purosangue (also an SUV) which has been out for a while and looks somewhat decent. The Luce is an answer to a question nobody asked, probably along the lines of "How to destroy a famed brand's heritage?"
This is a very strange car for Ferrari to make. What people expected is a Rimac and instead they get a fancy electric Prius.
Maybe it is really a functional prototype, but Ferrari as a company does strange things. They live off of their name brand, but they make buying and owning their cars a pain and frankly I don’t think they are very high quality compared to what other car makers in their price point are doing.
Kudos to Ferrari trying to stay modern with a collab with one of the best industrial designers of the moment. But this feels antithetical to Ferrari, it's bland and utilitarian where they should be channeling flair and evocative designs.
The whole thing looks amateur, this is what every product design student has in their design portfolio when they needed to add an automotive concept. There's chairs and lamps, and they tagged on this car in their PDF.
Looks like a school project not the kind of thing from a proper automotive designer.
Nothing about this conveys fast, lightweight, Italian sports car.
>THE FERRARI LUCE APP
A new way to connect your car
So they have an app specifically for this car and not a general app for all Ferraris? What are the chances it is a good, usable app? What are the chances it's loaded with trackers?
The companion app, showcased at the middle of the page, looks surprisingly under-designed, despite LoveFrom having some of the best UI designers in the world.
This looks really good in that Blue color when the light is just right.
Otherwise, I think this car has a lot of excellent new tech in a package that just won't get the motor(s) firing for most people - especially at a 650K price point.
It's a shame they couldn't figure out a way to make the shape look a bit more sporting. Who cares about practicality when you're driving a ferrari?
All people want is an electric Audi allroad. Instead, we get an e-tron.
All people want is an electric V90 wagon. Instead we get a polestar.
All people want is an electric Jeep Wrangler. Instead we get "Recon EV".
The reason for this is that the incumbent manufacturers understand clearly that the electric versions would completely eclipse the ICE models and their existing investments in design and tooling would rapidly diminish.
... and so, all of the eInitiative, iMobile, TronCars ... it's all a desperate (and lame) attempt to continue selling the ICE line and grow marketshare with the addition of the electric car consumers.
Why is every EV these days an amorphous blob? Even Ferraris are being homogenised. Can't believe Ive designed this. Interior is okay, but not special; the exterior though... It looks like any other of the thousands of blob EVs in the market. It's actually so bad
Considering Ive is responsible for my least favorite era of Apple, I can believe it. They kept making Macs as insanely anorexic as possible at the cost of upgradable / swappable RAM and storage space, plus that failure keyboard (what was it the butterfly nonsense?) that was the absolute worst season in Apple history, I held off ever buying another Mac as a result till last year.
Because once you don't have a combustion engine there is no need for a hood anymore as your car is virtually just a skateboard with batteries at the bottom for an as low as possible weight distribution.
All EV designs should converge to monovolume or van shaped vehicles as it is simply the best internal space to external space ratio while allowing decent aero.
They basically copy/pasted Ian Callum design language.
Boring as f. imho as Tesla Never had their proper design language, the model S being a 4 doors copy of an Aston Martin DB7 and the other models very Ford inspired.
Bigger, because no one expects beauty from Fiat. That said, the Multipla was a bold and brilliant car. This one is only bold in the sense that “I can’t believe Ferrari allowed that to happen”. It’s kind of the Balenciaga of cars: will rich people buy just about anything with the right logo on?
Did they even ask their customer base before approving the design? I don't care about Ferrari, but people who do care about Ferrari will not like this.
Sad that the i3 concept didn't take off, I loved it, together with the i8 (if only that one had a larger engine...)
Interestingly enough the i3 and i8's carbon structure helped the G11 & G12 (short and long wheelbase BMW 7), the G14/G15/G16 (BMW 8 series) and the F91/F92/F93 (BMW M8) shed a lot of weight.
But for the newer version of the 7 series don't use that structure anymore, as the weight savings are nullified by the battery pack.
Do you have the REX and are you in the USA? If so, with an app you can remove the gas-tank restriction and add the ability to maintain charge instead of only turning it on when below 30%.
You could stick a Door Dash car topper on the roof and few people would pick up on the joke. So the entire point of Ferrari is lost in this exterior design. Where are the wings and strakes and diffusers? It has a few holes, but sans that it's a slightly more swoopy two-tone Model 3.
I thought it was telling that the promo site leads with an overhead view of the car's shape, a perspective almost no driver or on-looker will have. If I was buying a status car, I think I'd be mostly interested in how great it looked from the ground...
Don't worry. This is being laughed at in the factories in maranello.
But Ferrari has an obligation to the populistic world too, trying to wheel in customers for an EV end ending up selling them a real car with a V8-12 engine.
It looks exactly like a black economy compact wearing a differently coloured body kit. There’s a ton of lovely design moments and thoughtful touches, but it never resolves into a cohesive design aesthetic.
It’s a five seat nearly SUV despite Ferrari claiming it isn’t. It makes fake noises in sports mode like the other EVs, it seems to have only two features that come from Ferrari and that’s the quad rear lights and the yellow badge.
I’m not the target market for this and never will be but nobody is going to make a poster of that for a teenagers bedroom. Yuck.
I think that's the key. This is meant to go up against the Lamborghini SUV and its ilk: a vehicle for the very wealthy who don't really like cars but have to mark their status in everyday interactions. It will sell well.
Yep they do despite it seeming like an anachronism from the 1980s. I have a few car posters in my workshop because grown ups aren’t allowed to have them on their bedroom walls, at least according to my wife.
The interior isn't offensive, but don't the dashboard air vents appear to kind of bolted on? Like, maybe they are super functional? But they look like an afterthought aesthetically.
If you like to show your car off once a month to friends, then sure.
But practically,
> start buttons
What is a difference from switch on button on laptop? How do you tell the car, that you are ready to drive?
> physical keys
So when your phone will not be working, are you walking home? I like physical keys because it does not create dependency on single artifact and thus single point of failure.
Agree on first two, but vents on my Tesla kinda blow. Too weak where it needs to work (my face) and too strong where it shouldn't (stray wind on my knees).
If the battery is under the passenger compartment, you're pretty much stuck with a sedan-derived coupe look. The performance better be super ultra special, otherwise Ferrari had no need to make a car that looks like that.
love the interior, not sure how i feel about that front end however. "The lowest drag coefficient in Ferrari history" is not what i would have guessed just seeing the picture alone, so props to them on making this possible!
This is the car you will need to buy to get on the list to buy the Ferrari you kind of want - but not the Ferrari you really, really want, that will cost you a lot more.
Given the level of hate here (I use that word advisedly), this should do fine in the target market. Most of us aren’t in that market - I doubt Maranello are quaking that a bunch of nerds are sickened to their very core by this car’s existence.
Even if this car had been the most beautiful object ever crafted, it would have faced an “EV bad, should be 12 cylinders” reaction.
Even if it had been the fastest or efficient EV, since that would currently be achieved through extreme aerodynamics, it would have been burdened with “that’s a moose, kill sir jony”.
Since it’s not the fastest EV, it gets compared unfavourably to a discontinued car from a discredited kleptocrat, or more reasonably with a Rimac. One of those nobody with 600k to blow on a car would comparison shop against (and they probably have a few in their garages anyway), the other they’re probably on the waiting list for or looking for used, and the Luce will fill in the gap nicely whilst they wait.
Keep huffing and puffing. Me? I’ll wait until some driving reviews emerge and in the meantime applaud Ferrari for stepping outside their comfort zone. This is undeniably a huge risk for them.
Ferrari juice their sales by making access to good cars contingent on buying bad cars first. Nerds are the only people who could like this, Ferrari owners hate it — it’s a complete departure from Ferrari’s design. The car itself is good spec wise but looks matter a lot more. Remember the cybertruck? People said the same, “you might think it’s ugly but it’s going to sell like crazy amongst Tesla fans” and instead it has been a flop. The reaction to this car is a lot worse amongst Ferrari owners.
I wonder if some of the design is related to the car that Apple was designing, if Apple released an EV this is pretty much what I would have expected it to look like
This is what happens when you hand over the job to a Silicon Valley yuppie with absolutely no car design history. As an Italian, this design feels like an insult and it's mental that a company like Ferrari even approved such a project.
The supercar EV market had such huge potential to innovate and inspire but no we decided to follow these average EV design trends instead.
I disagree, it still commits many sins of modern car design with regard to interior controls. After Ive making a big statement basically echoing what pretty much everyone has been saying for years about forcing touchscreens on drivers, he goes and slaps a big honking iPad on the dash.
Some EVs use them to let the driver change the "drag" of the electric motors. Imagine the "L" (sometimes "B") position of automatic gear but with finer control than all-or-nothing.
I am not sure why you would be surprised. Ferrari have looked like korean cars for more than 2 decades already. Just expensive, fast and impractical korean cars.
Well actually the whole car industry has converged to these design languages.
$1.2M in Canada after provincial and federal luxury sales taxes. For a 5100 pound, sub-300 mile range, mid-performer with 23/24" wheels. All those louvres, ducts, and aerodynamics for a terribly inefficient EV. Disappointing. (edited because i had $1.1M as the final price)
Ive is an overrated plonker and my first reaction is to wonder if all the serviceable components are glued in place.
Do you know why no one has ever put rotating switches on a steering wheel face before? Because it requires two fingers to operate the switches and thus taking your entire hand off the wheel. Those knobs and switches might as well be in the center console because it takes a similar amount of effort and diversion of attention to operate.
This looks like a car designed by someone who's never driven before. Did the early prototypes feature bubble domes before they were forced to tell Ive that won't work?
Porsche has a similar steering wheel mounted rotary switch. Traditionally it was on models optioned with the Sport Chrono package. They recently rolled it out to all new models over the past few years.
An Xiaomi blatantly copied that for their SU7. I think the rotary switches are the best part of the Luce. Everything else looks like someone put Ferrari stickers on a Chinese EV.
> Do you know why no one has ever put rotating switches on a steering wheel face before? Because it requires two fingers to operate the switches and thus taking your entire hand off the wheel.
I hate this car as much you do, it looks like a vape cartridge on wheels to me. That being said, there are F1 cars with rotating knobs on the steering wheel. Different category and all, but still worth it to point out.
I hate 20 inch, floating, glued to the dash tablets with such a passion. It cannot be such a huge monetary difference to have physical switches for the AC compared to this attention grabbing accident causing contraption that was never meant to be put in a human commandeered vehicle.
Yes, preach it! But … I think in fact it does make a huge difference economically. I don’t know what the bill of materials is, but imagine the difference between wiring into place (a) a touch screen, or (b) 40 physical controls.
I believe another motivation for manufacturers is that they can turn the car’s UI into a software problem, which from a human-centered design perspective means that they can throw it in the trash and never spend a dime on it.
Ferrari clearly aren’t doing it to save costs. I don’t think they’re doing it for principled driver-centered reasons, either, but more because the market expects it. Cars are appliances, and appliances are generally built to be sold (i.e., to look good) rather than to be used. Microwaves, washers, cars — the same for all of them.
The design exterior looks glued together from more interesting electric cars, so no surprise the interior does too.
EDIT: I just learned that Jony Ive did the interior. Further proof that without Steve Jobs goading him, Ive is just a stylist.
I also hate crappy car tablets. For context, though, according to the Ferrari CEO, they are 50% cheaper [0]. I'm not convinced that should matter on a premium badge car (or any car, given safety concerns), but that's for Ferrari's customers to decide.
It’s the first Ferrari EV: they had to think disruptively and I really appreciate the courage.
Love the design IMHO, looking forward to see the street performances.
Four wheel steering, active suspension, low center of gravity, 1050 HP...
The display & controls do look very nice!
I love how they found a way to make the sound provide real feedback. I wonder if the cabin gets feedback faster than the speed of sound in air would travel, that would be neat. I'm skeptical they kept the loop fast enough to beat speed of sound in metal though (5000~6000 m/s for steel).
> The Luce’s sound system doesn’t generate artificial noise. Instead, a precision accelerometer mounted at the center of the rear axle captures the actual vibration of the rotating electric components. That signal is then filtered, equalized, and amplified — essentially working like an electric guitar’s amplifier. The result is a sound that’s rooted in the real physics of the machinery, not synthesized from a speaker library.
Interesting idea, but ultimately not going to happen (or matter). I doubt the latency in that DSP Pipeline is below a millisecond, heck given the state of non-critical automotive Software it might a second.
Those rear tail lights don’t sit right with me. I know there’s probably some aerodynamic reason behind it but Jony, those aren’t the proportions that just work. Steve wouldn’t approve this. And I feel Jony was always partly Steve when Jony was at his best.That said the issue is the asymmetric black negative space below and above the red circles. This is mostly fixed if you get the Luce in black or very dark gray.
I mean it's neat but looks sorta.. halfway physical... still requires you to take your focus off the road and look at the touchscreen to know what you're changing and what the setting is.
There's also the metal handle to rest your hand on, which also acts as a target which you can find blindly, and from there you can find the correct knob by touch. You'll just have to remember the the third knob is the fan speed and so on. I imagine that you can use it without looking, and it seems to be designed that way. Also I'm pretty sure that the UI is replicated on the display behind the wheel so you don't have to look to see the numbers.
Oh wow, it’s even worse than I imagined based on those early images of the PlaySkool cockpit renderings!
The body lines? What body lines? I’m a vocal critic of derivative design, but this space egg usually is little more than a Junior Study drawing at best. It’s so bland it might as well be still made of clay.
I’m not being unfairly harsh here, there’s a huge tradition of sorting a car’s emotional response - yes, Countach being a prime case study - but I get more “This is interesting” from the latest Prius than anything with this design, in parts or taken as a whole. I can’t be alone, and I suppose the reactions will be savage. I am kind of giddy thinking about what some of the more crude phrasings might be from the likes of Clarkson or Harris.
This is a design for the Super Yacht club. If it was a concept car for a Chinese knock off of a Honda, it would be rightly panned at first sight. Was it designed on a first generation Macintosh?
It has no character whatsoever. The interior looks like patio furniture intended for a retirement home. To call it a failure is not quite right, because sometimes things like the Pontiac Aztek have coherent thought and risks involved. This has none of those things. Mayo on white bread with a glass of room temperature tap water.
In a strange way I love it because it might as well be called the Ferrari Hubris. Just…wow…
It would be a great looking Hyundai but it is a dreadful looking Ferrari. The cost of such a car will be far higher than it deserves. Ferrari for me is synonymous with genuinely beautiful curvaceous cars that have a gorgeous, slightly old looking interior. This is not it, nor is it take Ferrari into the modern day.
Oh looks like a fucken apple mobile. Of course it was designed by Jony Ive
and Marc Newson. :DDD What a horrible shitshow, jeeesus. Since they left Pininfarina, Ferraris looks like, well, shit. Shame.
LMAO, this thing is so ugly. It looks like a generic Chinese EV. Interior looks good, but the exterior is just a boat. 5.05m long, 2m wide, 5000lbs heavy.
Looks like a mix of the Jag Epace and the Mustang EV/Mache
Can't believe they are asking 600k for this thing.
It is almost like Ferrari is trying to punk its customers.
Wait, what's with those suicide doors? Weren't they, considered to be super dangerous? Will this car pass the safety regulations in the EU with those doors?
Is Ferrari serious with this? Are they trying to commit brand suicide? What in the world is going on with all of these large companies doing the absolute stupidest possible thing lately?
I once asked HN why EVs look funky and many people responded with “oohh no they don’t what are you talking about”. Tell me now if this looks weird or not.
The way I'd phrase your last sentence would be: "It's NOT a Ferrari."
That's the whole problem. If you told me this is the latest Chinese luxury EV, I'd shrug my shoulders, say "hm, not bad" and "not for me," and move on.
Wow. The only way I can describe this is as a bastard child of Apple and Rolls-Royce, and therein lies the problem. This doesn't feel like a Ferrari to me. Someone getting into a Ferrari wants to feel like they're trying to tame a beast, not being pampered in a Rolls-Royce.
Don't get me wrong, it's a stunning car. But I miss the screaming reds and yellows most of all. And the interface, polished as it is, feels almost too intuitive. Ferrari shouldn't feel effortless!
Now, if this were badged as an Apple car with a sticker price under $100k, we'd be having a very different conversation.
But handing over responsibility for the exterior is quite questionable IMO.
To me, the exterior has lost almost all of Ferrari's identity. It's a nice car-design, but if you'd tell me it's a Hyundai, Lexus or BYD I would believe you.
I wonder what political struggle was behind that within Ferrari. I can't imagine this design was received well, and I doubt that Ferrari actually asked for help on exterior design. It's more likely that Jony Ive demanded it...
(Also the fact that they presented the interior much earlier than the exterior could be an indicator for internal disagreements...)
The management knows that they need something new and out of their comfort zone. Someone (from within or without) suggests an idea that would never been accepted in the olden days.
The management, for the sake of their company, would suppress every instinct they have built over the years, often over-correcting. This inevitably results in some questionable choices seeping in, in the name of openness to new paradigms.
And not every time this goes well.
I'm not saying this is what's happening here. These are world-class engineers and designers, but nobody is immune from a bad decision or two.
That's why I can imagine Ive's company wowing the management with an early interior concept pitch, but then demanding also exterior design ownership as part of the agreement because "it needs to be a coherent design, like an iPhone".
Sounds perfectly reasonable and easy to vouch for. Management feels like they are anyway in control because they decide whether to launch the product or not.
But if the product starts to shift over the course of the development, someone in management has to make the call. And that's a very expensive call to make.
I've personally been with companies which had such big-name collaborations that "deviated" from expectations in very advanced development-stages.
I've seen companies successfully intervening, but more often than that scale-down the project or cancelling the entire collaboration and ending the project, as no partial solution could be agreed on.
The latter was especially common with Design Companies (e.g. Porsche Design, Prada, the earlier LVMH), as their contracts were not phrased for collaboration but for creative control. I would assume Jony Ive sees himself in the same bracket...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Primera
For me, the first reaction to the Ferrari Luce was utter shock, but after looking at it again several hours later I'm starting to see some of its exterior elements differently (although my brain finds it hard to call the car "beautiful" in the same way as some of the other recent Ferrari models).
It looks like a decision was made to depart from the "modern"-looking Ferraris, but the direction of that departure seems to be very different from what the competitors are doing and what the general public is looking for visually in such a car (but it's worth keeping in mind that members of the general public aren't really customers of this car).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect
But it's not a Ferrari design, it dropped almost all of the brands' identity and design language in favor of becoming a more "uniform sportscar design".
To me personally this is quite on-brand for Jony Ive's past work, where the exterior design of the product is diluted to the "least-offending version of its kind", a vessel to the high-quality interior experience which is focused to "excite the user".
In the mobile phone space this was disruptive, because (accidentally) it created the "normalized mobile computing platform" needed to transform the industry into a Smartphone industry.
But I'd say the sports car industry is different, I don't see a benefit in having the "most normalized sports car"...
I hope they didn't put the charging socket on the bottom.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jwU1ZvVFMXw
Ferrari already got their exception from the EU regulation for CO² reduction via the E-Fuel loophole, which was tailored for them and allows them to continue selling V8 and V12 ICE-based cars beyond 2036 if they only use synthetic e-fuels.
This secures their existing business model for customers who insist on ICE-based cars and are willing to pay the premium for it.
A portion of their addressable market shifts to EV-based sports cars though, they are shooting themselves into the foot by not establishing a BOLD identity in this space soon. A bland product with a "we used to be big in ICE" brand won't cut it there
"Look, we tried to create an EV and no one bought it. So we need to retain that carve-out in the regulations that mean we do not have to electrify our entire product line or we will go out of business entirely."
I'd totally buy this car if it looked like that and was from a mainstream manufacturer (i.e. priced normally), but yeah I cannot see a typical ferrari owner buying one.
I don't like the interior. I think this style can work for some things, it reminds me of a NuPhy keyboard, blocky plastic that looks nice in some circumstances.
For me this is not a Ferrari-standard of car, Ferraris are strikingly beautiful, and this just isn't.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy22rddy5no
"Introducing a team from outside the Ferrari Design Studio led by Flavio Manzoni invited a new perspective and cross-fertilisation, enabling a new design language to be introduced."
"LoveFrom was given the creative freedom needed to define the design direction of the project from the outset, translating this design language into an authentic Ferrari experience."
[0] https://www.ferrari.com/en-US/corporate/articles/ferrari-luc...
That, or they truly have insight into where consumer trends will go, and like the F50 etc, this will be better received in a decades time than now.
As many legacy brands, Ferrari is looking to refresh itself in order to stay relevant to a new generation of buyers, and not "die out" together with their existing customer base. They need to do this rather sooner than later while still standing on a pillar of good legacy identity, to not end up like Jaguar does...
What is the "EV game"?
The whole point of Ferrari is high enough volume to print money, low enough to make almost bespoke cars whose sheet metal can change quickly. If the platform is adaptable for that purpose, it will be a success.
Agree that the Interior and rest is all nice enough though.
I too would pick fun/weird stuff to play, but if I had Ferrari money I wouldn't be touching this.
My strong guess is the buyer of the electric Ferrari is not your typical Ferrari buyer.
These same people probably criticized the Porsche Cayenne for 'not being fast enough' or 'lacking features that Toyota SUVs have'
The target buyer is probably more like Dubai housewife with kids.
They have a different aesthetic. They LOVE their iPhone.
Everyone hating on it probably needs to reconsider. There's almost 0 chance that a company like Ferrari did this to not embarrass Jony Ive.
They legitimately expect this thing to sell to its target audience.
For Dubai you gotta consider the resale value. Which doesn't seem very high to me once the initial hype bump is over. (Sir why dont you buy this famous ugliest ferrari ever for the bargain price of 500000)
Every other expensive EV is doing awfully on the resale market, Rimac, Lucid, Taycan, Bautista, etc.
Exterior is not my style, but then again, I'm not the target.
The Urus is at least to me the equivalent kind of car. Captures a market that does not appeal to traditional lambos. I could see this doing the same.
This thing might sell incredibly poorly but one thing I have always found to be true. The taste of HN commenters is wildly different than target demographics.
Why?
IDGAF if Dubai Housewives like it. My world doesn't revolve around what they think.
P.S. It’s kind of like when Porsche entered the SUV market with the Cayenne, which didn’t have a conventional SUV look but still crashed the market.
I think this will flop. Even amazing halo car EVs have poor resale value, and this one isn't it. It will not keep value like an analog Ferrari, but may be better than Rimac because it's a Ferrari and if they limit supply.
I'm all for EVs by the way, I drive a Model 3 Performance and I love it. Just not feeling this design at all.
In case it wasn't clear, the Luce is a 1,000+ HP car and will cost over $300,000 USD.
Are there? That's a pretty bold claim.
I'm sure they think the same at Ferrari, but plenty of successful companies create products that flop miserably based on the wrong assumptions.
I would personally think that the public interested in high-performance combustion-engine luxury cars is not interested in generic-looking electric cars even if they come from the same company.
I'm sure there are buyers out there -- with questionable taste -- but whether there are enough of them... I guess we'll live and see.
This car is what the Apple Car should have been in the 2010s, sold at around 40k USD. At that price point, it would've been just fine. What it most certainly is not, however, is a 500k+ Ferrari.
Ives also had a ton of really excellent and classic designs, but maybe the world needs to stop pretending that everything that man touches is instant classics and best in class. Maybe consumer electronics design doesn't translate well into other fields. I still think it due to companies refusal to take risk, and in some cases, like with OpenAI, wanting to get some association with Apple. Better hire Ives, because then no one can critic the design, because everyone know that Ives is the world greatest designer.
For Ferrari I don't get it. They already have good designers and I think their customers would prefer an EV that looks like a Ferrari, not a Ferrari that looks like Mac.
You buy a Ferrari for the sex appeal.
But you nailed it. It's the Ferrari Priuso.
How can this make any sense when he designed every iPhone until 2019? None of which would have existed without his original design and all of which remain relatively close to that original design.
I know it’s Ferrari, but one of the interesting things about EVs is that there’s minimal technological differentiation marketed to customers after a certain point. As in: a buyer wouldn’t know or care about a Ferrari battery pack vs. a Tesla or BYD battery pack. Whether you’ve got 300 or 1000 horsepower, the brand of the motor la delivering it is mostly irrelevant.
The suspension may be cleverer (and more expensive) and the tuning (or coding) of the power delivery may be different, but underneath it all this does not have a 5x higher BoM than a Model S Plaid. And without the ‘benefits’ typically sold by Ferrari to justify their price point (e.g. heritage, F1 association, high-revving flat-pane crank engines, F1-derived gearboxes, handling, the typical Ferrari appearance) the price premium seems ever harder to justify.
Fortunately everyone will laugh and cringe, the usual car "journalists" will bite their tongues because they don't want to lose access, time will pass and it will be forgotten because Ferrari can afford to make these mistakes ( for now.. )
someone wrote it, someone performed it, someone mixed it, someone approved it, someone developed marketing for it, someone helped get it on shelves, and then someone played it.
There were plenty of points along the way where the disaster could have been averted.
Money/time/effort is spent on the wrong thing. It's a disaster for them. Not for you.
Haha, you just perfectly described every porsche dealership employee I've ever met.
Regarding the car itself, it's great. It's obvious that car existed in sketches and concept long time ago (compare it to the other Newson car – Ford 012C), maybe it's an Apple car and just materialized with a few Ferrari signature details now. It's very cool looking and could be a banger with a $50-70K price tag produced by a Lucid or some other US car neo-brand.
I find it quiet disrespectful to ignore Italian craftsmen and Flavio Manzoni (head of design) particularly by Ferrari management as they assumed that they have to hire "tech" guys to make tech product as local engineers and designers couldn't solve so complicated task. Manzoni team would introduce something like 12 Cilindri in sedan form and it would worth every pence of whatever price tag they would place for it.
https://marc-newson.com/ford-021c-concept-car/
The design is bonkers though , a major blunder
For roughly 17% of the price.
And it looks the same.
What an abomination!
(You can probably find similar Chinese EVs that also outperform similarly.)
Will it? I've owned a few Ferraris and I've driven quite a few others. They're lots of fun, but I would never describe Ferrari as a company with high build quality standards.
There is really no way to justify the price tag. With combustion engines at least you knew that you had an extremely rare feat of engineering.
The fact that I like the interior and I can't get it for less money is what justifies the price tag.
It's only since 2018 that they stepped up, but that's still not the focus of a Ferrari even with the Roma or Purosangue.
Even at low mileage, even for the new cars, wear and heat ruin the car extremely fast. Plastics and glues break down very soon on those cars, other surfaces become sticky and gummy.
Ferrari is a car made for the driving experience, if you're looking for interior quality you can get way better materials and build at a fraction of the price from other GT cars makers.
Buying an ultra-premium EV Ferrari over a faster, cheaper is a evolutionary broadcast (Costly Signaling Theory), proving the buyer possesses such immense excess wealth that they have no practical need to optimize their dollar-to-spec ratio. Everybody drives Teslas, the highly exclusive Ferrari satisfies a deep human drive for elite group differentiation (Social Identity Theory) while perfectly mirroring the buyer's aspirational ego and public identity (Self-Congruity Theory). Ultimately, this choice optimizes for intense internal sensory and emotional pleasure rather than objective efficiency (Hedonic Consumption Theory) by making (at least at the beginning) the owner feel that he is a super special dude.
The whole point of this fiasco is that this design doesn't work as a Veblen signal. It has none of the usual Veblen signifiers - overt use of premium materials and/or ironic fragility, sculpted elegance, conspicuous high-touch over-engineering and stat play, aggressive animal magnetism, high-effort minimalism, distinctive heritage design.
Instead it's nice - happy colours, toy car curves, improved ergonomics.
It's literally all of the things you don't want in a premium product.
Apparently they're aiming to produce about 2500-3000 Luces (Luci?) a year, and they're building about 14,000 cars total annually. So not too many in keeping with their scarcity strategy. That has worked great for them so far, but I doubt they can replicate it with the Luce.
Who is the customer for a Model S? What fancy full-size sedan would they otherwise buy?
Certainly not the person who'd buy a BMW 7er or a Mercedes S-class. Model S does not offer the basic comforts required to compete in this segment.
Perhaps the person who'd buy a BMW 5er or a Mercedes e-class? Possibly, but the Model S is still an uncomfortable, noisy and cheap feeling clunker compared to those two.
It's not like the full-size luxury sedan market is doing too bad. We've got at least:
Plenty of room for Ferrari to exist, but the Model S has been offering a low-end product at relatively high prices.Yeah! My first though about the design was "This looks like a Tesla SUV-type thing" and about as sporty as a minivan. It is 1544mm high. The Lotus Esprit (which is my standard for a cool sportscar) is over 400 mm lower. The batteries do need to go somewhere... but isn't there room around the cockpit instead of under? Or a way to have a thin layer of batteries below the entire car?
It's doubly a shame because Jony actually owns one of the all-time most beautiful classic Ferraris – the 250 Europa. I was hoping they'd do a modern re-imagination and revival.
https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/250-europa
https://ferrari-cdn.thron.com/delivery/public/image/ferrari/...
That G-force thing is a gimmick. You already know the ballpark without even looking, and unlike speed I’m not sure what’s the use case for precise readings.
The fact that it's extremely boring and conventional?
>That G-force thing is a gimmick. You already know the ballpark without even looking, and unlike speed I’m not sure what’s the use case for precise readings.
In this car? A gimmick, could maybe help someone who's trying to learn to drive a bit smoother. In a track car? Useful cornering data
So a complete lack of anything actually useful.
I am not into cars and I will certainly not pay for a luxury car anytime soon, so not the most relevant opinion. Still, when I buy a car again, I'd love to have this interior design. The exterior on the other hand, I don't know what they tried to achieve here.
Designers seem to struggle with exterior electronic car design in general. Are they trying too hard to be iconic?
Previously it had been known that Jony Ive was working on the interior of this car, but it seems his firm is responsible for the exterior as well[0].
> LoveFrom was given the creative freedom needed to define the design direction of the project from the outset, translating this design language into an authentic Ferrari experience.
[0]https://www.ferrari.com/en-US/corporate/articles/ferrari-luc...
The Luce however has zero Ferrari design language in my opinion. It has no visual cues that say Ferrari. The powertrain obviously doesn't have it. The interior is like the ghost of Ferraris past, you can see the ideas there but it still doesn't say Ferrari to me.
The whole package feels like something in the $80-100k price bracket for sensible consumers - not someone looking to spend half a million dollars on a performance car that hawks back to racing pedigree.
I don't feel that this addresses anything a Ferrari buyer is asking for. However they'll still probably sell heaps of them because Ferrari buyers are often purchasing for clout.
The interior is very nice. The rest of Ferrari can hopefully borrow from this.
It’s the outside I don’t like. I don’t hate it… just looks like it could be a Kia EV.
If you’re goofy enough to buy a Ferrari I expect you want people to really have to see that you’re driving a Ferrari.
Not a problem - because you'll also be wearing a Ferrari hat and jacket, just to make sure.
by the time this depreciates the Kia might hold better value
Ugly is the word for things like front end of Gen 1 Tesla or Gen 4 Prius, not for this. wtf.
$650k is a fine price for a Ferrari, but not one that looks as plain as that.
If I had to spend 650k on a single car, I wouldn't buy this.
If the dashboard was set up for a normal person and I could see this be a great sedan. But as it stands, it just seems horribly out of touch.
For me it looks like a nice “car” and I was shocked to see it was an Ive doing because I associate with him rather designing things for the sake of designing things far from reality and real world usage. Looks like he learned after all.
The Rimac Nevera is a different car category. Ferrari just decided to not make this a 2 seat hypercar.
This is the daily driver Ferrari for a small family, similar to the Porsche Cayenne or Panamera.
This looks like a child's toy.
Be careful not to take the Jaguar road for there is no coming back.
https://imgur.com/a/fsvO5G8
Then the Ferrari image loaded. Wow.
It really is a game of spot the difference. A difficult game.
edit: I don't want to reduce hypercars purely to their "Wow!" factor, but a huge huge part of their value is definitely the feeling they evoke when you see one out of the corner of your eye and your head snaps around. This Leaf/Luce side-profile similarity is completely antithetical to that "Wow!" factor.
It is a very generic shape for sure!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangwang_U9#/media/File:Yangwa...
Long live the Ivesmobile.
This car has absolutely ZERO life to it for any manufacturer, much less a Ferrari.
God, Jony Ive is such an insufferable person.
I can definitely see these used as lighting devices on luxury boats.
I honestly like Ive as a designer, but dear lord.
It's possible that those buttons are not Jony Ive's doing, but I still find him insufferably pompous.
I spotted probably the only cybertruck in Taiwan the other day. It was waiting to turn on a busy road, and people were jogging over to take a picture of it. "Woah cool! Awesome! Handsome!" Lots of stuff like that being said.
People share ai slop cat pictures on Facebook.
There's HN commenters, there's the subset of HN commenters smugly criticizing all the very obvious flaws of things like this... And then there's just the entire rest of the world which simply does not give a shit.
Everyone then complains that the automakers aren't making what they want... But the blame isn't with the manufacturers, the blame rests with consumers and how mindlessly apathetic they are to... basically everything.
This is not apathy in my opinion. This is rational. Cars are just tools. Metal boxes to enable mobility. Car people have turned them into this cult of personality that I think is batshit insane. It's not just cars mind you, we do this with watches, shoes, you name it and it's all very peculiar, but cars are my pet peeve because they are so obviously wasteful and dangerous. Not just directly like killing 40k per year in the US alone, but also through obvious geopolitics.
People want to move around and they want to smile smugly and think they are better than others. Those two things are pretty much universal. I say we separate those issues. You can move around all you want but smiling smugly you do in some other way than in your "car". We'll have really good public transport and you'll assert your dominance in some other fashion. I personally recommend we reintroduce dueling to the death.
By the way I don't know anybody that would buy a new car every two year to keep up with the Joneses and I live in a pretty "Jonesy" place. That's a bit hyperbolic at least in my neck of the woods (Netherlands). Most people here keep their cars until they become unreliable.
So the rest of the world not caring doesn't matter as the audience for this is probably a million people at best
The cybercar turned out to be a massive failure though. So, it kind of mattered?
Fun fact: The original company was founded in 1930 in Turin as "Società anonima Carrozzeria Pinin Farina". "Pinin" means the youngest son of the family, and Farina is the family name.
I assume some of it will be adopted from the industry in the upcoming years. Now that regulators are pushing back on touch displays, the integration of tactile buttons with software will be the move forward you still need to have a physical mechanical button it is better in terms of muscle memory and cognitive load. I never understood the central display abominations that car manufactures keep pushing however the rotation and adjustment of the position make it a little more bearable, Audi[0] had figured this out like 20 years ago with the retracting screen in the dashboard, give the users the ability to hide the display it makes the whole interior cleaner and the driver can focus on the driving. I still don't understand the push with the piano black plastics it looks awful this material needs to go from the car interiors once and for all.
I think Ivy did its job great here despite some design decisions the vision and the direction is the goal here with this car the blending of software with mechanical parts.
It is somehow funny tho that it took a designer like Ivy to work on a car project to push for things like that, like who are the people working in the design departments at those companies, the cars that are releasing in the last 5-10 years in terms of interior design are to say at least uninspiring for their price tag.
[0] - pop up screen in interror of #Audi https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TUgqDlzuiFQ
How do two people get in at the same time? Both go for the door handle right next to each other then let the other get in first because there's not enough room for two to get in at the same time on one side.
This sounds kind of fun. It’s curious they weren’t allowed to drive though..
> But I can say that the Torque Shift Engagement system — which gives the driver five power levels on the right paddle and five engine-braking levels on the left — is one of the most intriguing ideas I’ve seen in an electric car. It doesn’t simulate gear changes. It creates an entirely new torque language controlled by the driver, introducing an active decision-making element to trajectory management that sounds like it could restore the kind of driver engagement that many enthusiasts fear EVs have lost.
Oh wow, sounds like some corporation BS if I ever read some. My EV works by pressing the gas pedal and the torque is right there - not sure what revolutionary new invention is required?
Way too many people stomp, release, and repeat. This works in Mario Kart when the A-button input is a boolean value but in a Tesla with one-pedal driving turned on you end up repeatedly accelerating or decelerating and never go a constant speed.
If you're going to drive this slowly you might as well buy a Tesla
Model S Plaid has faster acceleration than Luce and they have similar top speed.
Reportedly, the Luce has more nimble handling.
People don’t get sports cars just for the acceleration.
For a absolutely tiny fraction of the price!
It also looks better than this Nissan leaf knock-off!
I'm not the target market, this thing costs more than my house! But I do think the specs are... Disappointing...
Whatever its merits, there wasn’t a market for it.
Lamborghini Urus sells well even though it’s inferior on every metric to cars a fraction of its price.
Tesla lost its premium brand cachet and consequently the Model S/X market.
Ferrari presumably has some data that there are buyers for a $500k scifi sports car with their logo on it.
I don't know why people insist on EVs being kind of ugly and boxy, but Ferrari had a chance to do better and didn't.
I think they are just falling into the same trap all other manufacturers do at first. They think the customer buying the EV is a different customer, who didn't like their other cars. So they make the techno-future mobile for a customer that doesn't exist.
Just make the same cars with an EV drivetrain, that's what the person who loves your brand but is in the market for an EV wants.
The retrofits usually are less preferable not only because of pointless inconveniences like transmission tunnels, but because they'll be the manufacturer's first toe dipped into the EV waters. The retrofit chassis speaks to either a rush to market, or a cautious approach not wanting to commit too many resources. The former says it'll have issues, the latter says they might bail on it and leave you stranded for service and repairs. Or both at once.
This is correct, but I really don't see why Ferrari would care.
And when you're not going the speed limit on regular public roads here's plenty of "driver engagement" to be had going too fast round tight corners (hopefully on a track, but we can't all be perfect ;)) regardless of whether there's some weird obfuscation between you and the actual mostly flat torque curve of the electric engine as long you build good suspension, body stiffness, put decent tires on it, don't make it too heavy etc.
I would love Lotus to make another road legal go-kart and slap an electric engine in it.
The car manufacturers are well aware of what their vehicles achieve in real world usage.
It would be trivial for them to give and prospective buyer indicative ranges for any particular geographical area.
The actual number of the EPA range is imaginary, yes. But it's useful for comparisons.
But if we're talking about comparisons between two vehicles, the vehicle with a 122kWh battery and a 280 EPA range will go less far and is much less efficient than the vehicle with a 84kWh batter and a 300 EPA range.
Unsurprising, for a Ferrari. I suspect it's designed for performance and not efficiency. Atrocious mileage is par for the course in this segment (see the Veyron)
I've driven manual cars daily for years and once you get used to it, changing gears is not even something you think about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_N_Vision_74
Not Ferrari’s typical market ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_R17_Electric_Restomod_...
In other words, they made an EV do wroom-wroom?
Though, we do have to be very careful with interpreting online commentary as representative the collective, when trying to understanding whether something is considered good/bad.
Firstly because only a small proportion of people voice their opinion publicly at all - so only a small proportion of opinions get heard.
Secondly because opinions that are voiced are much more likely to be definitive in nature (it's great / it's terrible) as people tend to be less willing to comment "it's ok" - so vociferous voices tend to dominant online discourse.
Finally, because online communities often represent a niche/specific demographic and so if you only see the views from a particularly online community it's a fair bet they are not very representative.
I guess my initial reaction was about presuming that some commenters here are presuming that their taste is the taste everyone has, but a more generous interpretation would have been that they are simply unhesitant to share their subjective point of view. So, I revise my take to the more generous one.
Sure it’s fast, but a Corvette ZR1X is faster. I’d rather take a ZR1X to a custom shop and have them redo the atrocious Corvette interior.
Edit: I’ll acknowledge that I’m not the kind of person to buy a Ferrari even if I could afford it, so maybe Ferrari doesn’t care about my opinion, but I feel like Jony Ive pulled an “emperor’s new clothes” on the Ferrari execs.
Again, a heritage brand ruined by an obnoxious, pesky iPad like display that has no business being in a Ferrari.
The front profile is hideous too.
iFerrari XS
It's 140% better than the previous Ferrari Enzo
And 20% thinner
With a brand new Magnesium case
It's the fastest Ferrari we've ever built.
Range up to 10 Km.
But starting at $600k for that?
It's clear they'd like to have a Lamborghini Urus like sales success that's not exactly a traditional style Ferrari but this thing seems like a total miss.
But Ferrari being who they are they'll do the same scummy crap of making dealers and customers buy the turd if they wanna get an allocation for the next highly collectable supercar.
Presumably the range is only a few KM, since Ive said, "You don't want a bigger battery."
And after ruining Apple's computers for years with his POS keyboard and embarrassing emoji bar, he's all about "tactile controls" now? Or was that the will of someone who ISN'T just a pompous hack?
Oh wait: Someone pointed out that there are KNOBS on the steering wheel. So there are wheels on a wheel. That has Ive all over it.
The design though, it seems very... uninspired? It has hints of throwback in the design, but imo it does not have the look of luxury or sports car.
Really hard to grasp who would want one (I'm too far down the wealth ladder to understand how the rich think and work), but that's what stood out to me initially.
I'm glad more and more manufacturers care more than exterior looks, but focus on interior, esp on technology side.
It looks weird/ugly because electric cars no longer need to be longer and have enough space for massive sport engines. Maybe we'll get used to it over time, still I would prefer the front of a Ferrari 458
The interiors look really nice, I'm a fan of the dashboard elements, blending touch with actual physical buttons.
Ultimately the probably should've gone with SUV tho - it's what people buy and looking at interior it what should've been - mass produced, luxury, performance car for everyone.
p.s. Car ethusiasts suck and nobody should listen to them. All they want is v8 manual from 80s with all the "character" which means it's impractical, unreliable and just terrible in every possible way, except the looks which you know what sort of buyer appeals to.
I was generally with you until those lines.
Car enthusiasts are as varied as cars themselves. Whether it's F1 lovers or the V8 manual lovers (an experience to appreciate but I didn't care to own), the MX5(Miata) lovers, the offroad lovers or the lovers of classics like VW Beetles and Mini's or more esoteric cars.
There are dreamers who read the latest car magazine and fantasize about the latest Porsche, Ferrari or Mercedes S class.
Everyone has an opinion and unsurprisingly electric vehicles are a hot topic right now. You will get a range of both rational and emotional responses, depending on whom you speak to.
To derisively state "they suck and nobody should listen to them" is unreasonable.
Luxury car makers should look to handbags for inspiration. If Ferrari wants to expand the market and reach new customers they shouldn't be making something that looks like an upbadged BYD.
It's like if Hermes started making a Jansport backpack, absurd. Instead they sell lower cost, but still premium designs like the Picotin. The Lamborghini Urus might be one example.
Interesting product advice you have to offer. Who do you think is the target market for expensive Italian sports cars, if not “car enthusiasts”?
lol most of them posers with money.
Lambo's 60% of sales is an SUV.
I'd argue there's certain brand toxicity in their cars.
The Jaguar redesign / rebrand has been a complete and utter disaster! A 97% drop in European sales. That’s not a misprint - 97%!!
No one would call the cybertruck a success either.
This design is a massive mistake for Ferrari. Looks at Porsche’s first electric, the Taycan. I can tell it’s a Porsche as soon as I see it. Look at Lamborghini- looks like a Lambo. Look at this car - looks like a Volkswagen. This is going to be a bomb.
Car hasn't even been released.
You can't argue Cybertruck isn't an icon. IIRC it's in top 10 for notoriously critical Doug Demuro.
Compare that to the next car on the list, now that's thrilling.
https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/849-testarossa
That is the criteria by which I judge these things and Ive's blue soap dispenser does not do it for me.
Emission regulations I'm guessing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-o0r2zSgCE
Steering wheel looks like its trying to be old school, but really shouldn't be.
EVs, by contrast, feel more like appliances meant to be used and enjoyed. And there will always be a more advanced model coming out just around the corner.
They've kind of hinted at the fact that this is meant to be more of an appliance than other models, with a more accesible price:
> “We were excited about a five-seater car that was flexible, versatile and inherently luxurious,” he tells TopGear.com during an exclusive walk-round. “Of course, the price point means it’s exclusive but it’s more accessible and relevant. That’s a new paradigm, and also the biggest challenge.” He gestures to the roof-line. “Imagine how much easier our job would have been if we’d been able to pull this point down two inches.”
Although I suspect the price will still be very much out of my range, there may well be some wealthy buyers out there who would love to have a Ferrari as a family sedan. Look at the success of the Cayenne - something that a lot of people snubbed their nose at initially. Honestly if I had the means I would be much more interested in this than any of their other cars. I'm definitely in the cars-are-meant-to-be-driven camp.
Edit: oh the estimated price is $640k. Yeah I don't think it will sell well at that price - though I also don't pretend to understand the market for super cars or the motivations of super car buyers.
The real beef was Porsche enthusiasts (911 purists) thought SUVs were for unwashed masses and soccer moms. They thought Porsche was jumping on the the relatively new (at the time) premium/luxury german SUV bandwagen establised by the X5 and ML500 (GWagen excluded).
Once they got over that they became customers.
This..thing...on the other hand is a tasteless abomination. Aside from the badges and tail lights there's nothing in it that's inherently Ferrari.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjE6kbDdPzM
This is absolutely not a car that screams "Ferrari" though.
For the vast majority of people, a Ferrari is something aspirational. But for those who can afford one but would rather have “normal” car, this might appeal. It has the form of something practical while still signalling wealth.
Before now, that generally meant those equally-ugly but for different reasons 4-wheel drive and SUVs.
If you view this as (for example) something for rich mums to take their kids to school in, then it makes a lot more sense.
At least that’s the demographic I think they’re quietly going after.
That’s why Porsche makes their SUVs which are really popular.
High end luxury brands should technically be able to serve both upper-middle and top end at the same time. The important thing is the products are good. And if they aren’t some Chinese or other brand will do it. The age of choosing between a couple 100yr old car companies might be ending soon.
Indeed, that's why I referenced SUVs in my post.
My point was that not everyone wants the SUV form factor but still desires something that can be argued as a practical family car. This is why you see executive models like saloon or 4 door coupes. But those cars are often catering to a male-orientated market and have more attainable models (eg Audi A6) that cheapens the brand for the ultra rich.
The Ferrari badge is a bigger signal of wealth and there isn't a whole lot out there that signals that kind of wealth while still being a practical car. Austin Martin sell smaller SUVs (DBX) and 2 door coupes, but nothing like an Audi A5 or A6. Maserati have a few older models that fit this niche but they too have discontinued them for SUVs. Likewise with Jaguar.
The SUV design has basically killed off all other 4-door family cars in the mid-range luxury price range. But at least the Ferrari Luce is at a price point where they're already catering to a smaller demographic and thus they're not relying on the economics of mass production.
At least this is my assumption of Ferrari's target demographic. I could be completely wrong.
And on a personal note, this car isn't to my tastes either -- though as I said before, I'm not the target demographic. But if I had the kind of money to buy a Luce, I think I'd rather by an older Jaguar for the school run and have a modern Austin Martin (2-door coupe) for personal trips.
It would have been trivial for Ferrari to just make their classic style but now, electric! And it would have been full of compromise.
Ferrari has made, in their opinion, the best design for the constraints and challenges of an Electric Vehicle. 4 motors, battery, human.
Good for them for putting real effort into it. And not just making a cash grab.
I guess not having large air intakes and generally a slightly larger frontal area helps with that (the coefficient of drag is always multiplied by the area, so this might not be the most aero Ferrari ever, that's a different claim).
A less worthwhile point: Especially especially low drag, when people don't drive it.
Well, just history now.
The Mercedes GT EV is faster than it, so the performance doesn't stand out.
https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/sf90-stradale
Ive's work is bubbly symmetric bland crap.
Then again the uproar might be the point of the experiment.
Edit: As an electric Ferrari family car it’s not too bad imo. Making it look like a mid-engine v12 would be silly, since it’s not that.
Maybe it is really a functional prototype, but Ferrari as a company does strange things. They live off of their name brand, but they make buying and owning their cars a pain and frankly I don’t think they are very high quality compared to what other car makers in their price point are doing.
Looks like a school project not the kind of thing from a proper automotive designer.
Nothing about this conveys fast, lightweight, Italian sports car.
So they have an app specifically for this car and not a general app for all Ferraris? What are the chances it is a good, usable app? What are the chances it's loaded with trackers?
And the back kinda reminds some of the past. But it also looks like smaller car inside bigger car... What is going on?
At least it isn't as hideous as the monstrosity shown in the Jaguar ads.
Otherwise, I think this car has a lot of excellent new tech in a package that just won't get the motor(s) firing for most people - especially at a 650K price point.
It's a shame they couldn't figure out a way to make the shape look a bit more sporting. Who cares about practicality when you're driving a ferrari?
We want your car, but electric.
All people want is an electric Audi allroad. Instead, we get an e-tron.
All people want is an electric V90 wagon. Instead we get a polestar.
All people want is an electric Jeep Wrangler. Instead we get "Recon EV".
The reason for this is that the incumbent manufacturers understand clearly that the electric versions would completely eclipse the ICE models and their existing investments in design and tooling would rapidly diminish.
... and so, all of the eInitiative, iMobile, TronCars ... it's all a desperate (and lame) attempt to continue selling the ICE line and grow marketshare with the addition of the electric car consumers.
It's a nice idea and it won't work.
I personally feel like it looks like a disposable tech hardware product, but to each their own. I'm sure a lot of people will love it.
All EV designs should converge to monovolume or van shaped vehicles as it is simply the best internal space to external space ratio while allowing decent aero.
Boring as f. imho as Tesla Never had their proper design language, the model S being a 4 doors copy of an Aston Martin DB7 and the other models very Ford inspired.
I blissfully ignore the cyberpunk era.
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20260216163304/https://www.ferra...
Man, I miss the 90's. Best decade for electronic music ever.
I scrolled further and saw the front of the car, and now I get what the comments meant. Holy moly. That‘s worse than the Jaguar rebrand on my scale.
Interestingly enough the i3 and i8's carbon structure helped the G11 & G12 (short and long wheelbase BMW 7), the G14/G15/G16 (BMW 8 series) and the F91/F92/F93 (BMW M8) shed a lot of weight.
But for the newer version of the 7 series don't use that structure anymore, as the weight savings are nullified by the battery pack.
Wow. It's a Ferrari and the top things about the car is how the lights shut off. Way to go Ferrari.
"Hmeep!"
Ferrari horns are in my opinion legendary wonderful toots. And I'm troubled that this car offers very little "Ferrari" while sitting atop its brand.
But Ferrari has an obligation to the populistic world too, trying to wheel in customers for an EV end ending up selling them a real car with a V8-12 engine.
Looks terrible. But they know it.
It's just a powertrain change why mess up all the styling.
I’m not the target market for this and never will be but nobody is going to make a poster of that for a teenagers bedroom. Yuck.
I think that's the key. This is meant to go up against the Lamborghini SUV and its ilk: a vehicle for the very wealthy who don't really like cars but have to mark their status in everyday interactions. It will sell well.
Do people still do this tho?
Though it's more common to see smaller framed art, and model cars.
You could buy a V12 Ferrari at that price, if a Ferrari is what you want. Or a Rolls Royce Spectre if you want something quiet and luxurious.
What would you rather have?
But practically,
> start buttons
What is a difference from switch on button on laptop? How do you tell the car, that you are ready to drive?
> physical keys
So when your phone will not be working, are you walking home? I like physical keys because it does not create dependency on single artifact and thus single point of failure.
I'm pretty sure they realize perfectly well how ugly it is.
Edit: I do love the analog buttons in the interior though. I despise those big screens with all the controls, and no tactile feedback.
Just saw it and wow, that's an accurate description. Gone is everything that makes a Ferrari a Ferrari
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-o0r2zSgCE
Even if this car had been the most beautiful object ever crafted, it would have faced an “EV bad, should be 12 cylinders” reaction.
Even if it had been the fastest or efficient EV, since that would currently be achieved through extreme aerodynamics, it would have been burdened with “that’s a moose, kill sir jony”.
Since it’s not the fastest EV, it gets compared unfavourably to a discontinued car from a discredited kleptocrat, or more reasonably with a Rimac. One of those nobody with 600k to blow on a car would comparison shop against (and they probably have a few in their garages anyway), the other they’re probably on the waiting list for or looking for used, and the Luce will fill in the gap nicely whilst they wait.
Keep huffing and puffing. Me? I’ll wait until some driving reviews emerge and in the meantime applaud Ferrari for stepping outside their comfort zone. This is undeniably a huge risk for them.
The supercar EV market had such huge potential to innovate and inspire but no we decided to follow these average EV design trends instead.
This is totally impossible to read without hearing it in Ive's soothing voice.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/731812
It’s time for Ive to stop working.
Well actually the whole car industry has converged to these design languages.
Unbelievably ugly stance.
Typo on the Ferrari website...
I like the handles on the interior display
Do you know why no one has ever put rotating switches on a steering wheel face before? Because it requires two fingers to operate the switches and thus taking your entire hand off the wheel. Those knobs and switches might as well be in the center console because it takes a similar amount of effort and diversion of attention to operate.
This looks like a car designed by someone who's never driven before. Did the early prototypes feature bubble domes before they were forced to tell Ive that won't work?
https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/press-kits/taycan/Die-Driver...
I hate this car as much you do, it looks like a vape cartridge on wheels to me. That being said, there are F1 cars with rotating knobs on the steering wheel. Different category and all, but still worth it to point out.
It's galling to see pompous, no-talent douchebags like Ive continually held out as some kind of innovator.
I believe another motivation for manufacturers is that they can turn the car’s UI into a software problem, which from a human-centered design perspective means that they can throw it in the trash and never spend a dime on it.
The design exterior looks glued together from more interesting electric cars, so no surprise the interior does too.
EDIT: I just learned that Jony Ive did the interior. Further proof that without Steve Jobs goading him, Ive is just a stylist.
[0]: https://www.thedrive.com/news/touch-controls-are-50-cheaper-...
Like I mean, isn't there a risk of the driver slapping or pinching a passenger that is boarding while shutting his door without taking enough care?
The display & controls do look very nice!
I love how they found a way to make the sound provide real feedback. I wonder if the cabin gets feedback faster than the speed of sound in air would travel, that would be neat. I'm skeptical they kept the loop fast enough to beat speed of sound in metal though (5000~6000 m/s for steel).
> The Luce’s sound system doesn’t generate artificial noise. Instead, a precision accelerometer mounted at the center of the rear axle captures the actual vibration of the rotating electric components. That signal is then filtered, equalized, and amplified — essentially working like an electric guitar’s amplifier. The result is a sound that’s rooted in the real physics of the machinery, not synthesized from a speaker library.
https://electrek.co/2026/05/25/ferrari-luce-first-electric-f...
Parsimonious product design with IMHO out of date conception of what's "cool". I think Ive is pretty washed up at this point.
I don't think that really solves much?
PS - its a real shame because the inside is perfect
The body lines? What body lines? I’m a vocal critic of derivative design, but this space egg usually is little more than a Junior Study drawing at best. It’s so bland it might as well be still made of clay.
I’m not being unfairly harsh here, there’s a huge tradition of sorting a car’s emotional response - yes, Countach being a prime case study - but I get more “This is interesting” from the latest Prius than anything with this design, in parts or taken as a whole. I can’t be alone, and I suppose the reactions will be savage. I am kind of giddy thinking about what some of the more crude phrasings might be from the likes of Clarkson or Harris.
This is a design for the Super Yacht club. If it was a concept car for a Chinese knock off of a Honda, it would be rightly panned at first sight. Was it designed on a first generation Macintosh?
It has no character whatsoever. The interior looks like patio furniture intended for a retirement home. To call it a failure is not quite right, because sometimes things like the Pontiac Aztek have coherent thought and risks involved. This has none of those things. Mayo on white bread with a glass of room temperature tap water.
In a strange way I love it because it might as well be called the Ferrari Hubris. Just…wow…
Can't believe they are asking 600k for this thing.
It is almost like Ferrari is trying to punk its customers.
Ps. Everyone is hating it on FerrariChat
Nothing new to see here, plenty of high end watches and luxury bag makers do the same.
Even the color they chose for the reveal speaks to me like "rich luxury car without personality"
Maybe there's a reason why I'm not a designer.
the phone screen shots show a pathetic 270km range...
https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/250-gt-berlinetta-lusso
The interior is head and shoulders the best I've ever seen in a car too.
Might not look like other Ferraris, but why should it? It's NOT like other Ferraris.
The way I'd phrase your last sentence would be: "It's NOT a Ferrari."
That's the whole problem. If you told me this is the latest Chinese luxury EV, I'd shrug my shoulders, say "hm, not bad" and "not for me," and move on.
For a Ferrari however it's horrendous.
Don't get me wrong, it's a stunning car. But I miss the screaming reds and yellows most of all. And the interface, polished as it is, feels almost too intuitive. Ferrari shouldn't feel effortless!
Now, if this were badged as an Apple car with a sticker price under $100k, we'd be having a very different conversation.