alt Hacker NewsFerrari Luce
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This will be a success. There is no need to sell an amount comparable to the Tesla Model S. It's Ferrari's first entry into the premium 5-seat EV sedan market. There are enough people who would pay any money to have an electric Ferrari. The fact that it's a rather everyday car—and not a supercar—makes it a very attractive option for rich people who need to show off. Design is also pretty good for the task. It doesn't compete with existing premium EV sedans but really stands out. It's unique, and that is its value prop. Should it look like a regular Ferrari but electric, it would compete with Ferrari's combustion engine supercars and would inevitably lose. It also shouldn't compete with the Porsche Taycan—a very nicely designed EV. The general public is not the target audience for this car to offer a generic design. So, Ferrari's unconventional design is the exact right choice.
P.S. It’s kind of like when Porsche entered the SUV market with the Cayenne, which didn’t have a conventional SUV look but still crashed the market.
The commentary seems pretty uninformed.
My strong guess is the buyer of the electric Ferrari is not your typical Ferrari buyer.
These same people probably criticized the Porsche Cayenne for 'not being fast enough' or 'lacking features that Toyota SUVs have'
The target buyer is probably more like Dubai housewife with kids.
They have a different aesthetic. They LOVE their iPhone.
Everyone hating on it probably needs to reconsider. There's almost 0 chance that a company like Ferrari did this to not embarrass Jony Ive.
They legitimately expect this thing to sell to its target audience.
What is gobsmacking is the price.
I know it’s Ferrari, but one of the interesting things about EVs is that there’s minimal technological differentiation marketed to customers after a certain point. As in: a buyer wouldn’t know or care about a Ferrari battery pack vs. a Tesla or BYD battery pack. Whether you’ve got 300 or 1000 horsepower, the brand of the motor la delivering it is mostly irrelevant.
The suspension may be cleverer (and more expensive) and the tuning (or coding) of the power delivery may be different, but underneath it all this does not have a 5x higher BoM than a Model S Plaid. And without the ‘benefits’ typically sold by Ferrari to justify their price point (e.g. heritage, F1 association, high-revving flat-pane crank engines, F1-derived gearboxes, handling, the typical Ferrari appearance) the price premium seems ever harder to justify.
I don't get how Ive is getting so much praise as a designer, after designing the worst iPhones ever and a Ferrari that looks like a Toyota Prius on steroids.
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.. )
I don't get why Ferrari didn't make a sub brand for EV and other cars that doesn't fit in their 'dream car' philosophy. Enzo did it with Dino, it didn't work then, but could be a smart move today.
Regarding the car itself, it's great. It's obvious that car existed in sketches and concept long time ago (compare it to the other Newson car – Ford 012C), maybe it's an Apple car and just materialized with a few Ferrari signature details now. It's very cool looking and could be a banger with a $50-70K price tag produced by a Lucid or some other US car neo-brand.
I find it quiet disrespectful to ignore Italian craftsmen and Flavio Manzoni (head of design) particularly by Ferrari management as they assumed that they have to hire "tech" guys to make tech product as local engineers and designers couldn't solve so complicated task. Manzoni team would introduce something like 12 Cilindri in sedan form and it would worth every pence of whatever price tag they would place for it.
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.
It seems that EVs and ICEs are sufficiently different that traditional car companies don't really enjoy nearly the encumbrancy advantage they once had.
The top EV manufacturer started as a battery company. The second place EV company started as an EV company.
Various ICE manufacturers have spent decades innovating and refining ICEs and building logistics chains optimized for ICEs.
The big problem that the high end ICE manufacturers have is that the things that made them special in the ICE market don't apply as well in the EV market.
You can potentially justify 6 figure price tags if you're in the luxury market. Hire famous designers, pay for premium materials, and leverage your brand name. If you want to sell cars for 6 figures based on performance, they actually need to perform significantly better. There are a bunch of much cheaper EVs that have better performance.
Just jacking up the price and relying on conspicuous consumption is how you get the Fyre Festival.
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.)
I like that it has lots of mechanical switches. Maybe that'll trickle down to regular cars. The stereo specs are impressive.
The article mentions low center of gravity and 0-60 time. At 2.5 sec, I'm not sure this is much of a differentiator. Teslas can match it, but even a full-sized work truck is already hitting 3.5s. BMW sedans sit at 3.1s. Sure, the Ferrari is a bit faster, but I'm not convinced it's a qualitative difference.
I wonder how it corners. There's no mention of weight in the article. That's been the main differentiator I've noticed between EVs that feel sporty and ones that handle like a pickup truck.
I also wonder how many people will immediately turn off the "authentic sound". I get that the octegenarian crowd is still running the global economy, and likes their lumbering shitbox tuned-exhaust gas guzzlers, but I don't see many gen-x'ers (hitting 50!) or younger that prefer gratuitous road noise.
Original title called out the connection to Jony Ive, in case you’re curious why this is on HN.
Previously it had been known that Jony Ive was working on the interior of this car, but it seems his firm is responsible for the exterior as well[0].
> LoveFrom was given the creative freedom needed to define the design direction of the project from the outset, translating this design language into an authentic Ferrari experience.
[0]https://www.ferrari.com/en-US/corporate/articles/ferrari-luc...
The iPhone 5C of Ferraris – and I am sure it'll have the same fate.
It's doubly a shame because Jony actually owns one of the all-time most beautiful classic Ferraris – the 250 Europa. I was hoping they'd do a modern re-imagination and revival.
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.
Then there was this model: https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/events/a1901311/one-ferrar...
The exterior looks like from a video game which has no license to use actual cars.
A "McLovin Testostero"...
That is horrific, I cannot believe Ferrari put their name on it yet alone released it.
For comparison, the recent Ferrari Roma: https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/ferrari-roma
The instrument cluser looks awesome, especially the G force instrument!
https://ferrari-cdn.thron.com/delivery/public/image/ferrari/...
The guy (Jony Ive) could've just used ChatGPT. Here is the $640k Ferrari everybody expects - https://ibb.co/GfgGjQQD
I ... it's growing on me! Odd. Very odd feeling.
I like the front. I like the interior. Controls and touches look great on video.
But rear is awful. So far anyways. Reminds me of this Chevy Impala model family:
https://www.rvinyl.com/products/chevrolet-impala-2000-2005-t...
I've seen a lot of explanations, including one by Marques Brownlee, stating that electric cars need large batteries in the floor, meaning they necessarily have to be taller and more SUV-like—and that, hence, a low, two-seater electric sports car is very hard to pull off with a decent range. But then, the Rimac Nevera is low and fast with 490 km of range—and that was released five years ago. I'm not sure why Ferrari couldn't have built something like that.
Incredibly boring on Ferrari's part, the design language is both trite and outdated. The type of car itself isn't something people go to Ferrari for. I'm sure it's a decent car, but not a decent Ferrari. They're headed for a few bad years.
Should have had Pininfarina do the body. The best looking Ferraris are all Pininfarina.
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.
What's missing is changing the stallion to a kiddified pony, to match the rest of the design.
This looks like a child's toy.
"Sir" Jony Ive? Sure fine, recognized by the crown and all that. It looks like a Kia. Don't get me wrong, I like Kia's. If Ive was a lollipop he'd lick himself. When you get to a point that you can no longer do seminal & groundbreaking work, and you continue to cling to what you used to be, just stop; even if only in respect to the good stuff you've done already.
Seems obvious that this was his failed Apple Car design. Completely out of touch for Ferrari. It's going to be a major flop...
Ferrari history - powerful engines, shitty interiors.
so how does this reflect the Ferrari history. maybe this should've been a Maserati project.
unless they were going to put massive electric motors or some other performance thing that's electric & not seen in other cars.
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.
if you got rid of the badges and showed me the exterior shot i'd say "oh, is that one of those cheap chinese EVs everyone is talking about?"
I'm not an expert on automotive or any type of design for that matter. But I have an appreciation for cars and especially racing cars. I can look at Ferraris of every era and even though the design language has changed. I can tell you that is a Ferrari. There is a common thread that runs through all of those cars that makes them a Ferrari. I just don't see that with the Luce. It looks like they threw a couple "Ferrari" styling cues on it, but that is it.
> 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?
Criticism is very valid, I don't want to mention the exterior however there are some very nice UX design touches which industry had to adopt 10 years ago?
I assume some of it will be adopted from the industry in the upcoming years. Now that regulators are pushing back on touch displays, the integration of tactile buttons with software will be the move forward you still need to have a physical mechanical button it is better in terms of muscle memory and cognitive load. I never understood the central display abominations that car manufactures keep pushing however the rotation and adjustment of the position make it a little more bearable, Audi[0] had figured this out like 20 years ago with the retracting screen in the dashboard, give the users the ability to hide the display it makes the whole interior cleaner and the driver can focus on the driving. I still don't understand the push with the piano black plastics it looks awful this material needs to go from the car interiors once and for all.
I think Ivy did its job great here despite some design decisions the vision and the direction is the goal here with this car the blending of software with mechanical parts.
It is somehow funny tho that it took a designer like Ivy to work on a car project to push for things like that, like who are the people working in the design departments at those companies, the cars that are releasing in the last 5-10 years in terms of interior design are to say at least uninspiring for their price tag.
[0] - pop up screen in interror of #Audi https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TUgqDlzuiFQ
I don’t understand why anyone is jumping to conclusions about anything before anyone has driven it.
A Ferrari is about driving, and while it wouldn’t surprise me that the driving experience is generally the same as most EVs I’m unwilling to dismiss this based on looks alone.
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.
Most of the reactions I am seeing on various social media are negative.
Granted, that is not the market that would buy a Ferrari, but one of the point of buying luxury cars is the status they grant. There is not much status in a car mocked by the public.
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.
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
The design language is a departure from usual Ferrari design, but I actually enjoyed the "smooth pebble" aerodynamic design of the exterior. It will certainly stand out in the sea of exaggerated angular shaped designs in the road. Maybe it would have been better received if it retained some elements of Ferrari design, like the headlights – it would be more recognizable.
I find the interior quite adequate for an EV, not too minimal neither gaudy. It does look like an interior designed by the iPhone designer, though. It would be a great interior in any car.
It seems this will be one of those divisive designs, because it totally broke with the Ferrari tradition.
Somehow managed to make a Ferrari look as cheap as a Tesla (inside and out).
Give me the modern interior design with a vintage exterior design.
Looks more like a computer mouse than a sports car.
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.
EVs will dominate the world in 10 years. Haters will hate. These two statements are not mutually exclusive. There is juicy irony in the fact that this is the country where modern EVs were invented and it is the one that hates the transition the most. There is nothing more American than driving an EV: https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/17/evs-dominate-the-most-amer...
So many details, so many cool videos, so many interesting descriptions ...
Oh. No price?
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.
It looks like someone designed the app first, then Jony Ive panic-wrapped a car around it.
Looks luke a cheap electric knockoff in some low budget racing game. It does not look like a ferrari at all.
Makes sense from corporate perspective to hire the "Apple Designer" to craft the interior experience, it's fresh input from a very respected UX design-lead of another industry.
But handing over responsibility for the exterior is quite questionable IMO.
To me, the exterior has lost almost all of Ferrari's identity. It's a nice car-design, but if you'd tell me it's a Hyundai, Lexus or BYD I would believe you.
I wonder what political struggle was behind that within Ferrari. I can't imagine this design was received well, and I doubt that Ferrari actually asked for help on exterior design. It's more likely that Jony Ive demanded it...
(Also the fact that they presented the interior much earlier than the exterior could be an indicator for internal disagreements...)