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...)
When I saw the design, I thought "This looks like a Tesla".
I'm sure it's an awesome car, and also a high quality premium experience. The question is whether it can command supercar prices - they are selling it for $650,000, and I don't quite understand the value proposition of a superior Tesla selling for that much.
Now you can say, well what is the value proposition of the other ICE Ferraris selling for that much? And that's the point, when they first came out, they didn't sell for such high prices, it was a long period of decades in which collectors were bidding up the prices due to their interest in collecting Ferraris and reselling them, at which point the cars became an investment and collectible item, rather than just "expensive high end vehicles".
So when you break from that tradition, but assume you can carry over the collector premium -- particularly for a disposable tech-heavy EV -- then that is where Ferrari made a mistake, and not only Ferrari, but there is a reason none of the EV supercars have sold well, or will sell well. Tech and collectables don't mix.
If you want an example of a brand that is doing this well, look at Rolls Royce. Rolls is selling actual luxury experiences, and their prices reflect the unique ownership experience, not the collectible value, as all Rolls Royces suffer massive depreciation, and have always suffered massive depreciation. No one buys a Rolls Royce expecting it to go up in value, it's understood that in 30 years, you can pick it up for less than the cost of the tires on the brand new model. In that environment, EVs work very well, and Rolls is having success with their high priced EVs that none of the automakers are having in the hypercar market.
Rolls knows their customers, as absurd as it may seem. The electrics hit the Royce brand first because it is the car “in which you are driven” and likely the reasons you state. Bentley, the car “you drive” has a different customer base and will be closer to the “normal” hypercar experience.
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...
honest question: is there any difference between this and the Pontiac Aztek? I guess time will answer that one...
>> the Aztek was to signal a design renaissance for GM, and to "make a statement about breaking from GM's instinct for caution. One designer said that during the design process, the Aztek was made "aggressive for the sake of being aggressive." Peters, the Chief Designer said "we wanted to do a bold, in-your-face vehicle that wasn't for everybody."
The Pontiac Aztek was at least bold, and like the Nissan Cube, people didn't like the looks, but those who bought it really seemed to love it inordinately.
This thing isn't even bold, it's just ... a generic car?
If they had made it outrageous (think: teardrop which is most efficient aerodynamically or something) it'd make more sense.
My cousin bought a brand new aztek off the lot for way way below sticker like 60% because they sold so poorly because of how ugly they were perceived to be. I think the people who love them probably love them because of how cheap they were.
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"...
Where is the Ferrari in this at all? I completely agree that they missed the mark in design. While the interior is 100% Jony Ive, the exterior screams "design by committee."
An electric Roma successor would have been much better received and possibly cheaper for them to develop (who knows?).
The silver lining in all this is that it means that the EV arm will not cannibalize their ICE cars.
The exterior screams asian-EV design langauge to me - which may not be an accident. Ferrari have made no secret of their hopes this car will succeed for them in China.
It looks like the EV version of Apple widgets and the iPhone home screen. There's so much rounded squares /rounded rectangle bullshit...it looks like something that was designed in 2010 and is about to get the shit sued out of it by Apple.
Every automaker is desperately trying to chase Chinese buyers. Most of them are too stupid to realize the Chinese can just....buy better Chinese EVs, and if they're not buying a chinese EV, it's because they don't want a Chinese EV, they want the foreign company's design and cachet.
Peopel don't buy Ferraris because they look like Chinese EVs. People buy them because they look like Ferraris and are exclusive.
Audi is doing stupid shit, too. They recently started making cars under the "AUDI" brand. Yeah. "AUDI". Versus "Audi" with rings.
If Ferrari wanted to sell more cars in China they could just stop be absurd dicks about a)who can buy their cars b)what people can do with them.
Things like "prohibit people from lending them to reviewers so Ferrari can game the review by putting on different tires and tuning the suspension for the specific track the reviewer will be using." Although might actually impress Chinese buyers since it aligns with them so well, culturally.
But that's not because Asian EVs have a specific identity, but because the Luce's design has NO identity. It has no heritage, like a sports car from a company that didn't exist 15 years ago.
At the moment I don't even see alot in it to BUILD a design-heritage upon, not many accents you could carry onwards to other cars.
The Hyundai Ioniq 5 is also an Asian EV. But it has character, it has accents, it has "rough edges". I can see aspects of it carrying onwards to the point that I see a van on the street and instantly know "it's a Ioniq". I don't see much of that in the Luce right now...
This is a disaster for Ferrari. You buy the brand, the car and its lack of reliability is well known and the difficult handling also well known. But its La Ferrari.
This is the type of car that will be seen in the hands of people buying Cybertruck or the UK chavs that now buy Rolex. The moment that happens your brand is dead. Your customers will flock away back to Buggati and Aston Martin.
IMO this is a risk worth taking. The Ferrari brand is rather stagnant and not innovative. They need to do something like this to drive more attention and sales. Even if this particular model does not sell well they can refine and make better selling EVs down the line.
>> They need to do something like this to drive more attention and sales.
The objective of a luxury brand is not volume sales.
There is the well known anecdote of somebody asking André Heiniger, then chairman/president of Rolex: "How is the watch business?"
and he answering something along the lines of: "I have no idea. Rolex is not in the watch business..."
According to one of the recent Acquired (podcast) episodes, they could ramp up production to increase sales at any time, they just don't in order to keep brand value and desire high, so I'm not sure it's that.
> The Ferrari brand is rather stagnant and not innovative. They need to do something like this to drive more attention and sales.
Wild assertion. Ferrari is currently #8 largest market cap for a car manufacturer. They're valued above Mercedes, BMW, Volkswagen and every other Euro car brand.
They couldn't be more successful as a small automaker if they tried. But you think they need to do something like this to drive attention and sales?
I don't agree that difference equals boldness. Boldness of Cybertruck comes from its statement. There is no such statement behind Ferrari Luce. It's a cheap Ferrari-for-your-kid kind of design.
> what political struggle was behind that within Ferrari ... could be an indicator for internal disagreements.
A while back I read a couple books on the history of Ferrari and came away with the clear sense that Enzo was one of those unique iconoclastic entrepreneurs who was brilliant, flawed and irreplaceable. After Enzo, Ferrari's management has mostly hovered between being inconsistent and incomprehensible. From the racing team to road cars, the company has become legendary for political fiefdoms and internal conflict.
I agree the Luce exterior may be the least Ferrari-looking Ferrari ever. I suspect it's going to be a disaster for the brand.
Ferrari has historically worked with outside designers. Pininfarina being probably the most prominent. Bertone, as well. Ferrari brought design in-house relatively recently.
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.
Most of what I've heard is about the electric vehicles they produce, not the ICE cars. My understanding is their EVs are different beasts and much better.
Kia has some competitive vehicles in niches that not many seem to want to service, and I suspect many of their buyers do not live in areas where immobilizers are going to be a major issue.
Our dealer was fine, and it's been fine. It's a car car, not really doing anything amazing.
Brands, but especially Asian ones, seem to go through cycles - this thing is absolute shit, nobody buy it, company fixes the problems and gets reliable, but still thought of as crap, company keeps improving, people start to notice, becomes known as a real good and reliable deal, company starts charging more and more. Kia's on the ascendant right now, where Toyota was 20+ years ago.
The dealer issues are true, but we have been very happy with our 2021 Hyundai Palisade Calligraphy after owning it for 5+ years and 82k miles. Budget luxury with pretty good handling and performance. It's a great value package if you need a 3rd row vehicle (I have 4 kids).
> 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
it was created after lobbying/intervention of Italy and Germany, so yes, also for Porsche.
But Porsche has a much wider palette of cars, if ICEs would be banned without exception they could adapt.
Their concern was that Ferrari could be exempted entirely from the regulation due to their low total volume, with Porsche ending up unable to compete on ICE sports cars with them because they're no longer allowed to build one.
Hence the "Ferrari loophole". Not just for Ferrari, but BECAUSE of Ferrari
"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.
Its a divorce car. You get to keep your real ferrari(s), and buy her one of those. Good for school/grocery runs, has the right badge, probably will drive like a normal car. There exists a demography for those kinds of cars. Lots of people dont care one bit about the style, its all about the brand. (I doubt anyone would consider Bentley SuVs as good looking, for instance - yet they seel well).
That was the deal with the Aston Martin Cygnus as well. It wasn't meant for enthusiasts. It was generally sold to wives who bought them alone - much to the fury of husbands later that day. Some Aston Martin salesman once mentioned this in an interview, mentioning that otherwise there was no way to move that vehicle.
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.
They’ll likely have to buy several of these, in different colors, and agree to sell them back to Ferrari at a massive loss… only for Ferrari to repeat the process over and over.
The shenanigans manufacturers like Ferrari and Porsche are allowed to get away with is so frustrating. But when people treat cars like collectibles and never even intend to drive them, I suppose there’s little reason not to.
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.
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.
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".
I felt the web site was "lights on nobody home", I think the interesting fact about this vehicle is that it is electric and even though you can pick different colors and a heated steering wheel as an option there isn't a single word about power train.
Just being a legendary brand like Ferrari doesn't mean that 100% of us understand 100% about 100% of your products.
"(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.
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).
EVs generally have more "freedom" to design the car the way they want, as it's usually motors (in the wheels, which you probably need to have anyway) and then the battery (which can be a giant slab, but that's for cost and maintenance reasons; there's nothing stopping a $650k car from having batteries custom laid to fit however they want).
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.
The performance is certainly what you would expect from Ferrari, but it doesn’t matter. This isn’t a car that should have a Ferrari emblem on it. This will go down as one of the all time automotive blunders.
I think Jony Ive is done too. He was responsible for those awful MacBooks that generated a class action lawsuit and now this. It’s hard to come back from two consecutive flops.
Teams inside Ferrari despise EV's (because they lack 10,000 moving parts and loud noises), so they pushed hard for this design, ensuring a flop, and giving ferrari cold EV feet for the foreseeable future.
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.
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.
Agree, if seen as start/inception of a line: promising
Imagine them boiling this down over the years into a ‘battle tested’ streamlined 160k EV -- they do not require the first version to be sold much ‘at all’ at this price point; it is now out there and the goal seems to be to mark the top of the line of this segment longterm; and if this succeeds, they ported the co into the future in style
There is soo much great design in this but it might be required to get closer to really experience and appreciate
I guess it will be an iconic car in 10-20 tears, like the F40 is still appraised today.
Maybe it feels an extreme change, but the solution like making batteries core part of the body might pay well. I am looking also for the first track tests, to see if their claims are real
I agree with the idea behind this comment, which is something like "This car will be more successful than the Cybertruck."
But Ferrari is intentionally low-volume with everything they make, and this car will also be extremely low volume. Even if it is dearly beloved and becomes ultra-high demand--and the jury is out on that--Ferrari wouldn't dream of selling that many, because it takes away from the exclusivity.
But I'll agree that Ferrari will likely hit its goals for this car in a way that Tesla hasn't hit its goals for the Cybertruck.
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.
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.
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)
I could see this being true, except that other high end electrics (Porsche, Audi) have not sold well. So the theory would be:
> people want either $30,000 electric cars (Tesla), $100,000 electric cars (Tesla), or $500,000 electric cars (Ferrari)
I do think Ferrari is trying to expand their audience with the Luce, but not to Dubai housewives. Ferrari's are for Ferrari collectors. There exists the guy with a few already, who daily drives a Tesla. Probably hundreds of those guys! This is for them (IMO).
Yeah, classic strategic mistake - lets try to attract a set of buyers completely different from our core base. The only thing that may save them, i.e., exotic playbook 101, is require core buyers to purchase one in order to get "the opportunity" to buy one oof its halo cars.
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.
why would the ultra wealthy care about it being an ev? operating cost and climate impact are not a priority when you are dropping 650k and living in a oil rich ME kingdom.
performance and aesthetics s would be more important, surely?
Why fixate on Arab countries? Rich people live all over the world and there are increasingly more emission restrictions. And again, as I keep repeating myself, just because you are not the target demographic does not mean it does not exist. I could easily see someone who does not care about cars wanting this because of the brand and yeah even EVs can matter depending on social circles.
You guys are defending this to death. I am only pointing out that it would not surprise me it fits a demographic they were targeting.
Any change in the past 12 months is abolutely not up to the Cayenne, which came to market 24 years ago. Or the Macan, which came to market twelve years ago. And that was the main point of the GP post--how adding SUVs to the mix didn't ruin the brand.
But in any event, Porsche sold more cars in 2025 in North America, than any year prior.
It did take a big hit to profitability in 2025, mostly on one-time restructuring charges. But until then it was one of the most profitable auto-manufacturers out there. And its annual revenue is still higher than most of its history, especially on a per-car basis.
So sure, recently Porsche hasn't done well. But it has very little to do with SUVs and that transition. And I would argue that the brand itself is still very strong, even if operationally they have mishandled the electric transition.
> But in any event, Porsche sold more cars in 2025 in North America, than any year prior.
Porsche sells about as many cars every year as Ferarri has sold in its entire existence. I'm not sure that's a strong indicator of whether or not it "brand" (AKA public perception) is doing well or not. Clearly Ferarri has a strong brand than Porsche, despite only selling 330,000 cars in the past 80 years. And despite Porsche selling 310,000 in 2024 alone.
Yes they have very different business models. But it would be like using "number of Window's licenses sold" to argue that Microsoft has a really strong brand right now.
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 have a lot of issues with the Ive era and the Mac... but every iPhone he designed was a banger. I think the 12-14 era is the only era of iPhones I thought were bad and that was after him.
I suppose the iPhone 6 was bendable but that was a hardware engineering issue as shown by the same form factor not being bendable for the 6s through 8.
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.
If you get every iPhone ever released, in black or black-adjacent, and lay them camera-side down and off, it would be difficult to line them up in the correct order.
Not much has really changed with them, and I'm not sure much really can.
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.
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.
Missteps both in music and in other areas don't usually kill something that wasn't already moribund. The trashcan Mac Pro didn't kill Apple; Procol Harum's cover of Eight Days a Week didn't kill them or the Beatles.
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 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.
I think they will eventually get to the point of technological differentiation but they've got to start somewhere: they must first have an electric car on the market before they can start experimenting with it to improve the performance 1.5x, 2x, 10x.
At some point, EVs are going to pull ahead of ICE cars not just incrementally, but categorically. Instead of 0-60 in 3 seconds, it'll be 0-60 in under a second: the limits are physics and the human body, not the engine. Full self-driving, native to the architecture. Over-the-air updates that do things like improve the car's range by 5% (Tesla did something like this). And more no one's thought of yet.
So, this is their beachhead. You've got to start somewhere: they're starting here.
The point of the Ferrari is it's high price point. People turn their heads to look at a Ferrari because it's expensive, not because it's a practical and reasonably priced luxury car (eg some lower end Porche models). The higher price makes it more attractive to a certain demographic and most of us in the comments don't belong to that group.
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.
Perhaps they hired an outside designer to not harm their own reputation. It was always going to be poorly received because it's an ugly aerodynamic EV SUV, which every brand has. There's no way to stand out if it must have an ultra-low CD.
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.
It literally looks exactly like a cheap Chinese EV. (And, to add insult to injury, you can almost certainly get a cheap Chinese EV with comparable specs.)
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:
> Who is the customer for a Model S? What fancy full-size sedan would they otherwise buy?
raises hand
I like EVs for their ripping fast 0-60. It's the only performance metric I can actually use. Top speed doesn't matter.
I drive a Model 3 Performance. I would have upgraded to a Model S Plaid a couple years ago, but Elon made a hard right turn politically and so I don't want to give him any more money. Also, Tesla has still been unable to fix quality consistency. My M3P has been great, but I've seen too many stories. Even people paying $100K for a Model S Plaid end up with things coming unglued or misaligned. I've seen them try to deliver a car with obvious gnarly scratches in the paint.
With the weather getting dryer in the PNW, I'm now looking for a convertible for my next car. Still looking to keep electric though, so now I'm just waiting patiently for the Porsche 718, Polestar 6, or Corvette EV convertible if they ever make one. Basically, whoever makes the first EV sports convertible for $200K or less that doesn't look ugly as sin will likely get my money.
Thank you for noticing that Tesla's are priced at premium levels, but they still don't know how to make actual quality that is present the models you listed above. I've owned several of these and driven all but the EQS and there's a huuuge gap between a 7er S-class and a Tesla. Huge.
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 seems that EVs and ICEs are sufficiently different that traditional car companies don't really enjoy nearly the encumbrancy advantage they once had.
The top EV manufacturer started as a battery company. The second place EV company started as an EV company.
Various ICE manufacturers have spent decades innovating and refining ICEs and building logistics chains optimized for ICEs.
The big problem that the high end ICE manufacturers have is that the things that made them special in the ICE market don't apply as well in the EV market.
You can potentially justify 6 figure price tags if you're in the luxury market. Hire famous designers, pay for premium materials, and leverage your brand name. If you want to sell cars for 6 figures based on performance, they actually need to perform significantly better. There are a bunch of much cheaper EVs that have better performance.
Just jacking up the price and relying on conspicuous consumption is how you get the Fyre Festival.
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.
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.
I like that it has lots of mechanical switches. Maybe that'll trickle down to regular cars. The stereo specs are impressive.
The article mentions low center of gravity and 0-60 time. At 2.5 sec, I'm not sure this is much of a differentiator. Teslas can match it, but even a full-sized work truck is already hitting 3.5s. BMW sedans sit at 3.1s. Sure, the Ferrari is a bit faster, but I'm not convinced it's a qualitative difference.
I wonder how it corners. There's no mention of weight in the article. That's been the main differentiator I've noticed between EVs that feel sporty and ones that handle like a pickup truck.
I also wonder how many people will immediately turn off the "authentic sound". I get that the octegenarian crowd is still running the global economy, and likes their lumbering shitbox tuned-exhaust gas guzzlers, but I don't see many gen-x'ers (hitting 50!) or younger that prefer gratuitous road noise.
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.
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
It's nice and I like the admission that the driver is the most important human who ever lived, so the touchscreen is angled towards him ;)
Not sure about the cupholder position. I wonder if the G-force is customizable (e.g, all the screens are?) or if it's fixed. If it's fixed, I'd almost prefer it to be the one analog instrument, perhaps taken from an acrobatic plane.
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.
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.
Having owned an Impala of that generation, and having seen so many around for so long, this is exactly where my mind went. These are a dead ringer for their rear lights.
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.
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.
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.
I'd like to see a "pimp my ride" that focused on making the bottom car look as nice as possible - new wheels, disc brake upgrade with colored calipers, some cleanup, I think it could look significantly better.
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.
Same guy here. I understand some people derive pleasure from the “hobby” of owning large mobile metal boxes and I am not against it, but notice we are commenting on a 650k Ferrari and a butt-ugly one at that.
The people in the video are literally smiling smugly. I kid you not.
I’m talking about all those fancy Audi, Tesla, Volvo and BMW drivers that want to feel superior in their mobile box of death and waste. They are not car enthusiasts. Car enthusiasts do maintenance work on 80s Alfas for fun. I know the type and those are alright.
Car culture is much larger than the mechanics. It’s the idea that cars need to be nice at all. The idea they have “personality” and are indicators of social status.
I’m not at all against social status. I’m against using such wasteful, ugly and dangerous machinery as a delivery mechanism of the winnings in your particular genetic and cultural lottery.
People think that everyone spends hours and hours deliberating over the car they buy - and some do, but those are the same people who likely have discussions about how the iPhone 17e is significantly different than the iPhone 16 (ooo "Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously"!).
Talk to various people with $100k+ cars and you often find they bought it "because they needed something and the color was nice" or "they always buy from Joe" and other similarly seemingly insignificant reasons.
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.
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.
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.
"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've never heard of this, but it looks incredible. I've seen some similar looking beasts around that seem to be modified for apocalypse survival and would love to try and drive it, as long as I don't have to reverse it up a slope lol
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.
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!
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)
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
> 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?
I'm not an expert on automotive or any type of design for that matter. But I have an appreciation for cars and especially racing cars. I can look at Ferraris of every era and even though the design language has changed. I can tell you that is a Ferrari. There is a common thread that runs through all of those cars that makes them a Ferrari. I just don't see that with the Luce. It looks like they threw a couple "Ferrari" styling cues on it, but that is it.
I bet there is a faction of “traditionalists” inside Ferrari who want nothing to do with electric and do not want the Luce to look anything like a traditional ICE Ferrari, also for fear it would cannibalize sales. Thus they took design cues from, of all places, BYD.
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.
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 don’t understand why anyone is jumping to conclusions about anything before anyone has driven it.
A Ferrari is about driving, and while it wouldn’t surprise me that the driving experience is generally the same as most EVs I’m unwilling to dismiss this based on looks alone.
Is it, though? Most Ferraris aren't driven much at all. In fact, most Ferraris are bought by collectors. If somebody has 10-20 Ferraris, do you think they drive them much? In Parallel?
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.
Most of the reactions I am seeing on various social media are negative.
Granted, that is not the market that would buy a Ferrari, but one of the point of buying luxury cars is the status they grant. There is not much status in a car mocked by the public.
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.
The design language is a departure from usual Ferrari design, but I actually enjoyed the "smooth pebble" aerodynamic design of the exterior. It will certainly stand out in the sea of exaggerated angular shaped designs in the road. Maybe it would have been better received if it retained some elements of Ferrari design, like the headlights – it would be more recognizable.
I find the interior quite adequate for an EV, not too minimal neither gaudy. It does look like an interior designed by the iPhone designer, though. It would be a great interior in any car.
It seems this will be one of those divisive designs, because it totally broke with the Ferrari tradition.
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.
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.
EVs will dominate the world in 10 years. Haters will hate. These two statements are not mutually exclusive. There is juicy irony in the fact that this is the country where modern EVs were invented and it is the one that hates the transition the most. There is nothing more American than driving an EV: https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/17/evs-dominate-the-most-amer...
EVs is just logical, it's better in every way possible and you can convert anyway gasoline into electricity to charge it so it's not even like you have a problem charging it anywhere, you can just bring the generator with you in the trunk for "problematic area".
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.
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.
Nobody buying a Ferrari needs an EV. A Ferrari is a flex, like a $100k Rolex — you’re not buying it to tell time, you’re buying it to signal you got loot. That’s what makes the Luce feel kinda confused.
Holy smokes this looks bad, nothing like Ferrari. The car was designed by Jony Ive, but from what I can see, he has zero experience designing cars. The asking price is $640k, which is absolutely hilarious. They should've published a render on April Fool's day instead.
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.
Does Ferrari have the same "relationship requirements" as other high-end manufacturers? I.e. to get the latest and greatest ICE sports case, you'll need to buy one of these first.
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'd rather a 2022 Acura NSX, but the word "Ferrari" will get a man interest from non-trivial amount of women, so there's the conspicuous consumption part of it.
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.
Ferrari's operating margin is ~28%. that number only works because they sell fewer cars than they could. the whole moat is manufactured scarcity. EV dilutes that if it widens access.
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.
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.
you don't have to drive at 100% to appreciate the driving dynamics. Light and nimble cars feel amazing even at speed limit, e.g 80 km/h on twisty country roads.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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 '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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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?
>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?
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?"
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?
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.
The page proclaims "A Ferrari is forever" underneath showcasing an app for chasing climate control. Durability/preservation and companion apps don't go hand in hand.
It could be like the specialist supercar garages keeping a specific model of 90s Compaq laptop which run DOS with custom cards as they're the only way to interface with McLarens F1s. In 2050: "We keep an iPhone 13 with the app loaded which has never been allowed to connect to the internet so we can move the seats back".
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.
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 like it. I'm not a Ferrari expert, and it looks like it could be from any number of manufacturers, which is part of why it's getting criticism here. But the interior looks nice, simple, button-oriented, and I like the pivoting center console.
It would be a great car at about 20% of the price.
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.
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.
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...
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).
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.
Jony Ive designed the imac. He also designed the stupid bullshit round hockey puck mouse that came with the imac. He also designed the stupid bullshit smooth "magic mouse" that you have to flip over to charge.
This is more like his mouse designs than his imac design.
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.
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.
This will go down as one of the largest strategic missteps in history. I understand the intent on the surface, but this completely misses the boat and abandons the racing heritage that makes Ferrari special. IMO, design was never really an issue with Ferrari. The problem is Ferrari has begun chasing popular trends, e.g., 4-door, electric.
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Ford F-150 Lightning is a clear indicator that the reverse is true: The market for “like my ICE vehicle, but with BEV tradeoffs instead of ICE ones” is today quite small, especially in the absence of major government subsidies to the consumer.
$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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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...)
When I saw the design, I thought "This looks like a Tesla".
I'm sure it's an awesome car, and also a high quality premium experience. The question is whether it can command supercar prices - they are selling it for $650,000, and I don't quite understand the value proposition of a superior Tesla selling for that much.
Now you can say, well what is the value proposition of the other ICE Ferraris selling for that much? And that's the point, when they first came out, they didn't sell for such high prices, it was a long period of decades in which collectors were bidding up the prices due to their interest in collecting Ferraris and reselling them, at which point the cars became an investment and collectible item, rather than just "expensive high end vehicles".
So when you break from that tradition, but assume you can carry over the collector premium -- particularly for a disposable tech-heavy EV -- then that is where Ferrari made a mistake, and not only Ferrari, but there is a reason none of the EV supercars have sold well, or will sell well. Tech and collectables don't mix.
If you want an example of a brand that is doing this well, look at Rolls Royce. Rolls is selling actual luxury experiences, and their prices reflect the unique ownership experience, not the collectible value, as all Rolls Royces suffer massive depreciation, and have always suffered massive depreciation. No one buys a Rolls Royce expecting it to go up in value, it's understood that in 30 years, you can pick it up for less than the cost of the tires on the brand new model. In that environment, EVs work very well, and Rolls is having success with their high priced EVs that none of the automakers are having in the hypercar market.
Rolls knows their customers, as absurd as it may seem. The electrics hit the Royce brand first because it is the car “in which you are driven” and likely the reasons you state. Bentley, the car “you drive” has a different customer base and will be closer to the “normal” hypercar experience.
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...
This happens all the time. Ferrari taking inspiration from BYD is certainly brave, but it there is a fine line between bravery and good old stupidity.
As the saying goes: It's good to keep an open mind, just not so open your brains fall out.
They needed something bold for their first foray into this market, but this is wrong direction bold lol
honest question: is there any difference between this and the Pontiac Aztek? I guess time will answer that one...
>> the Aztek was to signal a design renaissance for GM, and to "make a statement about breaking from GM's instinct for caution. One designer said that during the design process, the Aztek was made "aggressive for the sake of being aggressive." Peters, the Chief Designer said "we wanted to do a bold, in-your-face vehicle that wasn't for everybody."
The Pontiac Aztek was at least bold, and like the Nissan Cube, people didn't like the looks, but those who bought it really seemed to love it inordinately.
This thing isn't even bold, it's just ... a generic car?
If they had made it outrageous (think: teardrop which is most efficient aerodynamically or something) it'd make more sense.
> Pontiac Aztek was at least bold
How bad does a design have to be that this is a valid attack?
The Luce is so generic it borders on nihilism - destroying the very concept of Ferrari precisely because Ferraris are good.
My cousin bought a brand new aztek off the lot for way way below sticker like 60% because they sold so poorly because of how ugly they were perceived to be. I think the people who love them probably love them because of how cheap they were.
Well I'll say this for the design (as a non-designer):
1. It doesn't look like any other car, though it still obviously looks like a car
2. The buzz, good or bad, is going to mean people hear about it, talk about it, and see it
3. If you see it in public you're likely to recognize it; whether that's a good thing or not remains to be seen
But doesn't it look simply like "every sports car", like a dilution of all sports cars?
To me it's like how a sports car would look in a video game which has no license to use actual cars.
A "McLovin Testosterona"...
Isn't this how the Jaguar fiasco came to be?
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Primera
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).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect
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"...
Exactly - it's a "fine sedan" for Kia, Honda, even Apple to release (I'm sure someone has put an Apple logo on it already).
But it doesn't scream "Ferrari" nor does it scream "look at me I'm driving a half-million euro car".
Where is the Ferrari in this at all? I completely agree that they missed the mark in design. While the interior is 100% Jony Ive, the exterior screams "design by committee."
An electric Roma successor would have been much better received and possibly cheaper for them to develop (who knows?).
The silver lining in all this is that it means that the EV arm will not cannibalize their ICE cars.
The exterior screams asian-EV design langauge to me - which may not be an accident. Ferrari have made no secret of their hopes this car will succeed for them in China.
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-09/ferrari-s...
> https://archive.is/ilT3d
No it doesn't, it screams 2026 Nissan Micra.
It looks a little like the BYD seal too perhaps that's why you say this. The Asian sports cars look nothing like this, only practical sedans.
No Chinese EV looks anything like this?
It looks like the EV version of Apple widgets and the iPhone home screen. There's so much rounded squares /rounded rectangle bullshit...it looks like something that was designed in 2010 and is about to get the shit sued out of it by Apple.
Every automaker is desperately trying to chase Chinese buyers. Most of them are too stupid to realize the Chinese can just....buy better Chinese EVs, and if they're not buying a chinese EV, it's because they don't want a Chinese EV, they want the foreign company's design and cachet.
Peopel don't buy Ferraris because they look like Chinese EVs. People buy them because they look like Ferraris and are exclusive.
Audi is doing stupid shit, too. They recently started making cars under the "AUDI" brand. Yeah. "AUDI". Versus "Audi" with rings.
If Ferrari wanted to sell more cars in China they could just stop be absurd dicks about a)who can buy their cars b)what people can do with them.
Things like "prohibit people from lending them to reviewers so Ferrari can game the review by putting on different tires and tuning the suspension for the specific track the reviewer will be using." Although might actually impress Chinese buyers since it aligns with them so well, culturally.
Ain't just me who thinks it looks like an Asian EV:
> https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/05/26/ferraris-550000-ele...
> https://nypost.com/2026/05/26/business/ferraris-new-640k-ele...
> https://www.barrons.com/articles/ferrari-stock-price-luce-ev...
> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/05/26/ferraris-475...
etc
I agree as well.
But that's not because Asian EVs have a specific identity, but because the Luce's design has NO identity. It has no heritage, like a sports car from a company that didn't exist 15 years ago.
At the moment I don't even see alot in it to BUILD a design-heritage upon, not many accents you could carry onwards to other cars.
The Hyundai Ioniq 5 is also an Asian EV. But it has character, it has accents, it has "rough edges". I can see aspects of it carrying onwards to the point that I see a van on the street and instantly know "it's a Ioniq". I don't see much of that in the Luce right now...
It wouldn't even have been that hard to make it recognizable as a Ferrari. https://old.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1to71ad/jony_ive_de... looks pretty darned good in comparison.
This is a disaster for Ferrari. You buy the brand, the car and its lack of reliability is well known and the difficult handling also well known. But its La Ferrari.
This is the type of car that will be seen in the hands of people buying Cybertruck or the UK chavs that now buy Rolex. The moment that happens your brand is dead. Your customers will flock away back to Buggati and Aston Martin.
Massive Ferrari mistake.
The clientele for the lower trim Ferrari is not the same pool as Bugatti purchasers.
The actual correctness of your statement, and that I agree with, is irrelevant to the point I was making.
I agree on the aesthetics drastically breaking from legacy but I very much doubt charvers will afford this car.
Some UK soccer players
IMO this is a risk worth taking. The Ferrari brand is rather stagnant and not innovative. They need to do something like this to drive more attention and sales. Even if this particular model does not sell well they can refine and make better selling EVs down the line.
>> They need to do something like this to drive more attention and sales.
The objective of a luxury brand is not volume sales.
There is the well known anecdote of somebody asking André Heiniger, then chairman/president of Rolex: "How is the watch business?" and he answering something along the lines of: "I have no idea. Rolex is not in the watch business..."
According to one of the recent Acquired (podcast) episodes, they could ramp up production to increase sales at any time, they just don't in order to keep brand value and desire high, so I'm not sure it's that.
> The Ferrari brand is rather stagnant and not innovative. They need to do something like this to drive more attention and sales.
Wild assertion. Ferrari is currently #8 largest market cap for a car manufacturer. They're valued above Mercedes, BMW, Volkswagen and every other Euro car brand.
They couldn't be more successful as a small automaker if they tried. But you think they need to do something like this to drive attention and sales?
the world is shifting to EVs and Ferrari doesn't want to get left behind. It's making a bold statement with this model
What is bold about this cheap design?
It's bold to offer something as ugly as this for that kind of money. Jony Ive should stick to designing aluminium cubes. That's where his talents are.
It's completely different from the other Ferrari models (much like the Cybertruck for Teslas)
I don't agree that difference equals boldness. Boldness of Cybertruck comes from its statement. There is no such statement behind Ferrari Luce. It's a cheap Ferrari-for-your-kid kind of design.
which has nothing to do with your (wild) statements about how Ferrari is stagnant and desperate to boost sales...
The exterior is just a magic mouse! At least those switches in the dashboard are real switches, not touchscreen buttons.
I feel like the real story is Jony Ive’s deep love for the Subaru SVX on display here.
Hey, leave the SVX alone!
Underrated comment
> The exterior is just a magic mouse!
I hope they didn't put the charging socket on the bottom.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jwU1ZvVFMXw
Like this? https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/1taf5uw/apple_car_ch...
> what political struggle was behind that within Ferrari ... could be an indicator for internal disagreements.
A while back I read a couple books on the history of Ferrari and came away with the clear sense that Enzo was one of those unique iconoclastic entrepreneurs who was brilliant, flawed and irreplaceable. After Enzo, Ferrari's management has mostly hovered between being inconsistent and incomprehensible. From the racing team to road cars, the company has become legendary for political fiefdoms and internal conflict.
I agree the Luce exterior may be the least Ferrari-looking Ferrari ever. I suspect it's going to be a disaster for the brand.
Ferrari has historically worked with outside designers. Pininfarina being probably the most prominent. Bertone, as well. Ferrari brought design in-house relatively recently.
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.
Ferrari Luce is the nicest KIA design ever.
Or a fairly nice evolution of Honda maybe...
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.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hyundai+iccu
Maybe, but anecdotically people I know who bought new Kia's also got rid of them, after trying different models that all had interesting problems.
The immobilizer issue I mentioned effects virtually every Kia built between 2011 and 2021.
They also do not do well in CR's annual surveys.
They're still bad, and there is ample objective evidence.
Most of what I've heard is about the electric vehicles they produce, not the ICE cars. My understanding is their EVs are different beasts and much better.
Kia has some competitive vehicles in niches that not many seem to want to service, and I suspect many of their buyers do not live in areas where immobilizers are going to be a major issue.
Our dealer was fine, and it's been fine. It's a car car, not really doing anything amazing.
Brands, but especially Asian ones, seem to go through cycles - this thing is absolute shit, nobody buy it, company fixes the problems and gets reliable, but still thought of as crap, company keeps improving, people start to notice, becomes known as a real good and reliable deal, company starts charging more and more. Kia's on the ascendant right now, where Toyota was 20+ years ago.
The dealer issues are true, but we have been very happy with our 2021 Hyundai Palisade Calligraphy after owning it for 5+ years and 82k miles. Budget luxury with pretty good handling and performance. It's a great value package if you need a 3rd row vehicle (I have 4 kids).
Kia is pretty much well regarded in Europe. It was the first company to offer a 7 years warranty. I've been very happy with mine.
But justify to who?
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
Wasn't tailored for Ferrari, or at least not for Ferrari alone. Porsche is a much bigger player revenue – 5x the annual revenue.
it was created after lobbying/intervention of Italy and Germany, so yes, also for Porsche.
But Porsche has a much wider palette of cars, if ICEs would be banned without exception they could adapt.
Their concern was that Ferrari could be exempted entirely from the regulation due to their low total volume, with Porsche ending up unable to compete on ICE sports cars with them because they're no longer allowed to build one.
Hence the "Ferrari loophole". Not just for Ferrari, but BECAUSE of Ferrari
I thought a similar thing too.
"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.
Its a divorce car. You get to keep your real ferrari(s), and buy her one of those. Good for school/grocery runs, has the right badge, probably will drive like a normal car. There exists a demography for those kinds of cars. Lots of people dont care one bit about the style, its all about the brand. (I doubt anyone would consider Bentley SuVs as good looking, for instance - yet they seel well).
That was the deal with the Aston Martin Cygnus as well. It wasn't meant for enthusiasts. It was generally sold to wives who bought them alone - much to the fury of husbands later that day. Some Aston Martin salesman once mentioned this in an interview, mentioning that otherwise there was no way to move that vehicle.
> Aston Martin Cygnus
Googling this ruined my day
I do get a lot of "plastic" vibes and "high quality raching sim gear"
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.
Panamera is a beaut, though.
Compared to the Cayenne I’m with you. Compared to a 911 though…
we'll have to agree to disagree I guess ;)
Worst case Ferrari will make people buy these so they can buy something else.
They’ll likely have to buy several of these, in different colors, and agree to sell them back to Ferrari at a massive loss… only for Ferrari to repeat the process over and over.
The shenanigans manufacturers like Ferrari and Porsche are allowed to get away with is so frustrating. But when people treat cars like collectibles and never even intend to drive them, I suppose there’s little reason not to.
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.
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.
The back of the car is ugly.
I suppose by "back" you mean the whole car?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy22rddy5no
Sheesh, it looks like its own Chinese knockoff if that clichee were still a thing :D
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".
At least it tries to look like a Ferrari a bit more than the rest of the car. It's a rounded F40 without the wing
Define ugly
Ferrari Luce ugly.
I felt the web site was "lights on nobody home", I think the interesting fact about this vehicle is that it is electric and even though you can pick different colors and a heated steering wheel as an option there isn't a single word about power train.
Just being a legendary brand like Ferrari doesn't mean that 100% of us understand 100% about 100% of your products.
"(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.
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).
EVs generally have more "freedom" to design the car the way they want, as it's usually motors (in the wheels, which you probably need to have anyway) and then the battery (which can be a giant slab, but that's for cost and maintenance reasons; there's nothing stopping a $650k car from having batteries custom laid to fit however they want).
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.
Though Pininfarina, Zagato and others have a long history of designing beautiful car bodies, many of which have more than stood the test of time.
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."
[0] https://www.ferrari.com/en-US/corporate/articles/ferrari-luc...
Sounds to me like LoveFrom didn't spend enough time learning about Ferrari first.
The problem with cars is if you take all design constraints into consideration you will always end up with something that looks similar.
You sound like my old man who swears all coffee tastes the same. Folgers is Starbucks is Blue Bottle.
Think again ...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46173798
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.
I doubt this is a joke entry by any means.
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"?
Ferraris situation is absolutely, 100%, totally NOTHING like JLR
*yet
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 looks like a Polestar.
The performance is certainly what you would expect from Ferrari, but it doesn’t matter. This isn’t a car that should have a Ferrari emblem on it. This will go down as one of the all time automotive blunders.
I think Jony Ive is done too. He was responsible for those awful MacBooks that generated a class action lawsuit and now this. It’s hard to come back from two consecutive flops.
> It looks like a Polestar.
I don't agree. Polestar has their own "design language", they do not look the same.
I think that I prefer the look of a Polestar 5 to this Ferrari. Of course, I've never seen either vehicle in person, so what do I really know.
(Conspiracy) Plot twist:
Teams inside Ferrari despise EV's (because they lack 10,000 moving parts and loud noises), so they pushed hard for this design, ensuring a flop, and giving ferrari cold EV feet for the foreseeable future.
100% looks like a BYD/Hyundai; the front (exterior) is hideous. Surely this isn't the production version of the vehicle? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Is this so unusual for Ferrari and do we need to blame it on Jony Ive? Ferrari's been selling an SUV since 2024, after all...
And the Purosangue’s design runs circles around this appliance.
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.
I think the front of the car (arguably the most impactful part) does not really reflect the true Ferrari character which is a shame.
Agree that the Interior and rest is all nice enough though.
Ferrari has certainly outsourced design of the exterior before, often to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pininfarina
The interior is also, frankly, very meh.
Edit: ignore
There's a difference between picking a car out of a lineup to play in a game and taking (a lot of) money to buy a Ferrari.
I too would pick fun/weird stuff to play, but if I had Ferrari money I wouldn't be touching this.
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.
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.
Cayenne wasn't $647k USD.
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.
> Just not feeling this design at all.
This design looks like a friggin' Kia design, sadly. It's not a bad thing if it were a Kia, but I would expect much more from Ferrari.
Really doesn't look like a supercar, let alone a $650k supercar.
Looks more like a design for a premium fairly-mass-market EV from any number of other brands.
Nevera is limited to 150 units.
>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.
Over $600,000 USD
Before customisations
> 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.
> That's a pretty bold claim.
Behind every stupid design there are apologists, who claim that the critics don't get it.
Agree, if seen as start/inception of a line: promising
Imagine them boiling this down over the years into a ‘battle tested’ streamlined 160k EV -- they do not require the first version to be sold much ‘at all’ at this price point; it is now out there and the goal seems to be to mark the top of the line of this segment longterm; and if this succeeds, they ported the co into the future in style
There is soo much great design in this but it might be required to get closer to really experience and appreciate
So likely longterm: very good move
> The general public is not the target audience for this car
Which Ferrari had general public as its target audience?
I guess it will be an iconic car in 10-20 tears, like the F40 is still appraised today.
Maybe it feels an extreme change, but the solution like making batteries core part of the body might pay well. I am looking also for the first track tests, to see if their claims are real
They’ll probably sell more units of this than Tesla ever will with the Cybertruck
I agree with the idea behind this comment, which is something like "This car will be more successful than the Cybertruck."
But Ferrari is intentionally low-volume with everything they make, and this car will also be extremely low volume. Even if it is dearly beloved and becomes ultra-high demand--and the jury is out on that--Ferrari wouldn't dream of selling that many, because it takes away from the exclusivity.
But I'll agree that Ferrari will likely hit its goals for this car in a way that Tesla hasn't hit its goals for the Cybertruck.
That's not a high bar by any stretch of the imagination, though.
Since EVs have democratized speed, there's literally no reason for EV supercar/hypercars.
Especially at ~ $650k USD.
Stock is down 6% now
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.
>This car is what the Apple Car should have been in the 2010s
This is the car apple was working on, slightly modified. Ive just (re)sold previous work, and Ferrari is holding the bag.
The reason this doesn't look like a Ferrari is because it was originally conceived as an Apple.
That's why the Ferrari tail lights don't work - it's an Apple car.
Buyers = China
The commentary seems pretty uninformed.
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.
> They legitimately expect this thing to sell to its target audience.
"Selling" is not an issue that Ferrari has. Of course this thing will sell. They produce so few cars that every car they make will sell.
Whether it will help or hurt their brand in the long run is a much more interesting and important question.
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.
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)
Unrelated personal take: the tray screen is very nice. Great for changing navigation when your partner is helping you. There are some nice touches.
Exterior is not my style, but then again, I'm not the target.
I could see this being true, except that other high end electrics (Porsche, Audi) have not sold well. So the theory would be:
> people want either $30,000 electric cars (Tesla), $100,000 electric cars (Tesla), or $500,000 electric cars (Ferrari)
I do think Ferrari is trying to expand their audience with the Luce, but not to Dubai housewives. Ferrari's are for Ferrari collectors. There exists the guy with a few already, who daily drives a Tesla. Probably hundreds of those guys! This is for them (IMO).
It's entire run is almost surely entirely presold already. That's the way Ferrari works with these types of halo cars.
Yeah, classic strategic mistake - lets try to attract a set of buyers completely different from our core base. The only thing that may save them, i.e., exotic playbook 101, is require core buyers to purchase one in order to get "the opportunity" to buy one oof its halo cars.
This is a $300k car with over a thousand horsepower. Housewives are not the target market.
You think ultra rich housewives don't want ultra expensive cars?
Why would you think that? Rich housewives/spouses do exist.
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.
Wouldn't the Purosangue be the competitor though?
I am pointing out that manufacturers introduce models to capture new demographics. Just like the Urus did.
I would assume even they would prefer buying something sexier than an iphone on wheels.
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.
why would the ultra wealthy care about it being an ev? operating cost and climate impact are not a priority when you are dropping 650k and living in a oil rich ME kingdom.
performance and aesthetics s would be more important, surely?
EVs are legitimately better to drive.
Why fixate on Arab countries? Rich people live all over the world and there are increasingly more emission restrictions. And again, as I keep repeating myself, just because you are not the target demographic does not mean it does not exist. I could easily see someone who does not care about cars wanting this because of the brand and yeah even EVs can matter depending on social circles.
You guys are defending this to death. I am only pointing out that it would not surprise me it fits a demographic they were targeting.
Most housewives in dubai buy Rolls royce anyway. It looks better
Ok? Still does not defend anything you are saying.
The car isn't $300K. It's $640K (€550K).
Porsche Cayenne has hurt Porches brand immensely.
Not really. It shifted Porsches brand somewhat, but Porsche is still very strong.
And if a bunch of SUV buyers want to subsidize my 911 habit--I have no complaints.
Can you point to any evidence in the last 12 months of Porsche being "very strong"?
Any change in the past 12 months is abolutely not up to the Cayenne, which came to market 24 years ago. Or the Macan, which came to market twelve years ago. And that was the main point of the GP post--how adding SUVs to the mix didn't ruin the brand.
But in any event, Porsche sold more cars in 2025 in North America, than any year prior.
https://newsroom.porsche.com/en_US/company/porsche-cars-nort...
It did take a big hit to profitability in 2025, mostly on one-time restructuring charges. But until then it was one of the most profitable auto-manufacturers out there. And its annual revenue is still higher than most of its history, especially on a per-car basis.
So sure, recently Porsche hasn't done well. But it has very little to do with SUVs and that transition. And I would argue that the brand itself is still very strong, even if operationally they have mishandled the electric transition.
> But in any event, Porsche sold more cars in 2025 in North America, than any year prior.
Porsche sells about as many cars every year as Ferarri has sold in its entire existence. I'm not sure that's a strong indicator of whether or not it "brand" (AKA public perception) is doing well or not. Clearly Ferarri has a strong brand than Porsche, despite only selling 330,000 cars in the past 80 years. And despite Porsche selling 310,000 in 2024 alone.
Yes they have very different business models. But it would be like using "number of Window's licenses sold" to argue that Microsoft has a really strong brand right now.
Everyone hating on it probably needs to reconsider.
Why?
IDGAF if Dubai Housewives like it. My world doesn't revolve around what they think.
It's not about being informed, I for one am sick of minimalism spreading it's bland wings (just slats, really) everywhere.
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.
I'm starting to wonder exactly what designs Ive really had that weren't just "bland rectangle". I'll give him the Apple Loop and the iMac.
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.
It looks a little like the Apple Magic Mouse from some angles, only more ergonomic.
I have a lot of issues with the Ive era and the Mac... but every iPhone he designed was a banger. I think the 12-14 era is the only era of iPhones I thought were bad and that was after him.
I suppose the iPhone 6 was bendable but that was a hardware engineering issue as shown by the same form factor not being bendable for the 6s through 8.
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.
Jobs ability to say no to someone like Ive and not have him quit in a huff was 90% of his power, imo. It's a difficult line to hoe.
I'm sure everyone at Ferrari HQ dutifully applauded when this was revealed.
You buy a Ferrari for the sex appeal.
But you nailed it. It's the Ferrari Priuso.
amusingly, the last Toyota Prius looks quite nice.
My understanding is that he only did the interior, which I have no issue with. The exterior is garbage.
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.
If you get every iPhone ever released, in black or black-adjacent, and lay them camera-side down and off, it would be difficult to line them up in the correct order.
Not much has really changed with them, and I'm not sure much really can.
Toyota has a decent boring design consistency
>> after designing the worst iPhones ever
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.
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"?
You are interpreting it the wrong way around. It's not a disaster for general population. It's a disaster for the artist and others involved.
Money/time/effort is spent on the wrong thing. It's a disaster for them. Not for you.
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.
Missteps both in music and in other areas don't usually kill something that wasn't already moribund. The trashcan Mac Pro didn't kill Apple; Procol Harum's cover of Eight Days a Week didn't kill them or the Beatles.
And sometimes it's a runaway hit.
is it like a sunk cost issue? 'cos AAA computer games seem to have that issue
People have said the same of the first Porsche Cayenne, yet the Porsche SUVs have been outselling their sports cars for years.
That abomination is for porsche wannabes looking for an excuse to be better-than-you, there is a huge market for those
> wannabes looking for an excuse to be better-than-you
Haha, you just perfectly described every porsche dealership employee I've ever met.
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.
What is gobsmacking is the price.
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.
I think they will eventually get to the point of technological differentiation but they've got to start somewhere: they must first have an electric car on the market before they can start experimenting with it to improve the performance 1.5x, 2x, 10x.
At some point, EVs are going to pull ahead of ICE cars not just incrementally, but categorically. Instead of 0-60 in 3 seconds, it'll be 0-60 in under a second: the limits are physics and the human body, not the engine. Full self-driving, native to the architecture. Over-the-air updates that do things like improve the car's range by 5% (Tesla did something like this). And more no one's thought of yet.
So, this is their beachhead. You've got to start somewhere: they're starting here.
It's a Veblen good.
The point of the Ferrari is it's high price point. People turn their heads to look at a Ferrari because it's expensive, not because it's a practical and reasonably priced luxury car (eg some lower end Porche models). The higher price makes it more attractive to a certain demographic and most of us in the comments don't belong to that group.
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.
I didn't realize initially Marc Newson was involved. Definitely echoes of the 021C.
https://marc-newson.com/ford-021c-concept-car/
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.
Perhaps they hired an outside designer to not harm their own reputation. It was always going to be poorly received because it's an ugly aerodynamic EV SUV, which every brand has. There's no way to stand out if it must have an ultra-low CD.
I think they realize that in the future EVs will far outsell their petrol, so it makes sense to keep the brand for those.
The design is bonkers though , a major blunder
A $650k car could be fueled by dandelion farts and angel's tears and the target market wouldn't care much.
it's more about living with an EV, charging schedules etc
They could make an EV Purosangue.
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.
Either you were still day dreaming, or your school history class was pretty bad. That Taj Mahal story is a myth.
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.
This piqued my interest but I learned this is actually a myth.
Might be inspired by the Kremlin building. Same story but with Ivan and eyes.
that one's also a myth
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.
Quality is different than something that feels “special” which every Ferrari I’ve sat in or drove has in spades.
Whether or not it’s well put together is another topic entirely.
But the point made was about build quality soecifi8
Quality is not hearing squeaking food packing plastic Ferrari used on parcel shelf trim in 599.
Sure, but his point stands.
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.
I'll buy this car, mostly because I like the interior.
The fact that I like the interior and I can't get it for less money is what justifies the price tag.
Just out of interest, is that a hypothetical to explain the buyers view or are you actually going to buy it?
Ferrari really isn't a car known for interiors.
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.
> Ferrari really isn't a car known for interiors.
To be fair, what, three, four people will see the interior? But thousands see the exterior.
The price is the reason. Veblen explains that.
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.
yeah, this is one of those "lol, lmao" moments.
It literally looks exactly like a cheap Chinese EV. (And, to add insult to injury, you can almost certainly get a cheap Chinese EV with comparable specs.)
And the Model S is no longer in production due to poor sales. How many of these $650k family sedans could Ferrari possibly move?
Ferrari is intentionally low volume on everything. So the question is more about just how many they want and planned to move than absolute numbers.
Ferrari also presells the vast majority of its "special" cars. Which this one is. The run is probably already entirely sold out.
Ah I see...
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.
Bizarre comparison.
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.> Who is the customer for a Model S? What fancy full-size sedan would they otherwise buy?
raises hand
I like EVs for their ripping fast 0-60. It's the only performance metric I can actually use. Top speed doesn't matter.
I drive a Model 3 Performance. I would have upgraded to a Model S Plaid a couple years ago, but Elon made a hard right turn politically and so I don't want to give him any more money. Also, Tesla has still been unable to fix quality consistency. My M3P has been great, but I've seen too many stories. Even people paying $100K for a Model S Plaid end up with things coming unglued or misaligned. I've seen them try to deliver a car with obvious gnarly scratches in the paint.
With the weather getting dryer in the PNW, I'm now looking for a convertible for my next car. Still looking to keep electric though, so now I'm just waiting patiently for the Porsche 718, Polestar 6, or Corvette EV convertible if they ever make one. Basically, whoever makes the first EV sports convertible for $200K or less that doesn't look ugly as sin will likely get my money.
Thank you for noticing that Tesla's are priced at premium levels, but they still don't know how to make actual quality that is present the models you listed above. I've owned several of these and driven all but the EQS and there's a huuuge gap between a 7er S-class and a Tesla. Huge.
Probably more than you'd think. Lamborghini is selling around 5000 butt-ugly Urus SUVs per year.
>And it looks the same
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?
Well, at least Ferrari has hopefully higher quality materials.
It seems that EVs and ICEs are sufficiently different that traditional car companies don't really enjoy nearly the encumbrancy advantage they once had.
The top EV manufacturer started as a battery company. The second place EV company started as an EV company.
Various ICE manufacturers have spent decades innovating and refining ICEs and building logistics chains optimized for ICEs.
The big problem that the high end ICE manufacturers have is that the things that made them special in the ICE market don't apply as well in the EV market.
You can potentially justify 6 figure price tags if you're in the luxury market. Hire famous designers, pay for premium materials, and leverage your brand name. If you want to sell cars for 6 figures based on performance, they actually need to perform significantly better. There are a bunch of much cheaper EVs that have better performance.
Just jacking up the price and relying on conspicuous consumption is how you get the Fyre Festival.
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.
[0]https://www.ferrari.com/en-US/corporate/articles/ferrari-luc...
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.
https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/250-europa
I was trying to pinpoint what it reminded me of, and this is it 100%. It looks exactly like an iPhone 5C taken the form of a car.
He can’t design functionally well doesn’t mean he doesn’t have an appetite or money for things designed well.
even the color match...
I like that it has lots of mechanical switches. Maybe that'll trickle down to regular cars. The stereo specs are impressive.
The article mentions low center of gravity and 0-60 time. At 2.5 sec, I'm not sure this is much of a differentiator. Teslas can match it, but even a full-sized work truck is already hitting 3.5s. BMW sedans sit at 3.1s. Sure, the Ferrari is a bit faster, but I'm not convinced it's a qualitative difference.
I wonder how it corners. There's no mention of weight in the article. That's been the main differentiator I've noticed between EVs that feel sporty and ones that handle like a pickup truck.
I also wonder how many people will immediately turn off the "authentic sound". I get that the octegenarian crowd is still running the global economy, and likes their lumbering shitbox tuned-exhaust gas guzzlers, but I don't see many gen-x'ers (hitting 50!) or younger that prefer gratuitous road noise.
Lots of comments saying it looks ugly. I don't agree. But the $650,000 price tag is not pretty - that I can agree on. I know people will pay that.
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.
It looks like a BMW concept car honestly, like something I'd see at an auto show. Nothing reminds me of Ferrari.
At least they had the decency not to paint it red.
You can configure it in 3 different shades of red, including the traditional Rosso Scuderia.
It sounds like the interior is the Ive part.
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.
Nope, Ive's firm also designed the exterior.
>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.
Kia EV looks far better
by the time this depreciates the Kia might hold better value
The outside looks like one of the Mustangs from the 90s with the round brake lights. Meh
Absolutely.
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.
I agree. It is quite nice. Just way too expensive. If this was a $100,000 Apple car people would be lining up to buy one.
After seeing the pictures, I assumed they were moving into the mass-market budget EV sedan market at a price 1/10th of that.
$650k is a fine price for a Ferrari, but not one that looks as plain as that.
This. If this was a 65k sedan, I would understand. With a normal infotainment system, that is. Not this "looks like a race car" stuff.
If I had to spend 650k on a single car, I wouldn't buy this.
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.
I don't think it is ugly (Except those wheels) but it doesn't look like a Ferrari.
People who actually want to buy something else will be forced to pay it. That's how Ferrari dealers work.
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 is horrific, I cannot believe Ferrari put their name on it yet alone released it.
For comparison, the recent Ferrari Roma: https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/ferrari-roma
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
It looks like the UI of one of the good NFS games from that time period. I love it!
beautiful. But looks like an Aston Martin
That is also shit. Go back to Pininfarina. Flavio Manzoni can fuck off.
The instrument cluser looks awesome, especially the G force instrument!
https://ferrari-cdn.thron.com/delivery/public/image/ferrari/...
It's nice and I like the admission that the driver is the most important human who ever lived, so the touchscreen is angled towards him ;)
Not sure about the cupholder position. I wonder if the G-force is customizable (e.g, all the screens are?) or if it's fixed. If it's fixed, I'd almost prefer it to be the one analog instrument, perhaps taken from an acrobatic plane.
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.
Reminds me of old airplane or spacecraft instruments and i like those. Also the XY layout is pretty elegant.
>What’s awesome about it?
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.
Boring and conventional would be having physical controls on the wheel for volume, next/prev, ok/cancel etc.
So a complete lack of anything actually useful.
Lovely blend of analogue and digital elements.
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.
If you're buying a Ferrari, why wouldn't you want it to look like a Ferrari? Not some Chinese knockoff Tesla?
The exterior looks like from a video game which has no license to use actual cars.
A "McLovin Testostero"...
The guy (Jony Ive) could've just used ChatGPT. Here is the $640k Ferrari everybody expects - https://ibb.co/GfgGjQQD
That looks great actually x_x
Agreed - it's a great starting point at least, and looks nice.
Then again, I'm the definition of "not the target market" as that thing costs more than a California house.
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.
The Luce seats 5 and has a trunk.
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.
A GT4CLusso has 4 seats and a hatchback, yet looks reasonable as a Ferrari so it’s hardly unfamiliar territory.
I ... it's growing on me! Odd. Very odd feeling.
I like the front. I like the interior. Controls and touches look great on video.
But rear is awful. So far anyways. Reminds me of this Chevy Impala model family:
https://www.rvinyl.com/products/chevrolet-impala-2000-2005-t...
Having owned an Impala of that generation, and having seen so many around for so long, this is exactly where my mind went. These are a dead ringer for their rear lights.
Thank you for the laugh. I knew I saw those lights somewhere and that they didn’t require millions and millions of design prowess from Ive.
Then there was this model: https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/events/a1901311/one-ferrar...
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.
Should have had Pininfarina do the body. The best looking Ferraris are all Pininfarina.
Agree.
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.
Ferrari has been doing in-house design for a while. With spotty results.
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.
$600K Ferrari Luce vs. $35K Nissan Leaf: Spot the difference...
https://imgur.com/a/fsvO5G8
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.
Only the color is similar. Nothing else is otherwise you’ll start putting many cars in the same basket
I wouldn't say it is pretty, but to me it looks nicer on this picture than on the Ferrari website.
It is a very generic shape for sure!
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.
I'd like to see a "pimp my ride" that focused on making the bottom car look as nice as possible - new wheels, disc brake upgrade with colored calipers, some cleanup, I think it could look significantly better.
Judging by pictures only Ferrari should cost double of Nissan and 1/5 of this[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangwang_U9#/media/File:Yangwa...
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.
Long live the Ivesmobile.
This is the Apple Car. Now we know what it would have looked like.
I’m so relieved to see this is the top comment. I was afraid I was going to see HN people saying how great this monstrosity looks.
Oh, this is actually designed by Ive? It all makes sense now. He is a joke of a designer. I had thought people had stopped giving him work.
This car has absolutely ZERO life to it for any manufacturer, much less a Ferrari.
I believe he only designed the interior
"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."
Well, we finally got to find out what an Apple car would have looked like.
His firm did the entire car. Inside and outside.
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.
I had the same visceral reaction lol, so ugly.
They made a Ferrari look asian. If it actually sells in China I‘m gonna be so mad.
In software we have an enshittification problem. In industrial design we have a generification problem.
Buttons for turn signals. Yuck.
God, Jony Ive is such an insufferable person.
I think you simply haven't seen the light. Here, perhaps his $4800 lantern can help: https://www.balmuda.com/lovefrom-balmuda/
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.
> this thing is never seeing seawater anyway
I can definitely see these used as lighting devices on luxury boats.
The hell..!
I honestly like Ive as a designer, but dear lord.
Ferrari have had indicator buttons in all their cars since about 2010
Haven't Ferrari used buttons for turn signals for a while?
Not sure. I've been in a few Ferraris and they all had regular stalks.
It's possible that those buttons are not Jony Ive's doing, but I still find him insufferably pompous.
What's the point of this refutation, a quick Internet search would've shown you that there are Ferraris with buttons to activate the blinkers...
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.
Same guy here. I understand some people derive pleasure from the “hobby” of owning large mobile metal boxes and I am not against it, but notice we are commenting on a 650k Ferrari and a butt-ugly one at that.
The people in the video are literally smiling smugly. I kid you not.
I’m talking about all those fancy Audi, Tesla, Volvo and BMW drivers that want to feel superior in their mobile box of death and waste. They are not car enthusiasts. Car enthusiasts do maintenance work on 80s Alfas for fun. I know the type and those are alright.
Car culture is much larger than the mechanics. It’s the idea that cars need to be nice at all. The idea they have “personality” and are indicators of social status.
I’m not at all against social status. I’m against using such wasteful, ugly and dangerous machinery as a delivery mechanism of the winnings in your particular genetic and cultural lottery.
People think that everyone spends hours and hours deliberating over the car they buy - and some do, but those are the same people who likely have discussions about how the iPhone 17e is significantly different than the iPhone 16 (ooo "Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously"!).
Talk to various people with $100k+ cars and you often find they bought it "because they needed something and the color was nice" or "they always buy from Joe" and other similarly seemingly insignificant reasons.
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.
I do think about this a lot. Kind of like newspapers saying 'bad news sells', while they are also the ones deciding what news will be consumed.
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.
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.
When you're putting down this much for a car, you have options... I don't think this will be on the top of the list.
So the rest of the world not caring doesn't matter as the audience for this is probably a million people at best
> 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.
The cybercar turned out to be a massive failure though. So, it kind of mattered?
subset of hn commenters? The cybertruck is widely ridiculed, also in taiwan.
Yes, subset. See, the other subset: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48276310
What's missing is changing the stallion to a kiddified pony, to match the rest of the design.
This looks like a child's toy.
"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.
Kias look better
Ahem, there is a new Rolling Stones album slated for release in 2026. I most definitely agree with you by the way.
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.
It's sick those guys are my parents gen and still work and do what they love like outliving most of your fans must be a lonely life
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.
Yes, this must be it. There's no experience like driving a manual with a two-plus ton vehicle.
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.
If you enjoy that, get a Deuce and a Half - not much worse on gas (lol) but the shift pattern is something else entirely.
I've never heard of this, but it looks incredible. I've seen some similar looking beasts around that seem to be modified for apocalypse survival and would love to try and drive it, as long as I don't have to reverse it up a slope lol
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.
Sure, but this isn't a Tesla...
If you're going to drive this slowly you might as well buy a Tesla
> 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.
> Model S Plaid has faster acceleration than Luce and they have similar top speed.
People don’t get sports cars just for the acceleration.
The Luxe doesn’t look sporty at all, even if it has excellent handling.
Good thing neither are sports cars.
The casio watch is more accurate than a mechanical watch, it doesn't mean I should like it more
Tesla model S accelerates faster and has a higher top speed, and also more range on a smaller battery....
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...
Tesla Model S is discontinued.
Whatever its merits, there wasn’t a market for it.
Which suggests that a similar but worse product shouldn't sell either?
The brand name counts for a lot in this market.
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.
Just pointing out that, technically, if you're gonna drive slow, the Ferrari is the appropriate choice over the Tesla.
The look is nothing less than I would expect from "make it thinner and round the corners" pioneer Jony Ive.
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 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).
It's a $650,000 car. These are not anyone's top priorities with it.
> energy efficiency matters more with EVs
This is correct, but I really don't see why Ferrari would care.
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.
It’s a sports car, they all have atrocious fuel efficiency, especially in this price range.
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.
an eletric lotus would be a blast, but having a big heavy battery seems antithetical to their entire car building philosophy
Isn’t that what the Tesla Roadster was?
So a Tesla Roadster? :)
Just 280+ mile EPA range on a 122 kwH battery. 5100 pounds. 2.5s to 60. Not insane by any standard, ICE or EV.
Yeah that's actually rather inefficient. Tesla Model Y has 84kWh battery and a range of 300 miles.
Does it really?
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!
No, but we're comparing the EPA ranges here, which is the point of them.
The point of the EPA ranges are to be misleading.
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.
You're missing the point.
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.
Not really, no, except in narrow circumstances.
> Yeah that's actually rather inefficient
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)
A lot of Ferraris are driven less than 280 miles per year.
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.
Weird that you don't understand it. Have you read any of the replies in the multitudes of times you've invariably seen this discussion come up online?
Compare that to Hyundai N Vision 74.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_N_Vision_74
Concept cars are the best. If I could have this and the Renault R17 Restomod I would not need another car ever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_R17_Electric_Restomod_...
Lol, you have a weird taste
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.
Not Ferrari’s typical market ;)
the Hyundai looks worse? because of the lower lip thing
Hyundai is awesome! Ferrari is ugly.
because of reasons?
It has way more character. The Ferrari basically looks fungible with every other EV.
often saying something has character is a euphemism for being ugly
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
if you got rid of the badges and showed me the exterior shot i'd say "oh, is that one of those cheap chinese EVs everyone is talking about?"
> Sound waves are captured from electro-mechanical vibration in the axles that are equalised, amplified and delivered alongside visual feedback to inform the driver
In other words, they made an EV do wroom-wroom?
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.
The Mustang Mach-E makes a fake engine sound: https://www.drive.com.au/news/ford-mustang-mach-e-v8-exhaust...
Isn’t this quite literally how a microphone works?
Yes, but it still seems like a cool choice worth talking about. They could have made a totally fake engine noise, instead they mic’d up the axles.
Or, like, keep it silent as it is? Imagine iPhone converting signals an data lines to sound to imitate dial-up modem noises
I love Ferraris trying to sound like Yutong buses.
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?
Ferrari history - powerful engines, shitty interiors.
so how does this reflect the Ferrari history. maybe this should've been a Maserati project.
unless they were going to put massive electric motors or some other performance thing that's electric & not seen in other cars.
I'm not an expert on automotive or any type of design for that matter. But I have an appreciation for cars and especially racing cars. I can look at Ferraris of every era and even though the design language has changed. I can tell you that is a Ferrari. There is a common thread that runs through all of those cars that makes them a Ferrari. I just don't see that with the Luce. It looks like they threw a couple "Ferrari" styling cues on it, but that is it.
I bet there is a faction of “traditionalists” inside Ferrari who want nothing to do with electric and do not want the Luce to look anything like a traditional ICE Ferrari, also for fear it would cannibalize sales. Thus they took design cues from, of all places, BYD.
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.
[0] - pop up screen in interror of #Audi https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TUgqDlzuiFQ
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.
An individual’s opinion may not signify anything, but collectively, all those opinions decide if a product is successful or not.
Absolutely.
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 don’t understand why anyone is jumping to conclusions about anything before anyone has driven it.
A Ferrari is about driving, and while it wouldn’t surprise me that the driving experience is generally the same as most EVs I’m unwilling to dismiss this based on looks alone.
> A Ferrari is about driving
Is it, though? Most Ferraris aren't driven much at all. In fact, most Ferraris are bought by collectors. If somebody has 10-20 Ferraris, do you think they drive them much? In Parallel?
I don't like it at all. The curves, the silhouette, does not work at all, it does not "speak" to me as a Ferrari.
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.
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.
On top of this, it's 5x more expensive than a Xiaomi SU7 Ultra... which may be the better car regardless of price.
Man, I wish they sold this car in the states… I’d buy one instantly.
Introducing the new
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.
And doesn't come with a charger.....
Nothing like the dull, beige boxes with wheels of the competition.
Fine print:
Range up to 10 Km.
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.
Looks like a Polestar and Corvette had a child.
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.
Ferrari doors are always this bad. If you regularly transport more than 2 people in your Ferrari, you aren't their target market.
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.
On the battery size, 122kWh is actually pretty large for this size. Most Teslas have <100kWh batteries and they all have better or similar range.
Measured in Elon miles though.
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.
My 2024 Model 3 Performance regularly sees its EPA rated range.
thanks for putting into words what I was thinking as I was scrolling down the page.
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.
I love the EV idea, but the exterior design is terrible
Most of the reactions I am seeing on various social media are negative.
Granted, that is not the market that would buy a Ferrari, but one of the point of buying luxury cars is the status they grant. There is not much status in a car mocked by the public.
"The market has spoken: Ferrari shares fall after carmaker unveils first fully electric vehicle" - https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/26/ferrari-stock-shares-luce-el...
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
Somehow managed to make a Ferrari look as cheap as a Tesla (inside and out).
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.
The design language is a departure from usual Ferrari design, but I actually enjoyed the "smooth pebble" aerodynamic design of the exterior. It will certainly stand out in the sea of exaggerated angular shaped designs in the road. Maybe it would have been better received if it retained some elements of Ferrari design, like the headlights – it would be more recognizable.
I find the interior quite adequate for an EV, not too minimal neither gaudy. It does look like an interior designed by the iPhone designer, though. It would be a great interior in any car.
It seems this will be one of those divisive designs, because it totally broke with the Ferrari tradition.
It broke with "tradition" because this was originally designed for Apple. Ive just recycled his previous Apple Car ideas.
This car has nothing to do with Ferrari, except they paid him for work he already did once before.
What is the target demographic? The specs seem... nice. Nothing particularly special compared to the likes of Lucid, etc.
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.
The target demographic seems to be people wanting to buy a future Ferrari.
This. If you want to get on the list to buy the new supercars, you're going to have to start here. And you better add some expensive options.
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.
Inspiration is inside, so I'd say it's for people who want practicality + badge.
I'm glad more and more manufacturers care more than exterior looks, but focus on interior, esp on technology side.
Give me the modern interior design with a vintage exterior design.
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.
The massive 24" wheels make the car seem shorter in pictures.
Agreed. But by the description it sounds like it has very long wheels base.
I figured as much given they were comparing it to the Purosangue. Unfortunate that the proportions just make it, idk, horizontally squat looking.
Yes agreed, Ive been searching for some better photos but might have to wait a while
EVs will dominate the world in 10 years. Haters will hate. These two statements are not mutually exclusive. There is juicy irony in the fact that this is the country where modern EVs were invented and it is the one that hates the transition the most. There is nothing more American than driving an EV: https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/17/evs-dominate-the-most-amer...
EVs is just logical, it's better in every way possible and you can convert anyway gasoline into electricity to charge it so it's not even like you have a problem charging it anywhere, you can just bring the generator with you in the trunk for "problematic area".
Looks more like a computer mouse than a sports car.
It looks like someone designed the app first, then Jony Ive panic-wrapped a car around it.
Looks luke a cheap electric knockoff in some low budget racing game. It does not look like a ferrari at all.
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.
Cybertruck and Jaguar have not been sucessful.
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 Cybertruck and Jaguar rebrand are both complete flops.
Interesting product advice you have to offer. Who do you think is the target market for expensive Italian sports cars, if not “car enthusiasts”?
> 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.
> same with Jaguar
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.
They basically stopped _making_ any cars; it's kinda hard to not have a drop in sales after that.
> A 97% drop in European sales
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.
Looks like the BMW i3 met a Magic Mouse
Love it. Although I can't help to think you'll need to flip it around to charge.
How very unexciting. Works for laptops, Ive should stick to that.
Compare that to the next car on the list, now that's thrilling.
https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/849-testarossa
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.
Except Ive famously ruined Apple's laptops for the better part of a decade.
My god that V8 sounds terrible. From a company that made countless howling V12s, it's quite disappointing.
Emission regulations I'm guessing.
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.
These doors are designed for being chauffeured, not for you to get in at the same time as your driver.
Nobody buying a Ferrari needs an EV. A Ferrari is a flex, like a $100k Rolex — you’re not buying it to tell time, you’re buying it to signal you got loot. That’s what makes the Luce feel kinda confused.
Here to comment that Steve Jobs would be rolling in his grave right now
Why? The car has nothing to do with anything Steve did.
So many details, so many cool videos, so many interesting descriptions ...
Oh. No price?
Holy smokes this looks bad, nothing like Ferrari. The car was designed by Jony Ive, but from what I can see, he has zero experience designing cars. The asking price is $640k, which is absolutely hilarious. They should've published a render on April Fool's day instead.
> nothing like Ferrari
IDK, if you look at the other modern Ferraris it fits in with their design, other than the weird front.
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 knew it was going to be ugly, but did not expect an abomination. You surprised me indeed Ferrari.
This style might have worked as an apple car. It sure as hell doesn't work as a Ferrari.
Does Ferrari have the same "relationship requirements" as other high-end manufacturers? I.e. to get the latest and greatest ICE sports case, you'll need to buy one of these first.
Yes. You can't buy their high end models without buying lower end ones first.
This cars got a face that only a mother (Jony Ive) could love. Honestly it makes a prius look visually pleasing.
Lamborghini has been making prettier cars than Ferrari for 15+ years now. The entirety of the Ferrari line, looks-wise, is at best uninspired.
15 years ago is about when they broke up with Pininfarina. Your opinion is probably not a coincidence.
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.
The current model Prius is visually pleasing.
I'd rather a 2022 Acura NSX, but the word "Ferrari" will get a man interest from non-trivial amount of women, so there's the conspicuous consumption part of it.
Change the badge and it could have just as easily been the Apple car!
Yikes. That's a car that looks like it gets its lunch money taken by the other cars.
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.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjE6kbDdPzM
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.
Here's the English translation of your sentence:
"Certain brands, certain styles cannot switch to electric; the Green Deal doesn't apply to everything. Some machines need pistons!"
Seems obvious that this was his failed Apple Car design. Completely out of touch for Ferrari. It's going to be a major flop...
> ~ $650k USD
So is this what it takes to get nice physical buttons these days?!?
Ferrari's operating margin is ~28%. that number only works because they sell fewer cars than they could. the whole moat is manufactured scarcity. EV dilutes that if it widens access.
It's a $600,000 car. I don't think they're widening access.
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.
A tesla is a hedge against oil prices, a Ferrari obviously isn't.
EV is hedge against oil prices. Tesla is just a luxury brand of EV
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.
Driving dynamics. Not everything is acceleration..
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.
you don't have to drive at 100% to appreciate the driving dynamics. Light and nimble cars feel amazing even at speed limit, e.g 80 km/h on twisty country roads.
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.
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.
What made Ferrari think it was a good idea to have the guy who killed the headphone jack and shipped the butterfly keyboard design their first EV?
Validates my feeling that Ive is basically a hack who could only copy, I mean sincerely flatter Rams.
Eew I like the classics F40s but also the Stradale is dope too wtf is this thing
My eew comment is the design of the body
That's heinous. Their firm should stay away from sports car brands.
What did you expect? Braun didn't design any cars.
Wernher von? At least his Ferrari would be fast and arrive quickly.
Dieter Rams @ Braun. Ive REALLY likes his designs. https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/the-design-continuum-6494...
Shares of Ferrari fell by 6% in early trading on Tuesday after the launch of the Luce.
Jony Ive, more like jony ice
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.
The Polestar 6 is a much better looking electric sportscar IMO, although that's mostly a concept car at the moment.
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).
I noted that in the linked Top Gear review, they state "Ferrari won’t confirm the drag co-efficient", which makes me wonder about that claim
All worthwhile points.
A less worthwhile point: Especially especially low drag, when people don't drive it.
Ha ha. I can't imagine any Ferrari dealer would want this on their lot.
The painted parts are just for show.
Ugly as hell, it doesn’t look like a Ferrari.
The gas engine Farraris are a pinnacle of design for an engine, gas tank, drive train, and human occupant.
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.
The 'best' is the best given the constraints. Constraints for EV are different so the best should be different, not the same but EV.
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.
Looks like a significant departure from classic Ferrari styling and Italian thought to some American half arsed futurist dream version of a Mini.
Cleo Abram has a long video interviewing the designers about their thinking behind the design decisions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-o0r2zSgCE
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.
It looks like a VW bug wearing Milhouse's dad's racecar bed as a skin suit.
This is a car a Ferrari enthusiast buys his daughter.
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.
Yes, Ive's style is very recognizable as Dieter Rams design principles and language with brighter colors.
Ive's style may be inspired by Dieter Rams, but he ultimately fails to emulate it in any positive way.
Ive's work is bubbly symmetric bland crap.
I try to imagine the Ferrari badges as apple logos and the car all of a sudden makes sense.
imagine no more: https://chatgpt.com/s/m_6a14fc70630c8191bedf8e06913f4d34
Reminds me of those shoe covers workers put on to avoid tracking dirt into a customer's home...
Well that doesn't look like a Ferrari
That's the least Ferrari looking Ferrari I have ever seen.
Looks like a melted down Pontiac Aztec. Though, I don’t see Walter White forking over money for it.
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
Seems to me Porsche or Audi would have been better choices for Ive’s designs.
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.
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
The back looks nice, but from the profile and front/top this is really unlike a Ferrari.
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.
Cars like this is why restomods are getting big
Yeah, I ain't buying this
I really appreciate how "Jony Ive" this looks. Feels like they absolutely nailed the style.
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.
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
https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/sf90-stradale
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.
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?
Rear looks great, front looks horrible.
Steering wheel looks like its trying to be old school, but really shouldn't be.
I want a fully open source car. That's luxury!
The front looks like a vacuum cleaner
I rather like the interior gauges and switches but the exterior of this car is....I have questions
The front part seems to be purposefully designed to decapitate children on impact.
Everything but that stubby, sawed-off, blunted rearend looks pretty good
>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?
Luxury goods are funny. No way an owner of this $650K car can stomach the same app as the peasant who owns a $250K Ferrari Amalfi.
Wait until they stuff the app with AI.
Discussed 3 months ago as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46949642
Worth noting: it was only the interior that was revealed then (at that same link) [0].
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20260216163304/https://www.ferra...
Have we perhaps hyped Jony Ive a little too much?
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?"
Reminds me Chris Bangle and his flame surfacing at BMW.
I get the feeling this car was designed inside and out with a css stylesheet.
Jony Ive design philosophy of "thin and with round corners" can be seen in the Ferrari Luce. The car looks like an iPhone.
Fiat Multipla level design blunder
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?
Nice to see that, after all these years, "car commercial techno" is still a thing.
Man, I miss the 90's. Best decade for electronic music ever.
to this day, I play 90’s EDM almost exclusively while working
Wow, its cringe. And I get an iPad with my ferrari! Amazing!
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.
The page proclaims "A Ferrari is forever" underneath showcasing an app for chasing climate control. Durability/preservation and companion apps don't go hand in hand.
It could be like the specialist supercar garages keeping a specific model of 90s Compaq laptop which run DOS with custom cards as they're the only way to interface with McLarens F1s. In 2050: "We keep an iPhone 13 with the app loaded which has never been allowed to connect to the internet so we can move the seats back".
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
well … batteries take up a lot of volume within the chassis and they need ultra low drag to compete on range. all the EV designs converge to blob
Well, TIL! Thanks for the info I actually didn't know this
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.
Technically it also means you can do whatever you want and yet still nobody does.
This is the one place where I can give Elon real credit. He made EVs popular partially by making them not look like shit.
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.
He, however, forgot to upgrade the look over time.
I blissfully ignore the cyberpunk era.
I believe Ive was tasked with designing the interior only.
He (his firm) did both the interior and exterior.
Cool, it has suicide doors like the BMW i3 (a legendary concept car that escaped into the wild, and caused BMW to lose a lot of money)
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.
I have an i3 actually, never selling this thing! I wouldn't know if anything exists that is worthy to replace it.
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%.
Am in South Africa, I have the full BEV, not the REX one. Since it's mostly a town commuter I can use the other car for longer trips.
My friends had a first gen i3. They didn't like the styling but it was super practical for them as a car.
That is one horrific looking thing.
And the back kinda reminds some of the past. But it also looks like smaller car inside bigger car... What is going on?
Ferrari Deuce? :-|
Cynical me wonders if they made it deliberately bad, so that they could say "we tried electric, didn't sell".
At least it isn't as hideous as the monstrosity shown in the Jaguar ads.
I strongly smell sour grapes bias in this comment section.
Looks cheap run-of-the-mill certainly nothing you would spend $300,000 for…
$650,000…
I read the comments before visiting the website. After the page loaded I was like: "Well, the silhouette from above and the color looks neat!"
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.
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.
This is like the anti-Cybertruck. But in a funny horseshoe kinda way the exact same as the Cybertruck?
I like it. I'm not a Ferrari expert, and it looks like it could be from any number of manufacturers, which is part of why it's getting criticism here. But the interior looks nice, simple, button-oriented, and I like the pivoting center console.
It would be a great car at about 20% of the price.
Ferrari is synonymous with exclusivity in beauty, performance and history.
Well, just history now.
Why couldn't they have made it look like a normal Ferrari.
It's just a powertrain change why mess up all the styling.
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.
> It's a five seat nearly SUV
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.
> nobody is going to make a poster of that for a teenagers bedroom
Do people still do this tho?
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.
Seems like it. I regularly see photos of people's gaming setups/battlestations and hobby rooms, and it's not rare to see posters of cars.
Though it's more common to see smaller framed art, and model cars.
IDK about you, I keep imagining the horn when I see the outside: like Beaker from Dr Honeydew's laboratory in The Muppets,
"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.
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.
https://youtube.com/shorts/OPOS0tre9eQ?si=Be5vE9n4SJWiZvVs
This would have a chance as a $250k entry-level Ferrari. Not much of a chance, but a chance. At $600k? Crazy.
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.
Design wise, compared to previous Ferrari designs, a kick in the nuts is nicer than this.
> The lights gently recede when switched off, perserving the purity of the form
Wow. It's a Ferrari and the top things about the car is how the lights shut off. Way to go Ferrari.
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...
It is 2026 cars don't need start buttons, physical keys, or giant round air vents
> cars don't need start buttons, physical keys
What would you rather have?
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).
Best thing about the video was the song
Ugly as sin.
You're not getting it out of my head that they just used what would be the Apple Car design.
Ferrari Luce-r (like Loser)
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.
A car you'll never be able to get four people in, in the same time, using all four doors. Oh, well, if it's Ferrari...
Jony Ive designed the imac. He also designed the stupid bullshit round hockey puck mouse that came with the imac. He also designed the stupid bullshit smooth "magic mouse" that you have to flip over to charge.
This is more like his mouse designs than his imac design.
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.
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.
This will go down as one of the largest strategic missteps in history. I understand the intent on the surface, but this completely misses the boat and abandons the racing heritage that makes Ferrari special. IMO, design was never really an issue with Ferrari. The problem is Ferrari has begun chasing popular trends, e.g., 4-door, electric.
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!
Kinda telling that the video doesn't show the front up to the very last moment.
I'm pretty sure they realize perfectly well how ugly it is.
The first Ferrari I don't want to drive. Or even see. Can I have the Men in Black memory erasure thingy please? I want to unknow this.
I can see what they were trying to evoke from the design but damn, it seems to have missed the mark by a lot
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.
Looks terrible. But they know it.
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.
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.
Maybe I just have a bad taste for cars, but this looks awful. Uninspiring. Looks like a Tesla with a Ferrari logo.
Edit: I do love the analog buttons in the interior though. I despise those big screens with all the controls, and no tactile feedback.
My kid, way into cars, says it looks like a cheap Camaro from the future.
Teslas look better than this. It looks like a Prius with a Ferrari logo.
> Looks like a Tesla with a Ferrari logo.
Just saw it and wow, that's an accurate description. Gone is everything that makes a Ferrari a Ferrari
yeah, I don't know what was the goal here. I was expecting a regular Ferrari but electric, like the Tesla Roaster type of car.
Cleo Abrams dropped an interview with the creators:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-o0r2zSgCE
A sign that you are paying for the logo is that it's present 8 times freaking times on the body.
And just to be sure you get it, "Ferrari" is also spelled out.
Kia and a Ferrari had a baby… yikes.
It's lovely and I bet they sell every one they build.
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
"The lights gently recede when switched off, perserving the purity of the form."
This is totally impossible to read without hearing it in Ive's soothing voice.
Ferrari’s are supposed to look sexy.
This looks like if an iPod Mini had sex with a Norelco Shaver.
I feel bad for Jony Ive, no amount of lipstick on a pig is going to save that horrendous car.
Looks like a car from "smart". Not too far removed from the smart #3.
Is this an April 1st joke?
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.
If the brief was to make an ipad stuck to the dash of a Ferrari not ruin the rest of the car then that is certainly one way to do it.
I can't unsee those windscreen wipers :-/
More like Ferrari Duce
Look like my VW ID.3. I love it but a lot of people don't.
it has paddle shifters - what are those for?
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.
Switching to the next song in Spotify.
Temu Ferrari
Love the interior. Hate the exterior.
Ferrari done lost their mind! If you told me this was a Kia I would have said it was ugly for a Kia.
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.
I like the ev6!
Cool car but it looks like a Jony Ive car, not a Ferrari.
The Ferrari e-Multipla!
Unbelievably ugly stance.
Would be really awesome if you could fit 3 child seats in the back.
said nobody
I’m talking about cars in general, not this specific car.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/731812
> The lights gently recede when switched off, perserving the purity of the form
Typo on the Ferrari website...
This almost couldn't be less "Ferrari." Really baffling.
Are those the almost the same colours as the iPhone 5C?? (the red, yellow and blue)
Enzo is rolling on his grave
At least they didn't paint it red. And it's a good thing Enzo isn't here to see it.
The value of everyone manual F430 just went up a bit more.
man this looks too much american muscle car. if there is no ferrari logo, everybody will think it is chevy.
Looks like a Lucid.
It’s time for Ive to stop working.
I'm surprised we still let Jony Ive design anything.
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 think it's pretty cool as a car. But totally not the right move to do this under the Ferrari brand.
We don't want your electric car.
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.
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.
The Ford F-150 Lightning is a clear indicator that the reverse is true: The market for “like my ICE vehicle, but with BEV tradeoffs instead of ICE ones” is today quite small, especially in the absence of major government subsidies to the consumer.
Underrated comment
Dumb looking, Back to the Future inspired, toy design.
Looks like a sneaker with wheels.
$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)
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.
This is somehow even worse than the swatch/AP collab.
Charging port on the underside?
Che disgrazia
"Designed with Sir Jony Ive"; Yikes!
wow this thing is uuuugly
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.
https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/press-kits/taycan/Die-Driver...
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.
Knobs on wheel, especially for the controls on this, are normal in performance vehicles.
Ferrari has had their manettino dial on the steering wheel since the F430 in 2004.
This comment sounds like someone whos never driven manual before
> 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.
Wow I didn't see that. Standard Ive incompetence.
It's galling to see pompous, no-talent douchebags like Ive continually held out as some kind of innovator.
Ive was great when Steve was there to tell him no.
I was there at that time, and Ive still sucked.
I reall don't know if I like this or not.
Attention: AUTO-playing videos+sound when visiting
Nissan Leaf with a hideous bodykit
Oof.
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.
We're talking about a 400k dollars car, maybe they could find a way to add this expense into the design.
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.
It does have physical switches for the AC though
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.
[0]: https://www.thedrive.com/news/touch-controls-are-50-cheaper-...
That is the ugliest Ferrari I've ever seen.
That is awesome looking Nissan.
This is heartbreaking. Just awful.
The Porsche 914 of 2026
apart from being blasphemy, this also looks so ... 2010
What market exists that would buy this car??
China. They hope so, anyway.
Whoa. This is hideous.
I'll take "A waste of the world's resources for $200k, Alex" *600k, sorry
Damn, that looks awful.
[deleted]
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.
Why the Chevrolet Impala 2000-2005 backlights?
I like the handles on the interior display
The first view from above makes the car look like a smartphone :)
Now rebrand it the Apple car, and somehow it would makes sense...
Looks like an expensive Prius .. :(
458/488 was peak ferrari IMO
I hear the sound of a V6 engine at San Cataldo Cemetery ... the sound of Enzo spinning in his grave ...
Ferrari Multipla
It looks like an Apple Magic Mouse with wheels. Hopefully it also has a charge port on the bottom.
And you need to turn it upside down to charge it?
This looks terrible. Ferrari sells dreams, not "safe choices".
Doesn't look like a sport car. From above it actually looks like a phone. The main thing is that the charging port isn’t on the bottom.
This sucks
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.
https://electrek.co/2026/05/25/ferrari-luce-first-electric-f...
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.
As a lifelong fan of Ferrari, I find both the interior and exterior hideous.
Is Ferrari even known for interiors? Looking at pics they all seem to be hideous.
Ratioed
This is the ugliest car I've ever seen, and that includes the Cybertruck. I do like the retro modern interior though.
I'm wondering, isn't the system of the 2 doors opening facing each other dangerous?
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?
It doesn’t look like a ferrari
Jesus, did the bloke from the Jaguar rebrand move to Ferrari?
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.
It doesn't even look like a Ferrari. I am 99.999% sure it will fail.
It looks like something a villainous billionaire would drive in a sci-fi dystopia. And not in a good way.
Hate to say but this was in one of the Simpson’s episode
Sorry, but that is grotesque. I don't want a Tesla with Ferrari badging.
Took OpenAI's money and is now designing cars, lol
mamma mia...
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.
It looks like a budget car, not an exotic supercar.
$600k and they still won't give you physical climate controls.
Parsimonious product design with IMHO out of date conception of what's "cool". I think Ive is pretty washed up at this point.
The climate controls are physical knobs: https://youtu.be/6Reu1WS3BhM?t=611
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.
I don't think that really solves much?
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.
That's not terrible then I guess. Hopefully this makes it downmarket and "luxury" vehicles stop fetishizing touchscreen everything.
Why do suicide doors if you have to have that B pillar?
More of a writeup about it: https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/magazine/articles/ferrari-luce...
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.
Wow, this looks atrocious. I was thinking this was perhaps a budget model by its appearance, but then I looked up the retail price…
Is it just me, or does this look like Jaguar's self-inflicted brand damage?
And it has an app! They went full retard.
Imagine being able to afford a Ferrari and then buying the one that looks like a fancy Prius
insane levels of slop, so bad it almost feels intentional
This would have been an AMAZING Volvo. Sadly, it’s a very disappointing Ferrari.
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.
Ps. Everyone is hating it on FerrariChat
bro time to short ferrari lmao
PS - its a real shame because the inside is perfect
the ferrariphone
I like the design. (Might be a hot take)
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.
Is this a joke ? It looks beyond crap.
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?
Reminder that Ferrari's business model is all about "buy these 10 cars you don't care for, so maybe we sell you the exotic one you really want".
Nothing new to see here, plenty of high end watches and luxury bag makers do the same.
Looks like shit.
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?
Wow they went all-in creating a car for silicon valley tech bros...
Even the color they chose for the reveal speaks to me like "rich luxury car without personality"
Terrible design.
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.
If they look like regular cars, then the owners don't get the special feeling when people see their car.
Yet another time I've found something beautiful, only to discover that almost everyone else hates it.
Maybe there's a reason why I'm not a designer.
where are the specs for this FerrariPhone?
the phone screen shots show a pathetic 270km range...
There is only one Luce. The most beautiful of all. If they had any talent,they could have left a few nods in style to the classic.
https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/250-gt-berlinetta-lusso
it looks so good the new Apple car /s
Huh. I don't understand the hate because I think this looks incredible.
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.
No.
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.
Because the price tag is like other Ferries.
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.