Is the Ferrari Luce’s Design Really That Bad? 3 Italian Auto Experts Weigh In

The Ferrari Luce, the archetypal electrical conveyance successful the brand’s history, has generated heated treatment online, arsenic comments and opinions astir the plan proceed to bounce astir the web.

The Luce, an electrical sedan with a $650,000 terms tag that Ferrari presented with pomp and condition astatine the Quirinale successful Rome connected Monday, has paid dearly for its coming retired from down the curtain. Since Monday, the automaker has been suffering an avalanche of complaints and skepticism astir the Luce. It’s not conscionable the price—which is precocious adjacent for a Ferrari—but what the car represents and however it fits into the brand’s agelong and storied legacy. The time aft the EV’s debut, Ferrari banal dipped 8 percent.

Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, Ferrari’s erstwhile chairman, said, “We hazard the demolition of a myth.” Carlo Calenda, an Italian legislator and the country’s erstwhile economical minister, called the merchandise an “aesthetic and technological insult,” and took the accidental to onslaught John Elkann—the person of the Agnelli family, which owns a controlling involvement successful Ferrari—and his absorption of the family's assets. Closing the ellipse was Matteo Salvini, who arsenic Italy’s curate of transport felt compelled to intervene. His antagonistic assessment, accompanied by an invocation of Enzo Ferrari, demonstrates that thing tin beryllium said astir the Luce.

Beyond thing 1 mightiness think, the Luce is simply a radically antithetic car from its predecessors. It weighs astir a ton much than a hybrid, uses 4 electrical motors (one per wheel), and is built to spot 5 people. Its quality to sprint from zero to 100 kilometers per hr successful 2.5 seconds is impressive; the instantaneous acceleration adjacent required Ferrari to consult with NASA successful bid to support the sensations of specified an acceleration from being physically unpleasant. The “engine note” wrong the car uses electronically treated mechanical sounds.

We discussed the disruptive and divisive Luce with Maurizio Corbi, a car decorator with much than 30 years of experience. Corbi, who trained astatine the concern plan steadfast Bertone and aboriginal astatine the car decorator Pininfarina, explains wherefore the Ferrari Luce has triggered specified polarized reactions, some among insiders and the wide public.

“I fishy it's a almighty selling ploy,” Corbi says. “They virtually threw a boulder successful a pond, and that's each radical are talking about. I can't callback thing similar.”

“The satellite of cars, and plan successful particular, follows a good line. It's perpetually evolving, but there's ever a request for a civilization rooted successful time. Ferrari, erstwhile it comes to roadworthy cars, means Pininfarina. The brand's top masterpieces carnivore that signature. [Ferrari’s] existent plan director, Flavio Manzoni, has been capable to innovate portion inactive keeping a adjacent oculus connected that tradition. I fearfulness that helium excessively has been affected by this project, due to the fact that helium is excessively detached from the way Ferrari has taken successful caller years.”