Everyone seems to be crazy about Ferrari’s first electric vehicle.
It’s called Luce and was revealed On Monday, the (gasp!) five-seater was largely designed by Jony Ive and the design firm he runs with Marc Newson, LoveFrom. While it ticks a lot of spec sheet boxes—it boasts 1,000 horsepower and the ability to hit 60 mph in just two seconds—it’s the most derided new vehicle since the Cybertruck.
This widespread rejection of the wedge-shaped, Nissan-like car seemingly runs the gamut, too, from the typical weak knee-jerk reactions, to positively vitriolic reactions. The company’s stock price is falling, and even some of the more mediocre news outlets are admitting it in their own ways. (Bloomberg he said Luce is “enough”.)
The question underlying all this immediate reaction is unique: Who is Luce addressing?
It certainly isn’t for me, or almost anyone reading this. The Luce will cost around $650,000, and this is Ferrari we’re talking about, so even if you have that kind of money, you’re dealing with a company that is, shall we say, selective about its customers.
Is it for existing Ferrari owners? Usually, that answer is yes – more than 80% of the 14,000 people who bought a Ferrari last year already own one of its vehicles. It’s hard to imagine the crowd being excited enough about a car so devoid of the wild Ferrari angles that have graced bedroom walls for decades.
Is it for other car designers? Probably. Car companies borrow ideas all the time, and there’s certainly plenty in the interior – which features plenty of buttons and knobs that click, a major departure for Ive – that I’d personally like to see replicated elsewhere.
Is it for regulators? Well, maybe. The European Union is placing strict restrictions on the sale of new cars with internal combustion engines in 2035. The Luce could be Ferrari’s first step toward a lineup that complies with those looming rules.
Yes, during an interview with Cleo Abramwe learn that this outside pressure seems to have weighed heavily on Ive. Abram had access to one of four “secret” books that Ive created when the project began, which contain a combination of mood-style images and text written by the iPhone designer himself.
Abram reports that Ive compared the task of designing an electric Ferrari to how luxury Swiss watchmaker Patek Philippe adapted during the evolution from mechanical power to quartz crystals. Ive wrote that Patek Philippe survived “largely because it survived and thrived in the transition” by making a mix of traditional watches and watches with batteries and quartz movements.
But then he added: “If it had been legislated that Patek Philippe had to switch its entire product line to quartz, the challenge that would arise would seem similar to the transition facing Ferrari.” Effective!
However, I find it hard to believe that this is purely a compliance car. The company said it expects Luce to be profitable from the jump. And Ferrari’s chief marketing and commercial officer told the Financial Times that the company wanted the Luce to be “polarising”.
He also made another admission in that interview, saying that Ferrari’s main target with the Luce is someone who “already owns an electric car.”
This statement is almost as radical as Luce’s plan. By definition, this likely means Ferrari isn’t looking at current owners to make up the bulk of Luce sales.
Which brings us to what May be the truest answer: China. While Chinese buyers typically make up only about 10% of Ferrari’s total sales, those numbers have declined in recent years and automaker executives he was not shy about wanting their first EV to change things in the world’s largest battery-powered vehicle market.
Seen through that lens, the Luce’s design makes a bit more sense, as — to my eyes — it certainly resembles some of the designs that have come out of China’s booming auto industry in recent years.
So perhaps the more pertinent question to ask is this: Will Chinese buyers, currently inundated with high-performance, high-tech, affordable options, pay for the prestige of a horse in the hood?
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