- Ferrari has just released the very first look at the interior of its upcoming EV, the Ferrari Luce, which Sir Jony Ive has designed.
- Sir Jony Ive is best-known for his work with Steve Jobs at Apple, where he designed the first iPod and iPhone, and has more recently joined forces with OpenAI.
- The project has been more than four years in the making, and according to Ferrari, the exterior of the Luce will be revealed in May.
Ferrari’s first proper electric car has a name – Luce (meaning ‘light’ or ‘illumination’ in Italian) – and we’ve just been handed a tease of the bit that really matters: the cabin. Not the power stats or the Nürburgring rumours: the interface between you and the machine.
The main story of what we know so far, however, is that Jony Ive and Marc Newson have been working under their LoveFrom brand with Ferrari design boss Flavio Manzoni to shape the Luce’s instrumentation and interior elements.
For the lifelong tifosi, this is where the anxiety has existed, because Ferrari without combustion is like ordering a martini and getting a splash of gin without a garnish, and getting the details right has never been more important for Ferrari.
In saying that, if any duo can make an EV feel special without leaning on fake noise and gamer graphics, it’s the two industrial design obsessives who basically rewired modern taste. The brief clearly wasn’t make an infotainment screen look expensive, but instead to reinvent Ferrari’s identity for the electric era, without embarrassing one of the world’s most famous luxury automakers.
“We wanted to explore an interface that was physical and engaging,” Ive explained in an interview with TopGear, “and to take the most powerful parts of an analogue display and combine them with a digital display.
“All the controls are physical and mechanical. We stress tested these big organisational principles. We felt they were very important, but we also worked hard to verify the assumptions we were making. Fortunately, the best engineers in the world are at Ferrari.”
The event to reveal the interior was very on-brand, taking place in San Francisco, on LoveFrom’s home turf, in a room full of design and tech diehards. As we understand it so far, the car will be unveiled in a slow-drip three-stage strategy, and we’re currently at stage two, with the name confirmed and the interior language revealed. Now, the exterior is all we’re waiting for, still under wraps.
It’s an interesting move by Ferrari, but one that makes perfect sense. Luxury EVs might be faster than ever, but Ferrari understands that the ultra-rich haven’t exactly been stampeding towards zero emissions, and have responded with a plan that’s bold enough to push forward, but considered enough to do it with a separate design brain trust.
So far, the project has been more than four years in the making, and according to Ferrari, the exterior of the Luce will be revealed in May. We can’t wait.
