Meet Ferrari’s New All-Electric Luce, a 1,035 HP 4-Door That Seats 5

The crowd of spectators couldn’t be sure what to make of the car, its capabilities, or how it would impact its automaker’s future, but on that particular May 25, Ferrari put the world on notice. The year was 1947, and the car was the Ferrari 125 S, which launched the Prancing Horse legacy when it gave the marque its first motorsport win at the Grand Prix of Rome.

Now, 79 years later, to the day, Ferrari has returned to the Eternal City, not for racing, but to officially pull the veil off another milestone model—the all-electric Ferrari Luce. Maranello may not have captured lightning in a bottle to the same extent again, but the four-door, five-seat Luce is certainly a shock at first glance.

Sure to eclipse the multi-terrain Purosangue as Maranello’s most polarizing model, the 1,035 hp Luce is a zero-emissions statement piece intended to further demonstrate Ferrari’s maverick nature while the marque plugs into complete electrification on its own terms.

“Ferrari has never been defined by what powers it. It has always been defined by what it makes you feel—that thrill, that sound, that sense of wonder—and that has never changed,” stated Ferrari’s executive chairman, John Elkann, in his opening remarks at the global reveal. The event took place within the Vela di Calatrava–Città dello Sport complex, which Elkann referred to as “a place designed to imagine the future.” Fitting, as that is the Luce’s same raison d’être.

“Ferrari Luce is not a response to change,” Elkann assured all 200-plus members of the media in attendance. “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.’” To answer that question, the storied marque tapped into what has always helped it innovate, and that’s to collaborate. Enter the creative tour de force comprising Sir Jony Ive, Marc Newson, and their San Francisco–based design team at LoveFrom.

As mentioned in our preliminary coverage of the car, the opportunity paired seamlessly with a lifelong passion for automobiles shared by both Ive and Newson. “We’ve judged at all sorts of concours events. We collect cars. I know we share very, very fond stories and memories of having restored vehicles when we were children and teenagers in England and in Australia. The opportunity to work with Ferrari together, is a really incredible and unique one,” mentioned Newson when the Luce’s interior components were revealed in February.

That was considered phase two of the debut, while the initial phase occurred in Maranello this past October, as part of Ferrari’s Capital Markets Day, and comprised the unveiling of the aluminum chassis and select elements of the power train. Yet the full picture is finally complete for the public as of today. The first electric car from Ferrari is also its first five-seater, presenting a platform that features four radial-flow permanent magnet synchronous motors, one at each wheel, that Ferrari touts as “derived from the F80 and drawing on expertise gained in Formula 1 and the WEC,” according to it official press release.

The result is the aforementioned total output of 1,035 hp, along with just over 770 ft lbs of torque. The power-train configuration gives the 4,982.4-pound (curb weight) Luce the ability to cover zero to 62 mph in 2.5 seconds—in launch control—and top out at 192.6 mph. Juicing the automotive muscle is a 210-cell, 122 kwh battery which gives the Luce an estimated range of about 329 miles.

Where the Luce truly raises eyebrows, though, is its overall exterior styling, which has a very tenuous through line to the marque’s design DNA at best. But that was deliberate. “A well-known technology inevitably evolves towards existing stylistic solutions, while innovations always cause a challenge from the aesthetic point of view of the product,” Flavio Manzoni, the marque’s chief design officer and head of Ferrari Centro Stile, recently told Robb Report. “‘Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.’ This sentence by the German social psychologist Erich Fromm summarizes my thoughts on the need to be visionary and courageous in designing something innovative,” Manzoni mentioned. In reference to Ive and Newson, he added, “The element to be emphasized is that non-automotive designers from the world of product design and high tech have been chosen, precisely to guarantee a result diametrically opposed to what has been achieved so far.”

In the regard, LoveFrom has definitively delivered. If you were expecting a purely plug-in doppelgänger to the Purosangue, think again. While the stylistic language of Ferrari has always been defined by sensuous curves, visually seductive strakes and haunches, and a motorsport-inspired appearance, even in its grand tourers, the Luce reflects a fixation on drag reduction. To that end, its shape is born from 6,000 computational fluid dynamics simulations and roughly 330 hours of wind-tunnel testing, including 80 hours with full-size models.

With even a cursory look, one can see shades of Marcello Gandini’s wedge-like approach to automotive form, especially in the pervasive glass house, though softened nearly to the point of homogeneity. At the nose is a pronounced S-duct directing so much airflow that the wipers had to be vertically configured at the flanks of the windshield. Air is also subtly directed through the front a rear wheel arches, and the wheels themselves (23-inch at the front and 24-inch at the back) are claimed to “reduce drag by 5 percent,” according to Ferrari.

When Rolls-Royce set out to develop its first EV, the Spectre, we were told the mandate was that “it’s a Rolls-Royce first, and an electric car second.” In the case of the Luce, the expected adherence to tradition has been eschewed in order to introduce a completely new facet of Ferrari in both form and function. Where the Italian automaker has been determined to hold fast to its legacy, though, is on the performance front.

To ensure Maranello’s masterful drive dynamics hold true for the Luce, a few firsts come into play with the all-wheel-drive EV. A key introduction is the Vehicle Control Unit (VCU), which oversees the motors and the active suspension, among other elements, while factoring in driver inputs. And it reviews and optimizes at a rate of 200 times per second. There’s also four-wheel steering and a new torque-vectoring system monikered Ferrari Lateral Optimization Wheeltorque, likely named so it could have the fitting acronym FLOW. Then there’s the new Torque Shift Management Engagement system, which gives the paddle shifters real purpose. The right paddle has five different power selections to shift through, while the left one offers five different levels of engine braking.

And to top it all off, Ferrari has given the Luce a soundtrack of its own, one that it asserts is not fabricated from thin air but authentic to the power train, though the specifics may leave all but ardent audiophiles stymied as to its execution. Understandable, as Ferrari notes that it took five years and nearly 25,000 miles of testing to get right.

Yet while the exterior may not win everyone over, the interior is where the Luce sets a new benchmark, not just for Ferrari, but the industry, when it comes to the balance of digital and analog interplay. Again, as we previously mentioned after the interior components were debuted in San Francisco, when it comes to his work on the Luce’s interior, Ive had a principle starting point. “I never understood why, if the power source was electric, why does it follow that the interface be digital? I think that’s a bizarre and lazy assumption,” Ive mentioned back in February. “I think, particularly, as the power source affords an incredible set of opportunities, we are missing some things that we love about our old Ferraris. And so it was very clear to us that we needed to figure out as many ways as possible to viscerally and physically connect to the interface.”

Exemplifying this creative approach is the control panel on the dash, specifically what Ferrari’s refers to as the “multigraph” display that can alternate between a conventional watch face, a chronograph, a compass, and the car’s launch-control indicator. Yet while each of the aforementioned are digital displays, the three hands are crafted from anodized aluminum and are driven by three motors and intricate gearing. And at the base is an anodized handle to allow you to easily swivel the entire display as needed. As for the steering wheel and binnacle, the latter is attached to the steering column to effortlessly match wheel positioning.

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The instrument cluster represents bleeding-edge applications from Samsung and its OLED tech, and the same holds true for the prevalent use of Corning glass, including the innovative application of electronic ink on the key box. The sum of the interior’s ubiquitous parts is a cabin that tells a lush tactile story with precisely machined aluminum toggles and glass buttons complementing the intuitive electronic displays. In broad brushstrokes, the cabin sets a new standard in ergonomic design and a return of interior grace and gravitas through increased tactile engagement.

Although stateside pricing has yet to be announced, the Luce will start at 550,000 euros in Italy, so its definitely not the marque’s entry-level model by any means. Without having spent time spent behind the wheel yet, we can’t opine on how successfully the Luce will drive Ferrari’s future, though it is the missing piece to the automaker’s goal of “technological neutrality,” the ability to provide a power train and car for any use case.

“This has been probably one of the most exciting projects that we ever developed in Ferrari, simply because it was not just developing another model, stated Ferrari C.E.O. Benedetto Vigna at the premiere. “This is going to be the most versatile Ferrari ever produced.”  

Will the Luce inspire the same aspirational obsession in a young child as that of the new 849 Testarossa or F80. No, at least not at first sight. But perhaps the next generation of Ferraristi will have their first taste of the marque’s power and performance from the back seat of its new family hauler. For now, the Luce’s comparative silence is Ferrari’s mic-drop moment.

Click here for more photos of the all-electric Ferrari Luce.