Ferrari unveiled its first electric car, the Ferrari Luce, to critical acclaim this week, leaving the brand in the lurch. After Monday’s launch, the stock fell 8 percent and did not recover on Thursday, when CEO Benedetto Vigna defended Luce, saying customer interest is “strong.”
What made the response unusually wide outside of automotive circles was a certain quality of Luce’s design failure, according to automotive design experts. Ferrari has always sold aspiration across class lines, and people who would never own one still have a relationship with the brand, through posters, races and the simple fact that a Ferrari looks like nothing else on the road. However, Luce downplayed the beauty while maintaining a price tag of more than $600,000, angering not only her fans but the public as a whole.
The retreat even reached the back of Ferrari. Luca di Montezemolo, the company’s longest-serving chairman during the Enzo era, reportedly told Italian media that Luce poses a “risk”destroying the myth,” and said he hoped Ferrari would remove the rolling horse badge from the car.” Di Montezemolo ran the company from 1991 to 2014, and his public criticism of the current Ferrari brand is unprecedented.
Paul Snyderveteran automotive designer with decades of experience at major manufacturers such as Ford and Honda, and currently Paul & Helen Farago Chairman of Transportation College of Creative Studies in Michigan, which Luce called “Scary, because it doesn’t look like a Ferrari at all,” compares its measurements to a student’s exterior clay model and argues that it misses two fundamental Ferrari readings: silhouette and surface. “Nothing is real,” Snyder told the Observer.
Derek Jenkins, SVP of Design and Brand at Lucid Motors, whose Lucid Air has been compared to the new Ferrari Luce, made a similar distinction between the car’s exterior and interior. “The face of the car is invisible. That’s where the answer comes in. It doesn’t match the type of car,” Jenkins told the Observer. He particularly liked the cabin, calling the steering wheel “both mysterious and modern” and praising the switchgear and air vents as “future-thinking the product.”
Jony Ive’s design magic doesn’t translate to sports cars
Ferrari has a contract with Jony Ive and Marc Newson’s design company LoveFrom for the Luce. The interior, introduced last year, received mixed reviews for its combination of analog and digital. The exterior design, however, has become the focus of internet memes. Ive is best known for designing the first Apple iPhone and working on the never-before-launched Apple Car, while Newson is known for his design of Ford concept car called 021C.
But just because Ive and Newson designed beautiful and iconic things and furniture doesn’t mean they can’t design a car. Industrial design and automotive design are two very different skill sets, as Snyder points out.
Snyder said Ive’s work on Luce would not score “two out of five” on exterior evaluation criteria such as originality, scale and college appeal, which equates exterior design to middle-of-the-road sophomore projects. He said:
“It looks like it’s out of all the AI slop you hear about automotive design,” he continued, adding that if the flexible wing on top of the front windscreen had been removed, the glass line Ferrari created at great engineering expense would be truly new. Snyder also noted that if the interior design language had been used for a city car, or a small car like the Cinquecento, it might have resonated better with the audience, but for Ferrari, it doesn’t make sense.
CEO Benedetto Vigna’s risky pivot
The interior blocking shows a deliberate approach that is reportedly coming from the top of the Ferrari. In interview no Autocar India is published in AprilCEO Vigna called it “strange” that people think an EV should have multiple screens, saying Ferrari and Luce’s approach is to combine tradition and innovation. The company opted for tactile buttons, dials, and switches instead of following the industry trend toward touchscreen-dominated interiors.
A car reviewer Stephanie Brinley at S&P Global Mobility argue that the market reaction is likely to be short-lived. Ferrari operates at a low enough volume that even a crossover car can find enough buyers to trade in. “It’s not the first Ferrari that has people scratching their heads,” he said. “You can fix the design with money and time.” The real risk, he said, is if the car sells poorly and Ferrari doesn’t turn around.
Vigna told a panel in Modena on Thursday that customer interest is strong among new, ultra-wealthy buyers, a group the brand has been trying to recruit for some time. focusing mainly on rich Chinese brandss, although the leading car manufacturers are struggling in the country due to the economic situation there and local competition. Whether Ferrari’s Chinese audience will take to the polarizing design remains to be seen.
Whether the market agrees with Ferrari’s design bet or the rest of the world’s visceral reaction will be answered by Ferrari orders, not the Internet. Vigna noted that order numbers will be revealed in July when the company releases its second quarter earnings.
