► New Ferrari Luce – Maranello’s first EV – officially revealed
► Quad motors, bold design inside and out from LoveFrom
► Plus ‘authentic’ sounds, paddle shifts and circa-£440k price
The most controversial new car in years? That could quite possibly be this: the new Ferrari Luce. Why? Because you’re looking at Maranello’s first electric car.
The Luce has had a rather long gestation period, with development officially kicking off in 2021 (Ferrari had been pondering making an EV for a few years before then), when EVs were riding high and increasing in popularity in the premium, sport and luxury space. At that time, Ferrari announced it was creating an entirely new ‘e-building’ to manufacture it and that more than one would be on the way.
The world slightly reassessed that overly positive attitude to EVs not long after and so did Ferrari, confirming it would remain ‘multi-energy’ with its iconic V12 engines remaining for now. But it’s clear Ferrari hasn’t gone soft on Luce development despite changing headwinds; almost the entire car is newly developed, from the design to the architecture underneath, the batteries and e-motors as well as the interior. That has meant huge investment.
No, the Luce has largely been a project that’s been worked on by LoveFrom, a ‘creative collective’ of artists, designers and musicians that was founded by Sir Jonathan Ive and Marc Newson in 2019.
If Jony Ive’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he spearheaded decades of design cleverness at Apple, where he and his team there crafting icons like the colourful iMac G3, the original iPod and iPhone and so many others over the span of almost 30 years.
Ferrari says the Luce launches with 23-inch front/24-inch rear wheels, with a sporty five-spoke wheel being offered as well as a more aerodynamic version that claims to add an extra five per cent to the car’s range.
Other customisation options will include stripes down the sides of the doors, as well as the option to colour the black C-pillar panel that stretches over the roof, but Newson is keen to keep a tight set of personalisation options and ‘not make it a free for all.’
What’s it like inside?
Quite possibly the most impressive part of the entire Luce’s package. We’ve seen a lot of the Luce’s interior elements in isolation after Ferrari unveiled bits of it ahead of the Luce’s reveal but, naturally, we’re now seeing it all in one piece and in situ.
LoveFrom’s team have, for lack of a better phrase, gone a little retro here. Newson, for example, freely admits he’s a classic car collector and a Ferrari obsessive – and has been keen to ensure some physicality remains in the interior design. ‘Just because the vehicle is electric doesn’t mean you need to get carried away with the electronics,’ he says.
On top of that, you activate launch control by pulling down a toggle on the ceiling. It’s another bit of theatre and a nod to aviation, and one of many impressively well-crafted details inside. Doing so turns all of the dials orange.
‘It was clear to us that capacitive buttons, multi touch [displays]… it’s completely inappropriate for car interiors… it’s more or less dangerous,’ says LoveFrom industrial designer, Jeremy Bataillou. ‘We really wanted to design tactile physical controls, but we got to merge them with digital interfaces.’ That’s why you see details like slick, Apple-like animations showing temperature or fan speed changes when you flick a toggle, or can changes the analogue-handed clock in the top corner to a compass or stopwatch.
More than anything, though, it’s the tactility of it all. Everything feels of impressively high quality, with a much-improved user-friendliness not seen on Ferraris this decade. Buttons and paddles have a proper click or thunk, for example, with Newson saying that ‘I can count only one carrying part identified on the interior; everything else is completely ground up.’ That even extends to things like that milled aluminium seat rails, or the fantastically neat air vents. Perhaps our only criticism here is the finger-pull drive shifter; it feels a little too dainty and simplistic for our liking.
As well as the more structural aerodynamic elements like that front spoiler and integrated rear wing, there are air dams that open up depending on drive mode. And, to reduce noise and vibrations, the rear subframe is mounted with elastic contact points.
And then there’s the noise. The Luce remains silent in Range and Tour modes, with Ferrari’s chief test driver Raffaele de Simone saying that ‘silence is an added value’ for the customer buying a Luce. But flick the electric Ferrari into Performance and it emits a noise that is entirely derived by the electric powertrain. ‘The sound is authentic, the sound is real,’ says de Simone. ‘The texture of the powertrain is what you feel when you’re driving. We don’t want a fake, nostalgic sound,’ he adds, in stark contrast to the attitude over at Mercedes-AMG with its new V8-sounding electric GT four-door.
The sound also neatly plays into another feature of the Luce: torque shift engagement (TSE). This is where those meaty paddles come into play, with TSE being designed to add a little bit of extra driver engagement. As well as an ‘auto’ mode that defaults to full power and a middling amount of regen, TSE adds five ‘steps’ that both increase in power and decrease in regeneration respectively. So, step one has a limited amount of power but a high level of regen, while step five unlocks all the power but decelerates ‘similar to a Purosangue in eighth gear,’ according to de Simone. TSE is not strictly a simulated gearbox like Hyundai’s N-Shift. There’s no redline that cuts off power completely; you can still accelerate to top speed in the first step; it’ll just take longer.
It’s effectively there to make you feel more involved in the driving experience; Ferrari is keen for its first EV not to just be a point-and-squirt acceleration weapon. ‘It’s just fun to experience shifting like on an internal combustion engine Ferrari,’ smiles de Simone. ‘We’ve just redesigned the experience for the new world.’
Come on then – how much is a Ferrari Luce?
Effectively around €500,000, with UK pricing to hover around £440,000 – and that’ll naturally be before any options or customisation choices.
For reference, an electric Porsche Cayenne Turbo has an identical acceleration time and a slightly better claimed range; though this fact will almost certainly not matter to the kind of clientele expected for the Luce.
The first deliveries are expected to arrive in early 2027.