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Ferrari just pulled the cover off Luce, its first fully electric car. The five-seater is one of the biggest gambles in the Italian company’s history, arriving amid a string of missed targets and expensive promises by luxury carmakers to go electric.
In Luce, Ferrari engineers believe that they have developed a sports car capable of taking turns at high speeds despite being weighed down by more than half a ton of battery cells and electrical circuitry bolted to the floor pan.
But will the ultrawealthy spend more than US$500,000 on an all-electric Ferrari that doesn’t quite have the classic look or distinctive engine roar of a Ferrari?
“This has been a major investment from Ferrari’s point of view in a product that, at the moment, there’s no real certainty as to what the market is for it,” said Angus MacKenzie, international bureau chief for MotorTrend. “They’re nervous, would be fair to say.”
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The story of Luce is uncommon in the roughly 80-year history of Ferrari’s road-car business. The company teamed up with LoveFrom – the agency founded in 2019 by Jony Ive, Apple’s former design chief, and industrial designer Marc Newson – to develop Luce’s glass-and-polished-aluminum frame, which is capable of hitting close to 200 miles an hour.
John Elkann, Ferrari’s chair and a scion of the Agnelli family automobile dynasty, contacted Ive and LoveFrom shortly after the design firm opened shop in the hope of collaborating on a project. Their efforts began five years ago, around the time Elkann’s handpicked new CEO, Benedetto Vigna, started at Ferrari.
A physicist who spent decades at the chipmaker STMicroelectronics, Vigna has become linked to Luce’s fortunes, and Ferrari’s wider push into electrification, some analysts say. In an interview Monday, he pushed back on that idea. But he acknowledged that Luce’s arrival heralded a new era for Ferrari.
“There are some leapfrog moments, and I am fortunate to be living one at this time,” Vigna said before an unveiling ceremony on the outskirts of Rome on Monday.
He was feeling confident that the night would go well. Throughout the day, his phone was blowing up. “More than 20 messages from clients,” Vigna said, shaking his head with a grin while peering down at his smartphone.
The real test comes when Ferrari starts taking orders this week for a car that will cost 550,000 euros in Italy. The U.S. pricing has not been determined yet, he added.
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