The New Electric Ferrari Luce: Magic Mouse, But Car

I can’t help but get the sense that many enthusiasts don’t care about new Ferraris. They can make eleventy million horsepower and have laser beams for windscreen wipers and it still won’t matter. They’re too generic, too unobtanium, no longer objects of desire or even interest. The Ferrari Luce, on the other hand, is interesting. Not just because it’s electric, but because it’s an absolute freak. Welcome to the weirdest Ferrari since the Mondial, and possibly the weirdest Italian car since the Fiat Multipla.

Right, let’s get the specs out of the way first because they somehow aren’t the most interesting thing about the Luce. This EV has four motors kicking out a combined 1,035 horsepower, but don’t think they’re all identical. The front two motors combined can only generate 282 horsepower, which means the two rear motors are responsible for 835 ponies. That should make things lively in more ways than a claimed zero-to-62 mph in 2.5 seconds. A good clip behind the Lucid Air Sapphire and Porsche Taycan Turbo GT, but still seriously rapid. Speaking of pace, Ferrari claims zero-to-124 MPH in 6.8 seconds and a top speed of 193 MPH. What’s the curb weight, you ask? Well, it’s a claimed 4,982 pounds. Luce is Italian for ‘light’, but not that kind of light.

Feeding those motors is the responsibility of a 122 kWh battery pack, although that’s gross rather than net capacity, and don’t expect that gargantuan figure to result in serious range. Ferrari claims 330 miles on the WLTP cycle, about on par with a 2022 Kia EV6 long-range RWD which was rated at 310 miles on the EPA cycle. Expect a final figure around that ballpark for the Luce. In another weird similarity to the aforementioned Kia, the Luce also features an 800-volt architecture, except the Ferrari’s good to actually max out 350 kW DC fast chargers.

As you’d probably expect with something weighing nigh-on 5,000 pounds, Ferrari’s pulled out all the stops to make it go ’round corners. We’re talking active electrohydraulic suspension, four-motor torque vectoring, rear-wheel-steering with up to 2.15 degrees of angle, 265-section front and 315-section rear tires, and the latest version of Ferrari’s dynamics management software. Want to slow down? In addition to up to 500 kW of regenerative braking, the Luce sports 15.4-inch carbon ceramic discs up front and 14.6-inch units out back.

So then, what about engagement? While simulated V12 F1 car soundtracks would be neat, Ferrari’s gone in the complete opposite direction. Instead, the Luce processes actual sound from the rear drive motors, with various profiles and intensity depending on the drive mode. At the same time, paddle shifters aren’t just there for regenerative braking, the right paddle can adjust available torque, giving a kick in the backside with each pull. And we haven’t even reached the interesting part yet.

Designed by Apple veteran Jony Ive and “trustworthy and honest” public toilet designer Marc Newson, the Ferrari Luce is the first car from Maranello to carry the silhouette of a Magic Mouse. It has a dash-to-axle ratio of no, an enormous sweeping roofline, and a serious amount of wedge to the belt line. It’s certainly not objectively beautiful, but it’s also not immediately repulsive in the same way the new Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe is. Electrification has allowed for all sorts of new shapes of cars. This is one of them.

You can really tell the Luce’s roots lie in tech design rather than automotive design because there’s just so little typical Ferrari DNA here. While surface tension and thick black trim tries to take some weight out of the bottoms of the doors, there’s still an enormous amount of unbroken metal down each flank. Huge black bezels around vents on the front doors make the Luce look stubbier than its 197.87-inch length suggests. The down-the-road graphic is virtually impossible to anthropomorphize, the rear end treatment looks like it’s nesting an entire other car within it, and this is all only at a macro level.

Zoom in on the Luce and you start to notice some outrageous details. While the rear coach doors are precedented by the Purosangue SUV, they barely scratch the surface of the oddities dotted about the exterior. Each windscreen wiper’s resting position is completely vertical, like two Tesla Cybertrucks welded together longitudinally. This is because the Luce has no conventional wiper cowl, and each wiper arm simply sprouts out of an enormous windscreen with a big frit band to meet a giant recessed black hood insert.

Around back, a band of tinted plastic hides four circular inner elements, melding a touch of F355 Berlinetta with a touch of facelift Jaguar XJS. Oh, and while you’d expect the Luce to feature a lineup of wheels all more visually complicated than webs woven by spiders on LSD, you can tick an option box for the cleanest set of five-spoke alloys from Ferrari in decades.

If that isn’t enough visual whiplash for you, just take a look at the interior of the Luce. If you were expecting the dashboard to be a holodeck, you’d be mistaken. Instead, you get loads of leather and aluminum, real buttons and toggle switches, and an uncharacteristically pretty steering wheel reminiscent of the classics. Granted, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Metallic finishes are a hallmark of Ive’s Apple tenure, and elements on the OLED infotainment screen and digital instrument cluster bristle with his influence.

Add it all up and the Ferrari Luce is an extremely Marmite proposition. It doesn’t evoke emotion, it evokes a skeptical sort of studiousness, something you don’t normally get from something with a Prancing Horse on the front. At the same time, a €550,000 electric Ferrari was always going to have a buyer pool the size of a shot glass, so why not get bizarre with it? Some might call it a crime, but when the 849 Testarossa looks the way it does and a Ferrari SUV is something you can actually buy, any connotations of sacredness died a long time ago. As long as every future Ferrari doesn’t look like the Luce, I’m okay with it. At least it’ll make the 2075 Pebble Beach lawn more interesting.

Top graphic credit: Ferrari