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Makes sense from corporate perspective to hire the "Apple Designer" to craft the interior experience, it's fresh input from a very respected UX design-lead of a
by rickdeckard 5mo ago
Makes sense from corporate perspective to hire the "Apple Designer" to craft the interior experience, it's fresh input from a very respected UX design-lead of another industry.
But handing over responsibility for the exterior is quite questionable IMO.
To me, the exterior has lost almost all of Ferrari's identity. It's a nice car-design, but if you'd tell me it's a Hyundai, Lexus or BYD I would believe you.
I wonder what political struggle was behind that within Ferrari. I can't imagine this design was received well, and I doubt that Ferrari actually asked for help on exterior design. It's more likely that Jony Ive demanded it...
(Also the fact that they presented the interior much earlier than the exterior could be an indicator for internal disagreements...)
- dnpls 5mo agoThe exterior is just a magic mouse! At least those switches in the dashboard are real switches, not touchscreen buttons.
- tclancy 5mo agoI feel like the real story is Jony Ive’s deep love for the Subaru SVX on display here.
- xattt 4mo agoHey, leave the SVX alone!
- tclancy 4mo agoMust have been their sales pitch.
- bcatanzaro 4mo agoUnderrated comment
- amelius 4mo ago> The exterior is just a magic mouse! I hope they didn't put the charging socket on the bottom. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jwU1ZvVFMXw https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jwU1ZvVFMXw
- atombender 4mo agoLike this? https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/1taf5uw/apple_car_charging_design/ https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/1taf5uw/apple_car_ch...
- King-Aaron 5mo agoI just feel they were required to start an EV offering to comply with EU standards, but have designed something of a joke entry to protest being dragged into the EV game. That, or they truly have insight into where consumer trends will go, and like the F50 etc, this will be better received in a decades time than now.
- tpm 5mo agoThey can easily afford to pay the fleet emission fines even if they apply to them (I'm not sure since they are a small volume manufacturer and there might be exceptions for them). And they have produced hybrids since 2013 already.
- rickdeckard 5mo agoI doubt this is a joke entry by any means. As many legacy brands, Ferrari is looking to refresh itself in order to stay relevant to a new generation of buyers, and not "die out" together with their existing customer base. They need to do this rather sooner than later while still standing on a pillar of good legacy identity, to not end up like Jaguar does... What is the "EV game"?
- TylerE 4mo agoFerraris situation is absolutely, 100%, totally NOTHING like JLR
- rickdeckard 4mo ago*yet
- King-Aaron 4mo ago> What is the "EV game"? Partaking in the production and sale of electric vehicles.
- NetMageSCW 4mo agoSince those regulations apply to sales, a joke entry that doesn’t sell is just a waste of money.
- baq 5mo agoDoesn’t matter as long as it isn’t ugly. Porsche made the cayenne and the panamera, too. The V12 buyer won’t even look at this, but the luxury EV buyer now has a new thing to consider.
- discreteevent 5mo agoThe back of the car is ugly.
- kleiba2 5mo agoI suppose by "back" you mean the whole car? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy22rddy5no https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy22rddy5no
- mapcars 4mo agoDefine ugly
- wiseowise 4mo agoFerrari Luce ugly.
- dietr1ch 4mo agoAt least it tries to look like a Ferrari a bit more than the rest of the car. It's a rounded F40 without the wing
- 4mo ago
- ahmedfromtunis 5mo agoI lived through similar dynamics (though not at Ferrari, of course). The management knows that they need something new and out of their comfort zone. Someone (from within or without) suggests an idea that would never been accepted in the olden days. The management, for the sake of their company, would suppress every instinct they have built over the years, often over-correcting. This inevitably results in some questionable choices seeping in, in the name of openness to new paradigms. And not every time this goes well. I'm not saying this is what's happening here. These are world-class engineers and designers, but nobody is immune from a bad decision or two.
- martinvol 5mo agoIsn't this how the Jaguar fiasco came to be?
- rpozarickij 5mo agoI wonder whether the mere-exposure effect [0] could also be at play here. For me, the first reaction to the Ferrari Luce was utter shock, but after looking at it again several hours later I'm starting to see some of its exterior elements differently (although my brain finds it hard to call the car "beautiful" in the same way as some of the other recent Ferrari models). It looks like a decision was made to depart from the "modern"-looking Ferraris, but the direction of that departure seems to be very different from what the competitors are doing and what the general public is looking for visually in such a car (but it's worth keeping in mind that members of the general public aren't really customers of this car). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect
- rickdeckard 5mo agoJust to clarify: I'm not saying the car is ugly, it's a good looking design. But it's not a Ferrari design, it dropped almost all of the brands' identity and design language in favor of becoming a more "uniform sportscar design". To me personally this is quite on-brand for Jony Ive's past work, where the exterior design of the product is diluted to the "least-offending version of its kind", a vessel to the high-quality interior experience which is focused to "excite the user". In the mobile phone space this was disruptive, because (accidentally) it created the "normalized mobile computing platform" needed to transform the industry into a Smartphone industry. But I'd say the sports car industry is different, I don't see a benefit in having the "most normalized sports car"...
- JetSetIlly 5mo agoFerrari have long worked with third-party coachbuilders such as Pininfarina. I'm not sure how much autonomy Ive had over the final design, but if it's anything like the relationship with Pininfarina, etc. the design would have been a collaboration.
- rounce 5mo agoThough Pininfarina, Zagato and others have a long history of designing beautiful car bodies, many of which have more than stood the test of time.
- rickdeckard 5mo agoAnd the press-release [0] sounds like Ferrari had very limited creative control: "Introducing a team from outside the Ferrari Design Studio led by Flavio Manzoni invited a new perspective and cross-fertilisation, enabling a new design language to be introduced." "LoveFrom was given the creative freedom needed to define the design direction of the project from the outset, translating this design language into an authentic Ferrari experience." [0] https://www.ferrari.com/en-US/corporate/articles/ferrari-luce-a-new-chapter-for-the-maranello-marque https://www.ferrari.com/en-US/corporate/articles/ferrari-luc...
- bombcar 4mo agoSounds to me like LoveFrom didn't spend enough time learning about Ferrari first.
- gt0 5mo agoI thought the same. If it had a Kia badge on it, it wouldn't shock me, and I think Kia make some quite nice cars now. I don't like the interior. I think this style can work for some things, it reminds me of a NuPhy keyboard, blocky plastic that looks nice in some circumstances. For me this is not a Ferrari-standard of car, Ferraris are strikingly beautiful, and this just isn't.
- Mikho 5mo agoFerrari Luce is the nicest KIA design ever.
- rickdeckard 5mo agoOr a fairly nice evolution of Honda maybe...
- TylerE 4mo agoNever buy a Hyundai/Kia. They make the dumbest cost cutting decisions, like their recent immobilizer fiasco. The dealers are also, largely without exception, terrible.
- seabass-labrax 4mo agoSeveral Kia models produced around 2005 incorporated the questionable design of having the engine control electronics located below the oil sump - as I've seen first-hand what that does to the vehicle's maintenance costs, I'm inclined to agree with you!
- Copernicron 4mo agoI know a number of people with this view on Kia and Hyundai. "They were garbage back in 199X or 200X so they're still garbage now." Except that was twenty or thirty years ago and from what I've heard they made advances in design and quality since then.
- 4mo ago
- voidmain0001 5mo agoIf you don’t like it then you’re not the demographic they’re targeting. Let me say that I think it’s bland but I won’t say I don’t like it. The market they’re targeting is probably young and can’t afford it but those that can afford it will buy it to appear young, as if they belong to the demographic.
- dgellow 5mo ago[dead]
- voidmain0001 5mo ago[dead]
- concinds 5mo agoEdit: ignore
- chrisan 5mo agoThere's a difference between picking a car out of a lineup to play in a game and taking (a lot of) money to buy a Ferrari. I too would pick fun/weird stuff to play, but if I had Ferrari money I wouldn't be touching this.
- newsclues 5mo agoFerrari has certainly outsourced design of the exterior before, often to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pininfarina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pininfarina
- Spooky23 5mo agoIt’s a brilliant design. Everyone here is complaining about it, and hardly anyone is saying “EV is no true Ferrari”. The whole point of Ferrari is high enough volume to print money, low enough to make almost bespoke cars whose sheet metal can change quickly. If the platform is adaptable for that purpose, it will be a success.
- deepvibrations 4mo agoI think the front of the car (arguably the most impactful part) does not really reflect the true Ferrari character which is a shame. Agree that the Interior and rest is all nice enough though.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- dotancohen 5mo ago> To me, the exterior has lost almost all of Ferrari's identity. It's a nice car-design, but if you'd tell me it's a Hyundai, Lexus or BYD I would believe you. I think that is the idea. Ferrari presented a plausible EV exterior, albeit one that will not appeal to Ferrari's target market (and budget). The resulting non-sales could be used to justify the position that Ferrari's target market is not interested in EVs, should the need arise.
- mattlondon 4mo agoI thought a similar thing too. "Look, we tried to create an EV and no one bought it. So we need to retain that carve-out in the regulations that mean we do not have to electrify our entire product line or we will go out of business entirely." I'd totally buy this car if it looked like that and was from a mainstream manufacturer (i.e. priced normally), but yeah I cannot see a typical ferrari owner buying one.
- aenis 4mo agoIts a divorce car. You get to keep your real ferrari(s), and buy her one of those. Good for school/grocery runs, has the right badge, probably will drive like a normal car. There exists a demography for those kinds of cars. Lots of people dont care one bit about the style, its all about the brand. (I doubt anyone would consider Bentley SuVs as good looking, for instance - yet they seel well).
- dotancohen 4mo agoThat was the deal with the Aston Martin Cygnus as well. It wasn't meant for enthusiasts. It was generally sold to wives who bought them alone - much to the fury of husbands later that day. Some Aston Martin salesman once mentioned this in an interview, mentioning that otherwise there was no way to move that vehicle.
- bombcar 4mo ago[dead]
- loolatrix 4mo ago"(Also the fact that they presented the interior much earlier than the exterior could be an indicator for internal disagreements...)" - not necessarily, they did similar already back in the 1990ies, when the new line of front-engined GTs as successors to the mid/rear-engined Testarossa came up. At first some appetizers about the new way of building chassis (Ferrari had a decades old legacy of building rather outdated tubular space frame chassis), followed with tidbits about exterior and interior designs of at first the 456, and then the actual two-seater successor to the Testarossa, the 550.
- amelius 4mo agoThe problem with cars is if you take all design constraints into consideration you will always end up with something that looks similar.
- browningstreet 4mo agoYou sound like my old man who swears all coffee tastes the same. Folgers is Starbucks is Blue Bottle.
- amelius 4mo agoThink again ... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46173798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46173798
- pge 4mo agoTo what extent is the design a response to the constraints imposed by the electric drivetrain? The car is built around the engine. An EV has a large battery and small motor(s), while a gasoline sports car has a big engine in the front. I'm curious how much of the Luce design is a direct result of having to work around the drivetrain (noting that the Mustang Mach E also deviated significantly from the classic designs of past Mustangs in some of the same ways as the Luce deviates from past Ferraris).
- bombcar 4mo agoEVs generally have more "freedom" to design the car the way they want, as it's usually motors (in the wheels, which you probably need to have anyway) and then the battery (which can be a giant slab, but that's for cost and maintenance reasons; there's nothing stopping a $650k car from having batteries custom laid to fit however they want).
- jm4 4mo agoIt looks like a Polestar. The performance is certainly what you would expect from Ferrari, but it doesn’t matter. This isn’t a car that should have a Ferrari emblem on it. This will go down as one of the all time automotive blunders. I think Jony Ive is done too. He was responsible for those awful MacBooks that generated a class action lawsuit and now this. It’s hard to come back from two consecutive flops.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4mo ago> It looks like a Polestar. I don't agree. Polestar has their own "design language", they do not look the same. I think that I prefer the look of a Polestar 5 to this Ferrari. Of course, I've never seen either vehicle in person, so what do I really know.
- tcp_handshaker 4mo agoThis is a disaster for Ferrari. You buy the brand, the car and its lack of reliability is well known and the difficult handling also well known. But its La Ferrari. This is the type of car that will be seen in the hands of people buying Cybertruck or the UK chavs that now buy Rolex. The moment that happens your brand is dead. Your customers will flock away back to Buggati and Aston Martin. Massive Ferrari mistake.
- mc32 4mo agoI agree on the aesthetics drastically breaking from legacy but I very much doubt charvers will afford this car.
- tibbydudeza 4mo agoSome UK soccer players
- BrokenCogs 4mo agoIMO this is a risk worth taking. The Ferrari brand is rather stagnant and not innovative. They need to do something like this to drive more attention and sales. Even if this particular model does not sell well they can refine and make better selling EVs down the line.
- butlike 4mo agoAccording to one of the recent Acquired (podcast) episodes, they could ramp up production to increase sales at any time, they just don't in order to keep brand value and desire high, so I'm not sure it's that.
- tcp_handshaker 4mo ago>> They need to do something like this to drive more attention and sales. The objective of a luxury brand is not volume sales. There is the well known anecdote of somebody asking André Heiniger, then chairman/president of Rolex: "How is the watch business?" and he answering something along the lines of: "I have no idea. Rolex is not in the watch business..."
- WarmWash 4mo ago(Conspiracy) Plot twist: Teams inside Ferrari despise EV's (because they lack 10,000 moving parts and loud noises), so they pushed hard for this design, ensuring a flop, and giving ferrari cold EV feet for the foreseeable future.
- nelsonic 4mo ago100% looks like a BYD/Hyundai; the front (exterior) is hideous. Surely this isn't the production version of the vehicle? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- PaulHoule 4mo agoI felt the web site was "lights on nobody home", I think the interesting fact about this vehicle is that it is electric and even though you can pick different colors and a heated steering wheel as an option there isn't a single word about power train. Just being a legendary brand like Ferrari doesn't mean that 100% of us understand 100% about 100% of your products.
- rawoke083600 4mo agoI do get a lot of "plastic" vibes and "high quality raching sim gear"
- AquinasCoder 4mo agoWhere is the Ferrari in this at all? I completely agree that they missed the mark in design. While the interior is 100% Jony Ive, the exterior screams "design by committee." An electric Roma successor would have been much better received and possibly cheaper for them to develop (who knows?). The silver lining in all this is that it means that the EV arm will not cannibalize their ICE cars.
- giobox 4mo agoThe exterior screams asian-EV design langauge to me - which may not be an accident. Ferrari have made no secret of their hopes this car will succeed for them in China. > https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-09/ferrari-sees-its-first-electric-car-powering-a-comeback-in-china?srnd=phx-hyperdrive https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-09/ferrari-s... > https://archive.is/ilT3d https://archive.is/ilT3d
- KennyBlanken 4mo agoNo Chinese EV looks anything like this? It looks like the EV version of Apple widgets and the iPhone home screen. There's so much rounded squares /rounded rectangle bullshit...it looks like something that was designed in 2010 and is about to get the shit sued out of it by Apple. Every automaker is desperately trying to chase Chinese buyers. Most of them are too stupid to realize the Chinese can just....buy better Chinese EVs, and if they're not buying a chinese EV, it's because they don't want a Chinese EV, they want the foreign company's design and cachet. Peopel don't buy Ferraris because they look like Chinese EVs. People buy them because they look like Ferraris and are exclusive. Audi is doing stupid shit, too. They recently started making cars under the "AUDI" brand. Yeah. "AUDI". Versus "Audi" with rings. If Ferrari wanted to sell more cars in China they could just stop be absurd dicks about a)who can buy their cars b)what people can do with them. Things like "prohibit people from lending them to reviewers so Ferrari can game the review by putting on different tires and tuning the suspension for the specific track the reviewer will be using." Although might actually impress Chinese buyers since it aligns with them so well, culturally.
- 4mo ago
- pegasus 4mo agoIs this so unusual for Ferrari and do we need to blame it on Jony Ive? Ferrari's been selling an SUV since 2024, after all...
- NetMageSCW 4mo agoAnd the Purosangue’s design runs circles around this appliance.
- LgWoodenBadger 4mo agoFerrari has historically worked with outside designers. Pininfarina being probably the most prominent. Bertone, as well. Ferrari brought design in-house relatively recently.
- carefree-bob 4mo agoWhen I saw the design, I thought "This looks like a Tesla". I'm sure it's an awesome car, and also a high quality premium experience. The question is whether it can command supercar prices - they are selling it for $650,000, and I don't quite understand the value proposition of a superior Tesla selling for that much. Now you can say, well what is the value proposition of the other ICE Ferraris selling for that much? And that's the point, when they first came out, they didn't sell for such high prices, it was a long period of decades in which collectors were bidding up the prices due to their interest in collecting Ferraris and reselling them, at which point the cars became an investment and collectible item, rather than just "expensive high end vehicles". So when you break from that tradition, but assume you can carry over the collector premium -- particularly for a disposable tech-heavy EV -- then that is where Ferrari made a mistake, and not only Ferrari, but there is a reason none of the EV supercars have sold well, or will sell well. Tech and collectables don't mix. If you want an example of a brand that is doing this well, look at Rolls Royce. Rolls is selling actual luxury experiences, and their prices reflect the unique ownership experience, not the collectible value, as all Rolls Royces suffer massive depreciation, and have always suffered massive depreciation. No one buys a Rolls Royce expecting it to go up in value, it's understood that in 30 years, you can pick it up for less than the cost of the tires on the brand new model. In that environment, EVs work very well, and Rolls is having success with their high priced EVs that none of the automakers are having in the hypercar market.
- mlhpdx 4mo agoRolls knows their customers, as absurd as it may seem. The electrics hit the Royce brand first because it is the car “in which you are driven” and likely the reasons you state. Bentley, the car “you drive” has a different customer base and will be closer to the “normal” hypercar experience.
- mebizzle 4mo agoAnd the experience makes sense for what Rolls aims to do. Riding in a Spectre feels way more like riding in other Rolls' than it does an EV.
- deleted 4mo ago
- alfalfasprout 4mo agoThe interior is also, frankly, very meh.
- mrandish 4mo ago> what political struggle was behind that within Ferrari ... could be an indicator for internal disagreements. A while back I read a couple books on the history of Ferrari and came away with the clear sense that Enzo was one of those unique iconoclastic entrepreneurs who was brilliant, flawed and irreplaceable. After Enzo, Ferrari's management has mostly hovered between being inconsistent and incomprehensible. From the racing team to road cars, the company has become legendary for political fiefdoms and internal conflict. I agree the Luce exterior may be the least Ferrari-looking Ferrari ever. I suspect it's going to be a disaster for the brand.
- darau1 4mo agoMaybe I'm being silly, but I felt a strange existential dread watching the video. I asked myself: who is being marketed toward? In my head, it's Apple lovers that want to larp as car people, and having the money to waste on such an endeavor. edit: I just realized, I don't know the price, but I've basically described tesla people. I wonder how many of these buyers already own one... edit 2: price is around 600,000 USD -- it's a super tesla!
- c0de517e 4mo agoI kinda doubt it. Ive doesn't have that much pull, most people don't know him, definitely not as much pull as Ferrari, one of the most recognizable brands in the world. And I bet Ferrari was into this, they make a ton of new models anyways, and they probably know that sport car enthusiasts would not have jumped to an EV no matter what. Much better to try to make something very different than their lineup than just an engine swap.
- caycep 4mo agoExterior has frequently been Pininfarina w/ a distinct design language...changing it up wholesale would necessarily result in something quite different
- UltraSane 4mo agoI like how it looks but it does look like a BYD car instead of a Ferrari.
- make3 4mo agoit looks like a generic cop car from a sci fi game