Dials and buttons are back
Jony Ive never did get to make a car while he was the design chief at Apple, but he's now partnered with Ferrari to design the cockpit of the upcoming Luce electric car – while taking a swipe at the interior look of Tesla vehicles.
Teslas are well known for their large touchscreen dashboards, and a lack of physical dials and buttons. That wasn't the way Ive wanted to go with his own creation, made with his design partner Marc Newson, according to roundtable quotes given to The Drive and Autocar.
"I think a large touchscreen practically, functionally, doesn't work," says Ive. "That's incontrovertible. You have to look [at it], which you shouldn't be. You've designed [something that's] layers and layers deep."
Audi declares war on ‘giant iPad’ dashboards and hints at analog buttons
Ive clearly isn't a fan of Tesla interiors. "This idea that because the power source is electric the interface should be digital is nonsense. That makes no sense to me at all," he added.
That might be surprising, given Ive is largely responsible for the aesthetics of the iPad and iPhone. But the touchscreen on those products "served a purpose" Ive says, while pointing out that the inside of a car is "such a challenging and different environment".
On to the Ferrari Luce then, and so far we only have a teaser of the cabin for the electric vehicle. A full reveal is expected in May, but we now have an official look at the steering wheel, gauge cluster, dash, and center console.
There is a central touchscreen that can be moved around to suit the driver, but there are also plenty of dials, buttons, and levers to play around with. That physicality and tactility seems to have been an important consideration for Ive and Newson.
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“One of the things that we felt very strongly about was we wanted to explore an interface that was physical and that was engaging, and that was to take the most powerful parts of analogue displays and combine them with digital displays,” Ive said at the unveiling.
Ferrari's first fully electric car has been a long time coming, and was originally slated to show up in 2025. The name Luce was chosen as it means a light source in Italian, and it's also a colloquial term for electricity.
There's extensive use of anodized aluminum and strengthened Corning glass here, which is another callback to the iPhone and the iPad. We'll keep you posted on this hugely anticipated EV as we get closer to the full reveal from Ferrari.
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David Nield Social Links NavigationFreelance Contributor
Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.
