Ferrari’s first EV is not for you

Everyone seems to be mad about Ferrari’s first electric vehicle.

Called Luce, and revealed on Monday, the design of the five-seater (gasp!) was led in large part 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 miles per hour in just over two seconds — it’s tracking to be the most mocked new vehicle since the Cybertruck.

This widespread rejection of the wedge-shaped, Nissan-resembling car covers seemingly the whole spectrum, too, from the typical flimsy knee-jerk reactions, to the positively vitriolic. The company’s stock price is down, and even some of the most down-the-middle news outlets are admitting it in their own ways. (Bloomberg said the Luce is “quite a stretch.”)

The question underneath all of this immediate backlash is singular: Who is the Luce for?

Certainly it’s not for me, or for 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? Typically 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 that crowd being sufficiently excited about a car that is so devoid of the fierce Ferrari angles that have adorned bedroom walls for decades.

Is it for other car designers? Possibly. Car companies borrow ideas all the time, and there’s definitely plenty on the interior — which features a lot of clicky buttons and knobs, a marked departure for Ive — that I’d personally like to see repeated elsewhere.

Is it for regulators? Well, maybe. The European Union is placing severe limits on the sale of new cars with internal combustion engines in 2035. The Luce may be the first step Ferrari’s taking toward a lineup that complies with those looming rules.

In fact, during an interview with Cleo Abram, we learn that this external pressure seems to have weighed heavily on Ive. Abram was given access to one of four “secret” books Ive created when he started the project, which contains a mix of mood board-style imagery and text written by the iPhone designer himself.

Abram quotes Ive as comparing 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 “primarily because it survived and grew in the transition” by making a mix of traditional timepieces and watches with batteries and quartz movements.

But then, he added: “If it had been legislated that Patek Philippe had to transition its entire product line to quartz, the resulting challenge would appear similar to the transition Ferrari is facing.” Telling!

Still, I find it hard to believe this is purely a compliance car. The company has said it expects the Luce to be profitable from the jump. And Ferrari’s own 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.”

That statement is nearly as radical as the Luce’s design. By definition, that 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 have typically only made up around 10% of Ferrari’s overall sales, those numbers have declined in recent years, and the automaker’s executives haven’t been shy about wanting their first EV to turn things around in the largest market for battery-powered vehicles in the world.

Viewed 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 over the last few years.

So maybe the more proper question to ask is this: Will Chinese buyers, who are currently awash in high-performance, high-tech, affordable options, care to pay up for the prestige of a prancing horse on the hood?