Love it or Hate it, the Ferrari Luce is a Fun Car

Some still believe that you can’t run a car company unless you are a fully paid “car owner”. Tell that to Benedetto Vigna, head of Ferrari. A professional by education, he was hired to run the company in 2021 after a career in engineering, although he ran a large automotive business at the time.

Vigna also helped develop a three-dimensional motion sensor that was first used in airbags, later developed into Nintendo Wii and iPhone is a workaround screen. The founder, that is. “I like the founder,” he once told me. “Most of the time designers only think, but designers create new things and make them happen.”

These are all useful foundations for LuceFerrari’s first electric car, made in Maranello, Italy, but manufactured in California is LoveFroman organization founded by the famous iPhone designer Jony Ive. No An abandoned Apple carreinvented and relaunched to become a world-renowned car brand, but largely thanks to the collaboration between like-minded founders – Italian spirit and ideas, Silicon Valley lateral thinking.

Courtesy of Ferrari

But unless you’ve been hiding under a rock on Mars with Elon Musk for the past few months, you’ll also know the results. he didn’t land as its creators would have hoped. Ferrari fans around the world seem to have no idea of ​​an electric car on principle. And hiring Ive and his team to rethink the aesthetic has proven to be as welcome as Kryptonite is to Superman.

One of the most frequent slurs around Luce centers on the idea that Ferrari designs are supposed to produce an instant dopamine rush. These are not cars that require a PhD in design to understand; they have to hit hard and fast, to plant a desire when you see them. The Luce is a departure from tradition, and without the iconic Prancing Horse badge, there’s little here that puts it in the most respectable books of all cars. But it was all part of the brief: Do something different.

Driving heightens this feeling. Luce is a Ferrari, not the brand we are used to. “In the last 100 years, technology has changed a lot,” Raffaele de Simone, Ferrari’s chief test driver, tells me. “But what hasn’t changed are our bodies. We have two hands, two eyes and ears, and two feet.” The steering is the same—the steering, the brakes and the shock absorbers—but the Luce has a different kind of emotion and a different way of announcing the fun of driving.”

Driving Differently

WIRED ran a version of the Luce before the May unveiling in Rome, which is why there’s a camo cover to hide the design.

Courtesy of Ferrari

I was at a test site in northern Italy in May to find out how well this has been achieved. I was in a pre-made car, still hidden during the drive because it was not yet the day the car appeared in Rome. First impressions? The Luce’s cab-forward stance means you sit closer to the front axle than usual, and higher thanks to the large battery under the cabin. Obviously, it’s not low slung or sporty.