Here’s The First Car From Jony Ive’s Design House

If the wild, Jony Ive- and Marc Newson-designed interior for the Ferrari Luce had you intrigued and wanting more, here’s the payoff. After committing to build an EV last year, ignoring those earlier statements that it would never happen, Ferrari has finally given me a look at the entire finished product. As big a departure as that interior is from Ferrari’s current suite of sports cars, the exterior is an even bigger step, one that not everyone is going to love.

Whether you love it or hate it, you can likewise attribute Luce’s exterior styling to LoveFrom, the design house founded by Jony Ive in 2019. Though this is LoveFrom’s first full car design, it’s actually Newson’s second, following on the Ford 021C concept from 1999. That vehicle has a very different shape from the Luce, but it does feature doors that open the same way, and I’m picking up similar vibes from both.

The Luce is definitely not a traditional sports car, more like an SUV in its size and shape, featuring four doors and five seats. It isn’t Ferrari’s first four-door; the Purosangue SUV bears that honor, but it is the first time a car with a prancing horse on the hood has seated more than four people.

And it does so reasonably comfortably. The back seat is quite roomy, accessed via a pair of so-called suicide doors that hinge at the rear, making for a slightly more glamorous, less awkward entry to the back. For extra style on the red carpet, there’s a button that swings them shut for you.

I found headroom in the second row to be just a bit limited, but otherwise, I was quite content. There’s even a little control pad back there to fiddle with that has the same funky knobs and dials as found in the interior up front.

I spent more time fiddling with those controls from the driver’s seat, and I’m sorry to report the software is still largely non-functional at that point. The cheeky little stopwatch in the upper-right of the touchscreen did nothing, nor did the drive modes or seat ventilation. Still, everything looked good and felt great, something that can’t be said for most pre-production models like this.

Seeing the interior inside of an actual car, rather than standing free on pedestals as I experienced it before, gave me a very different impression. Where previously I thought it was far too cold and clinical for a Ferrari, surrounded by the scent and presence of warm leather, it actually seemed to fit.

I still don’t think the typical Ferrari owner is going to immediately fall in love with that interior, but then I don’t think the typical Ferrari owner is going to fall in love with the exterior, either. This is a model to not only extend Ferrari’s portfolio but also to diversify its clientele, too. Or, as Ferrari CMO Enrico Galliera said: “The possibility to enlarge our Ferrari community.”

It may not look or feel like a Ferrari, but it should offer the kind of outrageous performance typical of the brand. It has 1,035 horsepower, which is certainly a lot, but more importantly, it comes from a set of four motors. That means one per wheel, a setup that should deliver some impressive dynamics.

By adding more power to the outside wheels, the Luce can be made to turn into corners more aggressively. And, by modulating power individually, the EV can more precisely handle low-grip situations, or even wheelspin on high-grip surfaces, which will surely be an issue since 1,035 horsepower is plenty enough to liquify even the best of tires.

The car also has four-wheel steering, so it can turn the back wheels with or against the fronts to either add more stability or agility. The Luce features a version of Ferrari’s active suspension, which relies on an electrically actuated damper system to not only provide varying degrees of stiffness or softness, but to dynamically adjust ride height, too. Get up to speed on the highway (maximum 193 mph), and it’ll lower itself by 10mm.

All that comes together with a new, more advanced traction and stability control systems, all managed by what Ferrari calls the Vehicle Control Unit, or VCU. The system is designed to sample the road surface and motor output on all four corners every 5 milliseconds, adjusting power output and suspension behavior to best suit conditions.

Power comes from a 122-kWh gross battery pack situated down low in the car, skateboard-style. That charges at a maximum speed of 350 kW, and Ferrari says it’ll deliver 329 miles on the European WLTP cycle. If that holds, it’ll likely be somewhere south of 300 miles on the harsher EPA cycle.

That’s all fair enough, and I look forward to experiencing how well it comes together in due time, but there’s one other system onboard that might prove equally vital in forming the complete driving experience.

EVs, of course, make very little noise. Their silence is one of their strongest attributes when you’re just cruising to work. But with Ferrari, the sound has always been a crucial part of the experience. Thankfully, that continues with the Luce.

Rather than creating a wholly synthesized sound, like Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 N, for example, the Luce actually has a sort of acoustic pickup mounted on the rear axle. There, it can sample the vibrations of the rear motors. That signal is then pumped through a sort of amplifier to create a distinctive note that is suitably evocative but still wholly distinctive. It has a familiar sound that isn’t far off from some of the company’s high-strung V8s in the past, but yet clearly isn’t trying to pretend to be something else. It is its own thing. 

Ferrari likens the process to an amp for an electric guitar, pointing to this being the next evolution beyond analog motoring. Ferrari has already evolved through numerous powertrains in the past, both large and small, and with engines mounted ahead of or behind the driver.

This, though, feels rather more significant, a complete reboot to both the brand’s look and feel as well as its means of propulsion. Will it be successful? Before anyone can draw a conclusion there we’ll have to see how it drives. Hopefully that’s an answer we can provide soon.

Hopefully we’ll know how much it costs soon, too. Ferrari has not yet set U.S. pricing, but in its home market of Italy it will carry a starting price of €550,000. That will make it the company’s most expensive model, pricing it well above the roughly $430,000 Purosangue. That’s quite an ask, but then most of LoveFrom’s prior designs have carried quite a premium, so why shouldn’t this?