The Ferrari Luce Is Brilliant, Brave, but Why Does It Look Ready to Connect via Bluetooth? #4 A2W Car Spotlight

Ferrari has created its first fully electric car, called it the Luce and given it more than 1,000 horsepower. That should have been enough to make me immediately search for the nearest bank to rob. Instead, I looked at the design and wondered why Ferrari had placed wheels underneath my computer mouse.

Sorry, Ferrari. We need to talk.

The Luce was designed with LoveFrom, the creative group founded by Jony Ive and Marc Newson. Ive helped create products including the iPhone, iPad and iMac, and his influence is very obvious here.

Possibly a little too obvious.

The smooth surfaces, rounded shape and minimal details make the Luce look modern. Unfortunately, they also make it look as though I should connect it to my laptop through Bluetooth. If I press the roof, does it open an Excel spreadsheet? Is the left headlight for selecting something and the right one for additional options?

I understand what Ferrari was trying to achieve. This is not supposed to be an electric version of an existing model. The company wanted to create a completely new design language for its first EV and show that Ferrari is moving into a different era.

I respect the bravery. I simply do not understand where the Ferrari went.

A Ferrari should create a small emergency inside my body before it even begins moving. It should look dramatic, slightly dangerous and completely unreasonable. The Luce looks clean, intelligent and beautifully manufactured, but it does not frighten me.

It looks friendly. Ferraris are not meant to look as though they can help me organise my emails.

Technically, however, this computer mouse has apparently been drinking energy drinks. Ferrari says the Luce produces more than 1,000 cv, reaches 100 kilometres per hour in 2.5 seconds and has a top speed of 310 kilometres per hour. Its 122-kWh battery provides more than 530 kilometres of claimed range, while four electric motors deliver power to all four wheels.

So yes, it is enormously fast. If you challenge the Luce at a traffic light, it may quietly remove your confidence, your dignity and most of the distance between itself and the horizon.

Ferrari has also tried to solve my biggest problem with electric performance cars: the missing emotion. The Luce uses a special system that amplifies genuine mechanical vibrations from its electric powertrain rather than playing fake engine sounds through the speakers. I genuinely like that thinking because manufactured V12 noises inside an EV would feel like watching an action film with somebody making explosion sounds from behind the sofa.

But I still need more.

I want vibration through the steering wheel. I want sound that rises with the speed and tells my body that something irresponsible is about to happen. I want to press the accelerator and feel my heartbeat submit an official complaint.

A silent launch may be faster, but noise is part of the theatre. Without it, I feel as though I have reached 100 kilometres per hour before the car has finished loading.

Then there is the name. “Luce” means light in Italian. Thankfully, Ferrari appears to mean light as illumination because the car weighs around 2,300 kilograms. That is not light. That is a very fast Italian building.

Would I buy the Ferrari Luce if A2W suddenly became extremely successful and my bank account stopped behaving like a normal human bank account? Honestly, no.

I would admire the engineering, sit inside it, touch every beautiful switch and politely thank Ferrari for allowing me near it. Then I would leave and buy a Lamborghini that wakes up the neighbourhood, frightens local birds and makes absolutely no attempt to improve my relationship with the environment.

I am happy with a Lambo. Please and thank you.

However, I would absolutely drive the Luce on a track. I want to experience more than 1,000 horsepower arriving instantly, discover whether Ferrari has genuinely created emotion without an engine and find out if the world’s fastest computer mouse can make me forget that it looks like one.

That is the strange thing about this car. I do not like the exterior, but I desperately want to understand it.

Perhaps that is exactly what Ferrari wanted.

The Luce is brave, clever and technically extraordinary. Its cabin mixes beautiful materials, digital displays and proper physical controls, which deserves credit in an age when some manufacturers expect drivers to use a touchscreen simply to remember where the air conditioning went.

But the exterior has lost the aura for me.

Ferrari has created the future, given it incredible performance and then dressed it for an important presentation at a technology company. I respect the thinking. I admire the engineering. I would happily take it around a track. I just wish looking at it made me want to put a poster on my wall instead of checking whether it needs two AA batteries.

Waiting to drive Ferrari’s 1,000-horsepower mouse before escaping in my Lamborghini.
aKi Malik