Ferrari Luce, history's most shocking 'redhead' debuts: electric, five-seater sedan and shocking styling
Heresy or the beginning of a new era? The new electric Ferrari, born between Maranello and San Francisco, where it was designed by former Apple man Jony Ive, displays unconventional lines. It has four electric motors with a total of 1,050 horsepower and claims a range of 530 km. But it has five seats and a station wagon boot
Key points
Electric, saloon, hatchback, almost fastback, five-door and even five-seater. Luce is one of the most divisive cars in history, certainly the most controversial Ferrari ever developed, with echoes of puzzled enthusiasts because it seems to be a response to a need that does not exist and that, perhaps, no one has expressed. Or maybe not: it is just the first of a new era, in a changing world that takes passionate cars into another league, where the opponents in the field are no longer Porsche or Lamborghini.
Luce is the first electric Ferrari, and it even does so in a shocking hatchback format, with a tailgate that opens wide onto a real boot and five seats, comfortable, moreover, because the aim was also to develop the most comfortable Ferrari in its history, and this gives the measure of how much Luce seeks to enlighten a market other than the traditional one.
If Maranello wanted to make a Ferrari that had never been seen before, they have succeeded, but the question remains as to whether this breakthrough really makes sense and whether being disruptive, as the tech gurus like to say, does not mean distorting. Let's say that the Luce is a car that has to be understood and understood because the first reaction is inevitably shocking, especially externally where there are aesthetic solutions that have to be understood calmly and are the result of the work of the LoveFrom designers who, as we shall see, guided the project.
Ferrari Luce, the three stages for the presentation of Maranello's first electric car
Luce was born after a long three-stage journey, with an initial presentation nine months ago, in Maranello, of the technologies deployed for the battery, engine and chassis; a second stage with the reveal of the interiors, in San Francisco, where the role of Jony Ive, a former Apple designer with no experience in the world of cars, was definitively revealed. Together with Marc Newson and the LoveFrom team, he defined a dashboard composed of elements that seem to be taken pari passu from the world of Apple, iPhones and Apple Watch, with spectacular aluminium components turned from solid. An appreciable aesthetic result, which is sure to set a trend as the standard in the premium luxury sector and which is likely to be taken up by Chinese competitors, the only ones who can afford such refinements on a large scale. There is also an OLED display made by Samsung and protected by Corning Gorilla glass, a solution that inevitably recalls the world of smartphones. But there is one point that gives one pause for thought. The car reduces touch controls to a minimum in favour of a physical interface. Obviously there was no need for Sir Jony Ive to state this obvious, especially in defining a car that no longer competes only with Lamborghini, which has abandoned pure electric, but also with Chinese newcomers such as Yangwang, of the BYD group, or Xiaomi.
At the end of the day, we are talking about luxury on wheels and here, in the electric sphere, the Chinese, albeit without their coat of arms, know how to have their say in some markets, while in others it will be positioned in a world of its own and such is also the case in the Ferrari range. the price? 550 thousand euros but it's easy to go up to 700 thousand with customisation.
