At a moment when Ferrari's sports car rivals are tapping the brakes on their EV ambitions, Maranello has chosen to accelerate into an all-electric future, revealing its first-ever fully electric car – and it’s set to be the Italian marque’s most controversial.
The Ferrari Luce, Italian for “light”, was unveiled today in Rome before a room of nearly 200 motor journalists and media, all desperate to be among the first to present Ferrari’s vision to the world.
Whether the brand’s first EV ushers in a new dawn for Ferrari, a brand synonymous with style, performance, and auto heritage, or the turning out of the lights of a legend remains to be seen. But one thing’s for certain, this is bound to divide opinion.
Built in Maranello, Ferrari's near-mythical home in the Emilia-Romagna flatlands, the Luce is the latest release from a town that has largely built its entire identity around the inherent roar of a combustion engine.
Unlike the Testarossa, the F40, or LaFerrari, which have glided across this small Italian town’s cobbled streets, the Luce will not leave with the shriek of a flat-plane V8, or the operatic thunder of a V12. It will be the first time a car has left the shop without a sound; the first car in the marque's history assembled in Ferrari’s gleaming new e-building producing EV systems, hybrids, and combustion components side by side.
So why now? Why this?
Ferrari accelerated its electric strategy after Benedetto Vigna joined as CEO in 2021. A champion of an all-electric future, Vigna was chosen deliberately for his fluency in the technologies that were already reshaping the industry. Driven, largely, by stricter European emissions regulations and the EU's planned phase-out of new petrol cars by 2035.
And whilst the brand confirmed it had halved its 2030 electric ambitions, from 40% of its lineup down to just 20%, Ferrari couldn’t exactly switch one of its most popular cars into a whizzing hybrid model. If you thought some of the online commentary was bad now, imagine if Ferrari completely gutted a classic 250 GTO – it had to come up with something else entirely.
“Ferrari Luce is not a response to change,” John Elkann, Ferrari’s executive chairman, said during the Luce’s unveiling in Rome. “It’s a decision – a deliberate decision, to lead what comes next with clarity, with courage. Five years ago, we asked ourselves, ‘What would Ferrari be if we imagine that again from a blank sheet?’”
That blank sheet led Ferrari to collaborate with Sir Jony Ive, Marc Newson and the pair’s creative studio LoveFrom. If you’re unsure of their work, take a look at the iPhone in your pocket, or the iMac on your desk, and you'll get the idea.
Early images of the interior were not well-received. Critics referred to the all-new Luce as Ferrari’s “Apple Car.” But rather than adding more touchscreens throughout, the brand installed tactile switches for the Luce's interior, aligning more with existing Ferrari models.
Similarly, Ferrari was determined to capture the visceral thrill of driving, and give you something you could actually drive – even though an EV doesn't necessarily need any of it. An electric motor has no gears to change, no torque curve to ride, no mechanical drama to manage. These days, you push a button and whirr off into the distance.
With physical dials on the steering wheel, carbon-ceramic brakes, rear-wheel steering, active aerodynamics, and paddle controls that let drivers manually step through torque delivery instead of flattening everything into that one-speed EV jolt, Ferrari didn’t want to lose anything that made this feel like a Ferrari in 2026.
The Luce delivers 772kW (1,035hp), a claimed 0–100 km/h time of 2.5 seconds, and a top speed north of 300 km/h.
Even the sound – that most sacred aspect of all Ferrari cars – has been engineered from the real vibrations of the electric motors rather than piped-in fake engine noise. The Luce has been built to find its own voice, but whether that distinction matters to a purist or not is another question entirely.
And yet, for all of that, the question that lingers isn't whether the Luce is good. It probably is. Stick an XPeng logo on the front, and you'd be genuinely impressed. The numbers, the technology, the collaboration with Jony Ive – it would make headlines as one of the most sophisticated electric cars ever built.
The question is a simpler and more uncomfortable one: who is it actually for?
Because if you have half a million euros (and the kind of person buying a Ferrari generally does), the Luce is competing for garage space against a 12Cilindri, a Purosangue, a McLaren, an Aston. Cars that will make you feel something every time you fire them up for a drive. That specific, wonderful irrationality of wanting something that is loud and hot and difficult and completely, utterly impractical.
The Luce just strikes me as the rational choice. The first Ferrari you have to convince yourself to buy. And a little plain Jane for a brand that once made you feel something in your chest before you'd even opened the door.
