The design of luxury electric vehicles has a tendency to polarise. From the Jaguar Type 00 prototype to Tesla's Cybertruck disaster, radical departures from traditional car design have divided opinion. The newly unveiled Ferrari Luce is no exception.
The Luce ('light' in Italian) is Ferrari's first EV. It's intended as a reference point that will prove electric can deliver super car performance, class and exclusivity, but it also breaks with the Maranello-based carmaker's heritage: it's a four-door, five-seater sedan, apparently strongly influenced by LoveFrom, the design studio founded by former Apple chief design officer Jony Ive and former Qantas Airways creative director Marc Newson. That's led to some surprising comparisons.
The Ferrari Luce is a radical departure from the more agile and aggressive design language of the brand's berlinettas and spiders. As well as the difference in size and the four centre-opening doors, the shell-like design is relatively minimalist. You wouldn't immediately know it to be a Ferrari if it weren't for the Cavallino Rampante badge.
Set to retail at $640,000, it has an electric motor on each wheel, helping the car reach 60mph (96km/h) in around 2.5 seconds. A two-tone design language runs the length of the vehicle. This creates a contrast between the typically bold colourways (red, yellow and turquoise in the press images) of the main aluminium chassis, and the black of the continuous glass upper section and the armour-like skirt around the lower section.
Inside, the Ferrari Luce is less controversial. Although there are Samsung-made OLED touchscreens, there's a strong emphasis on mechanical buttons and dials making the cockpit look like the antithesis of Tesla's approach (take a look in the video below).
LoveFrom was originally said to be contributing to the design of this interior, but the billing of its involvement seems to have been stepped up. Ferrari's press release suggests the studio was responsible for the design of the whole car, stating that it had "the creative freedom needed to define the design direction of the project from the outset".
For some Ferrari enthusiasts, that makes iPhone designer Jony Ive responsible for what they see as a drastic break with Ferrari's past. Some claim that the Luce looks generic or mainstream and "lacks soul". Others wonder whether LoveFrom recycled ideas from the cancelled Apple Car project.
Some are suggesting that the even the launch videos (above) feel like Apple product introductions, and the car's design has inevitably been compared to one of the most controversial Apple designs of all time, the infamous Magic Mouse. "I wonder if you have to turn it upside down to charge it..." one person quips on X.
It's the first time LoveFrom has designed a car. Since Ive and Newson formed the studio in 2019, their projects have been highly eclectic. They've dallied with graphic design for his majesty King Charles III and created a €4,500.00 portable LED sailing lantern for Balmuda, a new rostrum for auction house Christie's, a turntable for Linn and an outerwear collection for Moncler.
Most of their energies are now presumably occupied with their mysterious AI hardware project with OpenAI, which now owns the design studio.
Reporter: Mr. Ive, where did the inspiration for the new Ferrari Luce’s design come from?Jony Ive: [long thoughtful pause, adjusting glasses] ...The purity of form. The honesty of a single, uninterrupted volume. A timeless object that feels both familiar and revolutionary... pic.twitter.com/Hm5VJzXnGJMay 26, 2026
The Ferrari Luce literally looks like it’s about to shit out a real Ferrari.Look at the tail lights. It’s like a small, angular, Ferrari with a challenge stradale black bar is hiding inside fat uncle Luce pic.twitter.com/2rphhebqLzMay 26, 2026
> be Ferrari> spend 8 decades selling cars based on the sound they make> hire Jony Ive - the guy who killed the headphone jack and shipped the butterfly keyboard - to design your first EV> wait 4 years. unveil the "Luce" in Rome> charge $640,000 for 280 miles of range. a $50K… https://t.co/p5v1qykyXt pic.twitter.com/zZL6rD1ggzMay 26, 2026
Never thought I'd say this about a Ferrari, but this is one of the ugliest EV designs ever, and it can be all yours for $640,000 lol https://t.co/uaxkG0ynH7 pic.twitter.com/7SlFoCq624May 25, 2026
In a way, Ferrari's EV is potentially more of a risk than Jaguar's. For the British brand, it's make of break. It's staking its future entirely on electric vehicles, and that required a total rebrand. It's an almost complete break from the past. It's seeking a new customer and doesn't care too much if it upsets old customers on the way.
But Ferrari isn't rebranding, and it isn't dropping the internal combustion engine. The Luce will need to sit comfortably alongside its existing offerings and not harm its traditional market.
Social media criticism won't define whether that works. The Luce clearly isn't going to be the car that sparks a mass adoption of electric vehicles. But if it does well enough on Ferrari's order books, it could shape attitudes to them.
Rather than billing electric as a sustainability measure, Ferrari's presenting it as a performance requirement that's allowed it to build a different type of vehicle. Given the iconic carmaker's disproportionate influence, that could shape perceptions.
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