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.
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
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.. )
"(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.
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.
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 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"?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
The actual number of the EPA range is imaginary, yes. But it's useful for comparisons.
But if we're talking about comparisons between two vehicles, the vehicle with a 122kWh battery and a 280 EPA range will go less far and is much less efficient than the vehicle with a 84kWh batter and a 300 EPA range.
I've done Stockholm - Oslo on a single charge in early winter, which is almost exactly that distance, so I'd say it does! Even kept me nice and toasty along the way!
Unsurprising, for a Ferrari. I suspect it's designed for performance and not efficiency. Atrocious mileage is par for the course in this segment (see the Veyron)
They’ve historically had eye watering regular maintenance bills, even outside of them generally having a reputation for being temperamental. Maybe Ferrari will continue pioneering in their own way and make an unreliable and expensive to own EV
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
> It creates an entirely new torque language controlled by the driver
Oh wow, sounds like some corporation BS if I ever read some. My EV works by pressing the gas pedal and the torque is right there - not sure what revolutionary new invention is required?
Driving manual/stick is considered "manly" and a lot of sports car enthusiasts would never drive an automatic. So I presume this multilevel "torque language" bullshit is basically a way to retrofit stick shift into an EV that has no mechanical need for it.
Agreed, I'm driving a ~2000kg truck atm with a stick shift from the 90s and a V8 in a hilly city and it's so much more fun than the arbitrary compact cars I've been borrowing for years. Super mega scary on gas, but fun nonetheless as on occasional leisure thing.
I will say, Teslas usually have too much torque because I feel very nauseous in them as a passenger. Having more fine grained control over the torque profile might be nice
The reason you feel nauseous as a passenger has nothing to do with the maximum torque output of the vehicle, but because one-pedal driving mode amplifies bad driving habits by people who never learned how to use the accelerator pedal on a car properly.
Way too many people stomp, release, and repeat. This works in Mario Kart when the A-button input is a boolean value but in a Tesla with one-pedal driving turned on you end up repeatedly accelerating or decelerating and never go a constant speed.
I 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.
"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.
> 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?
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.
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?"
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.
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.
Worse in my opinion since the look is simply Tesla (whether one likes that or not), no one would have blinked an eyelid if Tesla released this car whereas Ferrari doing so comes off incoherent.
I'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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Yikes. If you showed me this car and asked me to guess the brand I'd probably say Renault. Which isn't meant to be shade on Renault, and I don't exactly hate the design and might even take a look at it if I was in the market given the expectations I have around the price point of a new Renault.
This is absolutely not a car that screams "Ferrari" though.
I 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.
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.
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.
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 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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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?
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.
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.
Given the level of hate here (I use that word advisedly), this should do fine in the target market. Most of us aren’t in that market - I doubt Maranello are quaking that a bunch of nerds are sickened to their very core by this car’s existence.
Even if this car had been the most beautiful object ever crafted, it would have faced an “EV bad, should be 12 cylinders” reaction.
Even if it had been the fastest or efficient EV, since that would currently be achieved through extreme aerodynamics, it would have been burdened with “that’s a moose, kill sir jony”.
Since it’s not the fastest EV, it gets compared unfavourably to a discontinued car from a discredited kleptocrat, or more reasonably with a Rimac. One of those nobody with 600k to blow on a car would comparison shop against (and they probably have a few in their garages anyway), the other they’re probably on the waiting list for or looking for used, and the Luce will fill in the gap nicely whilst they wait.
Keep huffing and puffing. Me? I’ll wait until some driving reviews emerge and in the meantime applaud Ferrari for stepping outside their comfort zone. This is undeniably a huge risk for them.
Ferrari juice their sales by making access to good cars contingent on buying bad cars first. Nerds are the only people who could like this, Ferrari owners hate it — it’s a complete departure from Ferrari’s design. The car itself is good spec wise but looks matter a lot more. Remember the cybertruck? People said the same, “you might think it’s ugly but it’s going to sell like crazy amongst Tesla fans” and instead it has been a flop. The reaction to this car is a lot worse amongst Ferrari owners.
I 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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Agree on first two, but vents on my Tesla kinda blow. Too weak where it needs to work (my face) and too strong where it shouldn't (stray wind on my knees).
If 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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
$1.2M in Canada after provincial and federal luxury sales taxes. For a 5100 pound, sub-300 mile range, mid-performer with 23/24" wheels. All those louvres, ducts, and aerodynamics for a terribly inefficient EV. Disappointing. (edited because i had $1.1M as the final price)
Ive is an overrated plonker and my first reaction is to wonder if all the serviceable components are glued in place.
Do you know why no one has ever put rotating switches on a steering wheel face before? Because it requires two fingers to operate the switches and thus taking your entire hand off the wheel. Those knobs and switches might as well be in the center console because it takes a similar amount of effort and diversion of attention to operate.
This looks like a car designed by someone who's never driven before. Did the early prototypes feature bubble domes before they were forced to tell Ive that won't work?
Porsche has a similar steering wheel mounted rotary switch. Traditionally it was on models optioned with the Sport Chrono package. They recently rolled it out to all new models over the past few years.
An Xiaomi blatantly copied that for their SU7. I think the rotary switches are the best part of the Luce. Everything else looks like someone put Ferrari stickers on a Chinese EV.
> Do you know why no one has ever put rotating switches on a steering wheel face before? Because it requires two fingers to operate the switches and thus taking your entire hand off the wheel.
I hate this car as much you do, it looks like a vape cartridge on wheels to me. That being said, there are F1 cars with rotating knobs on the steering wheel. Different category and all, but still worth it to point out.
I hate 20 inch, floating, glued to the dash tablets with such a passion. It cannot be such a huge monetary difference to have physical switches for the AC compared to this attention grabbing accident causing contraption that was never meant to be put in a human commandeered vehicle.
Yes, preach it! But … I think in fact it does make a huge difference economically. I don’t know what the bill of materials is, but imagine the difference between wiring into place (a) a touch screen, or (b) 40 physical controls.
I believe another motivation for manufacturers is that they can turn the car’s UI into a software problem, which from a human-centered design perspective means that they can throw it in the trash and never spend a dime on it.
Ferrari clearly aren’t doing it to save costs. I don’t think they’re doing it for principled driver-centered reasons, either, but more because the market expects it. Cars are appliances, and appliances are generally built to be sold (i.e., to look good) rather than to be used. Microwaves, washers, cars — the same for all of them.
The design exterior looks glued together from more interesting electric cars, so no surprise the interior does too.
EDIT: I just learned that Jony Ive did the interior. Further proof that without Steve Jobs goading him, Ive is just a stylist.
I also hate crappy car tablets. For context, though, according to the Ferrari CEO, they are 50% cheaper [0]. I'm not convinced that should matter on a premium badge car (or any car, given safety concerns), but that's for Ferrari's customers to decide.
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?
Four wheel steering, active suspension, low center of gravity, 1050 HP...
The display & controls do look very nice!
I love how they found a way to make the sound provide real feedback. I wonder if the cabin gets feedback faster than the speed of sound in air would travel, that would be neat. I'm skeptical they kept the loop fast enough to beat speed of sound in metal though (5000~6000 m/s for steel).
> The Luce’s sound system doesn’t generate artificial noise. Instead, a precision accelerometer mounted at the center of the rear axle captures the actual vibration of the rotating electric components. That signal is then filtered, equalized, and amplified — essentially working like an electric guitar’s amplifier. The result is a sound that’s rooted in the real physics of the machinery, not synthesized from a speaker library.
Interesting idea, but ultimately not going to happen (or matter). I doubt the latency in that DSP Pipeline is below a millisecond, heck given the state of non-critical automotive Software it might a second.
Those rear tail lights don’t sit right with me. I know there’s probably some aerodynamic reason behind it but Jony, those aren’t the proportions that just work. Steve wouldn’t approve this. And I feel Jony was always partly Steve when Jony was at his best.That said the issue is the asymmetric black negative space below and above the red circles. This is mostly fixed if you get the Luce in black or very dark gray.
I mean it's neat but looks sorta.. halfway physical... still requires you to take your focus off the road and look at the touchscreen to know what you're changing and what the setting is.
There's also the metal handle to rest your hand on, which also acts as a target which you can find blindly, and from there you can find the correct knob by touch. You'll just have to remember the the third knob is the fan speed and so on. I imagine that you can use it without looking, and it seems to be designed that way. Also I'm pretty sure that the UI is replicated on the display behind the wheel so you don't have to look to see the numbers.
Oh wow, it’s even worse than I imagined based on those early images of the PlaySkool cockpit renderings!
The body lines? What body lines? I’m a vocal critic of derivative design, but this space egg usually is little more than a Junior Study drawing at best. It’s so bland it might as well be still made of clay.
I’m not being unfairly harsh here, there’s a huge tradition of sorting a car’s emotional response - yes, Countach being a prime case study - but I get more “This is interesting” from the latest Prius than anything with this design, in parts or taken as a whole. I can’t be alone, and I suppose the reactions will be savage. I am kind of giddy thinking about what some of the more crude phrasings might be from the likes of Clarkson or Harris.
This is a design for the Super Yacht club. If it was a concept car for a Chinese knock off of a Honda, it would be rightly panned at first sight. Was it designed on a first generation Macintosh?
It has no character whatsoever. The interior looks like patio furniture intended for a retirement home. To call it a failure is not quite right, because sometimes things like the Pontiac Aztek have coherent thought and risks involved. This has none of those things. Mayo on white bread with a glass of room temperature tap water.
In a strange way I love it because it might as well be called the Ferrari Hubris. Just…wow…
It would be a great looking Hyundai but it is a dreadful looking Ferrari. The cost of such a car will be far higher than it deserves. Ferrari for me is synonymous with genuinely beautiful curvaceous cars that have a gorgeous, slightly old looking interior. This is not it, nor is it take Ferrari into the modern day.
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.
Is Ferrari serious with this? Are they trying to commit brand suicide? What in the world is going on with all of these large companies doing the absolute stupidest possible thing lately?
I once asked HN why EVs look funky and many people responded with “oohh no they don’t what are you talking about”. Tell me now if this looks weird or not.
The way I'd phrase your last sentence would be: "It's NOT a Ferrari."
That's the whole problem. If you told me this is the latest Chinese luxury EV, I'd shrug my shoulders, say "hm, not bad" and "not for me," and move on.
Wow. The only way I can describe this is as a bastard child of Apple and Rolls-Royce, and therein lies the problem. This doesn't feel like a Ferrari to me. Someone getting into a Ferrari wants to feel like they're trying to tame a beast, not being pampered in a Rolls-Royce.
Don't get me wrong, it's a stunning car. But I miss the screaming reds and yellows most of all. And the interface, polished as it is, feels almost too intuitive. Ferrari shouldn't feel effortless!
Now, if this were badged as an Apple car with a sticker price under $100k, we'd be having a very different conversation.
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.
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.
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 instrument cluser looks awesome, especially the G force instrument!
https://ferrari-cdn.thron.com/delivery/public/image/ferrari/...
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.
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!
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.. )
"(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.
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.
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 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"?
People have said the same of the first Porsche Cayenne, yet the Porsche SUVs have been outselling their sports cars for years.
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
The outside looks like one of the Mustangs from the 90s with the round brake lights. Meh
Kia EV looks far better
by the time this depreciates the Kia might hold better value
Nope, Ive's firm also designed the exterior.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
And the Model S is no longer in production due to poor sales. How many of these $650k family sedans could Ferrari possibly move?
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.
Probably more than you'd think. Lamborghini is selling around 5000 butt-ugly Urus SUVs per year.
Well, at least Ferrari has hopefully higher quality materials.
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.
That is horrific, I cannot believe Ferrari put their name on it yet alone released it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
subset of hn commenters? The cybertruck is widely ridiculed, also in taiwan.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 hell..!
I honestly like Ive as a designer, but dear lord.
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.
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.
In software we have an enshittification problem. In industrial design we have a generification problem.
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.
$600K Ferrari Luce vs. $35K Nissan Leaf: Spot the difference...
https://imgur.com/a/fsvO5G8
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.
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.
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!
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.
Compare that to Hyundai N Vision 74.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_N_Vision_74
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.
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_...
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
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.
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?
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.
No you are.
Thanks for the thoughtful, eloquent response.
Not really, no, except in narrow circumstances.
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!
> 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
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? :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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
Sure, but this isn't a Tesla...
If you're going to drive this slowly you might as well buy a Tesla
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.
> 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.
The casio watch is more accurate than a mechanical watch, it doesn't mean I should like it more
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 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.
"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.
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.
I knew it was going to be ugly, but did not expect an abomination. You surprised me indeed Ferrari.
> 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?
Isn’t this quite literally how a microphone works?
I love Ferraris trying to sound like Yutong buses.
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.
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?
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.
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?"
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.
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 can't unsee those windscreen wipers :-/
Wow, its cringe. And I get an iPad with my ferrari! Amazing!
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Nothing like the dull, beige boxes with wheels of the competition.
Fine print:
Range up to 10 Km.
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.
I love the EV idea, but the exterior design is terrible
Looks like a Polestar and Corvette had a child.
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.
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.
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.
My 2024 Model 3 Performance regularly sees its EPA rated range.
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.
Ferrari doors are always this bad. If you regularly transport more than 2 people in your Ferrari, you aren't their target market.
Ugly as hell, it doesn’t look like a Ferrari.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The massive 24" wheels make the car seem shorter in pictures.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
They basically stopped _making_ any cars; it's kinda hard to not have a drop in sales after that.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
My god that V8 sounds terrible. From a company that made countless howling V12s, it's quite disappointing.
Emission regulations I'm guessing.
Except Ive famously ruined Apple's laptops for the better part of a decade.
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.
The current model Prius is visually pleasing.
Yikes. That's a car that looks like it gets its lunch money taken by the other cars.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
Wait until they stuff the app with AI.
This style might have worked as an apple car. It sure as hell doesn't work as a Ferrari.
The Polestar 6 is a much better looking electric sportscar IMO, although that's mostly a concept car at the moment.
It looks like a VW bug wearing Milhouse's dad's racecar bed as a skin suit.
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.
A tesla is a hedge against oil prices, a Ferrari obviously isn't.
> 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.
I rather like the interior gauges and switches but the exterior of this car is....I have questions
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.
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
That's heinous. Their firm should stay away from sports car brands.
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
I believe Ive was tasked with designing the interior only.
He (his firm) did both the interior and exterior.
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.
This is the one place where I can give Elon real credit. He made EVs popular partially by making them not look like shit.
He, however, forgot to upgrade the look over time.
I blissfully ignore the cyberpunk era.
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.
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.
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
I can see what they were trying to evoke from the design but damn, it seems to have missed the mark by a lot
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
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 painted parts are just for show.
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.
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.
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...
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?
Looks cheap run-of-the-mill certainly nothing you would spend $300,000 for…
$650,000…
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.
Looks like a melted down Pontiac Aztec. Though, I don’t see Walter White forking over money for it.
Well that doesn't look like a Ferrari
That's the least Ferrari looking Ferrari I have ever seen.
I want a fully open source car. That's luxury!
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.
Cars like this is why restomods are getting big
Why the Chevrolet Impala 2000-2005 backlights?
I like the handles on the interior display
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.
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.
> 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...
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.
Have we perhaps hyped Jony Ive a little too much?
The front looks like a vacuum cleaner
Kia and a Ferrari had a baby… yikes.
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.
Looks like a car from "smart". Not too far removed from the smart #3.
Jony Ive design philosophy of "thin and with round corners" can be seen in the Ferrari Luce. The car looks like an iPhone.
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.
Look like my VW ID.3. I love it but a lot of people don't.
Looks like a Lucid.
It’s time for Ive to stop working.
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.
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...
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.
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
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.
I feel bad for Jony Ive, no amount of lipstick on a pig is going to save that horrendous car.
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.
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)
My friends had a first gen i3. They didn't like the styling but it was super practical for them as a car.
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.
apart from being blasphemy, this also looks so ... 2010
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
Cool car but it looks like a Jony Ive car, not a Ferrari.
It is 2026 cars don't need start buttons, physical keys, or giant round air vents
Agree on first two, but vents on my Tesla kinda blow. Too weak where it needs to work (my face) and too strong where it shouldn't (stray wind on my knees).
If 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.
> cars don't need start buttons, physical keys
What would you rather have?
Ugly as sin.
man this looks too much american muscle car. if there is no ferrari logo, everybody will think it is chevy.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Looks like a sneaker with wheels.
It doesn’t look like a ferrari
Cleo Abrams dropped an interview with the creators:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-o0r2zSgCE
The Porsche 914 of 2026
And it has an app! They went full retard.
Charging port on the underside?
It's lovely and I bet they sell every one they build.
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
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.
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.
Damn, that looks awful.
This almost couldn't be less "Ferrari." Really baffling.
Enzo is rolling on his grave
The Ferrari e-Multipla!
Unbelievably ugly stance.
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.
Love the interior. Hate the exterior.
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.
> 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
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.
The value of everyone manual F430 just went up a bit more.
Ferrari done lost their mind! If you told me this was a Kia I would have said it was ugly for a Kia.
I like the ev6!
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'll take "A waste of the world's resources for $200k, Alex" *600k, sorry
I'm surprised we still let Jony Ive design anything.
Ferrari Multipla
> The lights gently recede when switched off, perserving the purity of the form
Typo on the Ferrari website...
Whoa. This is hideous.
Dumb looking, Back to the Future inspired, toy design.
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.
Nissan Leaf with a hideous bodykit
$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)
This is heartbreaking. Just awful.
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
This comment sounds like someone whos never driven manual before
Ferrari has had their manettino dial on the steering wheel since the F430 in 2004.
Knobs on wheel, especially for the controls on this, are normal in performance vehicles.
This is somehow even worse than the swatch/AP collab.
I reall don't know if I like this or not.
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.
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-...
It does have physical switches for the AC though
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?
Attention: AUTO-playing videos+sound when visiting
That is the ugliest Ferrari I've ever seen.
What market exists that would buy this car??
China. They hope so, anyway.
It doesn't even look like a Ferrari. I am 99.999% sure it will fail.
Imagine being able to afford a Ferrari and then buying the one that looks like a fancy Prius
Looks like an expensive Prius .. :(
458/488 was peak ferrari IMO
This is the ugliest car I've ever seen, and that includes the Cybertruck. I do like the retro modern interior though.
Hate to say but this was in one of the Simpson’s episode
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?
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.
Took OpenAI's money and is now designing cars, lol
It looks like something a villainous billionaire would drive in a sci-fi dystopia. And not in a good way.
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.
Is it just me, or does this look like Jaguar's self-inflicted brand damage?
mamma mia...
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.
I like the design. (Might be a hot take)
Wow, this looks atrocious. I was thinking this was perhaps a budget model by its appearance, but then I looked up the retail price…
insane levels of slop, so bad it almost feels intentional
the ferrariphone
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
This would have been an AMAZING Volvo. Sadly, it’s a very disappointing Ferrari.
Terrible design.
Looks like shit.
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?
Is this a joke ? It looks beyond crap.
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.
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"
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.
Because the price tag is like other Ferries.
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.
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.