Ferrari Luce EV

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Come to think of it, one could think of some other Ferrari models that aren't necessarily ugly but don't seem to fit the brand's design language, can't we? Like the 1956 410 Superamerica by Ghia, which does indeed look cool, but it seems unlike other Ferrari designs from the time. (Though I suppose a car called the "Superamerica" makes sense to have a variant that looks very...American.) Or perhaps the cars that were solely designed and built for the Sultan of Brunei.

That said, I think the Luce's price is insanity - even the Purosangue is over $200k less despite having a V12. The Luce really should've had a closer resemblance to the Pininfarina Battista.
If I understand it correctly, the Supercamerica was not really a Ferrari in that it was rebodied by Ghia. In any case, Ferrari hadn't really established itself yet in the 1950s and so there was more variation the design language. The 125-166 look more British than Italian to my eyes, for instance.
 
Damn I'm really going to die on the hill that this car isn't really that bad lol.

Like people froth at the mouth with so much hate for this car even saying "I don't love it but it's an ok car you guys, it's not the worst one ever made" is a controversial opinion.

At this point I wouldn't even be surprised if the Vatican put out a statement denouncing the Luce.

Also to the people saying "it looks like a Chinese car with a prancing horse sticker from Temu", yeah that's kinda the point. That's where the cheddar and sales for this car are in Ferrari's eyes. Like as much as China loves flexing their home-grown tech, and their EVs, they still for some reason really love Silicon Valley, an iPhone, their American luxury tech. And idk if Ferrari thinks they have a business case here then hopefully it goes well for them and this car is like a huge smash hit for sales over there and proves everyone wrong lol. That would be interesting to see after all of this "disaster of the millennium" outrage.

Also it's hilarious seeing these AI "artists" making renders of electric Ferrari hypercars based on the Luce design like they totally didn't hate the Battista and Evija when those came out.
 
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And idk if Ferrari thinks they have a business case here then hopefully it goes well for them and this car is like a huge smash hit for sales over there and proves everyone wrong lol.
You can't prove that something is not ugly, that's an absurd statement.
 
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It's not a bad looking car. It's a bad looking Ferrari.
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You can't prove that something is not ugly, that's an absurd statement.
I never said that? Plenty of people are saying it's going to be a sales flop simply because it's ugly, but completely ignoring that it wasn't meant to be a hypercar in the first place and is going after a specific market that's grown a huge amount in the last decade.
 
I never said that? Plenty of people are saying it's going to be a sales flop simply because it's ugly, but completely ignoring that it wasn't meant to be a hypercar in the first place and is going after a specific market that's grown a huge amount in the last decade.
Sure, you didn't specify what they would be wrong about, but your whole post was about you thinking it's not as ugly as most people seem to think. So when you then said you wanted to prove everyone wrong it seemed like you wanted to prove them wrong about the car being ugly.
 
Plenty of people are saying it's going to be a sales flop simply because it's ugly
I think that you're missing a key point from the end of what these plenty of people are saying, which is that it's also $640,000.

Personally, I don't think it'll be a sales flop in specific terms: it won't sell well in general terms, nor in comparison to its best-selling cars (the 458 Italia sold about 15k in six years, with the 458 platform generally making it to 20k), but Ferrari will probably sell every one it plans to build. Which will be in the hundreds a year, maybe as much as two a day on average early on.

That's not just because it is generally a poor piece of design both in overall look (too tall, too slab-sided, too much of a Leaf rip-off) and in general detail (pug underbite, droopy front-fell-off-a-Bricklin, pooping out a Corvette-lighted Saab 9000, thumb-operated battery cover at random on the sides, hey why not park the wipers like that, no design lineage from any other Ferrari as far as I can make out), but because it's ugly and it's $640,000.

We're also yet to see if Ferrari, which normally sticks with a car for five-to-seven years without major changes, will be able to keep up with the much more rapid iterative pace of EVs.


If you have a desire for an EV with many powers, five seats, a minimalist + screens interior, and 800V/350kW fast charging, a Polestar 5 Performance and a vinyl wrap so it isn't Ctrl+U is a quarter of the price and probably won't get quite so much urine thrown at it.
 
If you have a desire for an EV with many powers, five seats, a minimalist + screens interior, and 800V/350kW fast charging, a Polestar 5 Performance and a vinyl wrap so it isn't Ctrl+U is a quarter of the price and probably won't get quite so much urine thrown at it.
I've heard of people spitting in roadsters with the top down, but is urinating on cars in public a common thing I've just never heard about? It's probably happened once or twice but I've never heard of someone doing that myself. I'll just assume it's hyperbole because this is apparently the worst car of all time.

Also pretty much every Ferrari has always been decent house money, and these days a decent house can go for 600k easily. There hasn't ever been a Ferrari that isn't overpriced relative to its competitors. If someone's in the market to be able to consider buying a Ferrari, that isn't an issue for them. Ferrari is never going to be competitive with their pricing because they don't need to be and they don't care.

I've seen some people say too it's overpriced relative to the performance, but Ferrari isn't Bugatti and has never been about making the fastest car in whatever segment, it's always been more about making an experience. The Enzo was slower than a McLaren F1 but it was more about making that Michael Schumacher F1 car for the road feel, the F80 pissed off a lot of the V12 purists for having a V6, but that car was all about making you feel like you were driving the Le Mans winning 499P. The Luce is a Silicon Valley tech bro experience, which is why they got the Apple guy to do it. Might not be the experience purists want from Ferrari, but they put a lot of effort into crafting it, and that's something that a Tesla or Polestar doesn't have.

Also around my area, the average truck seems to go for a fair chunk over 100k these days. That used to be Porsche money, and certain 911s can easily get over 200k now, which is where the F430 and 458 used to be. A 296 GTS is almost double the price of a 458's launch price when you start getting into options these days. A 600k techy Ferrari doesn't seem that crazy to me anymore, honestly.
 
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I'll just assume it's hyperbole because this is apparently the worst car of all time.
Remind me where I said that it was the worst car of all time again?

And no, it's not hyperbole either. Nor would I say "urinating on cars" is "a common thing", which is why I didn't actually say either of those two things either. But yes, the thing I did actually say is a thing that does happen.

So is throwing/smearing faeces at/on cars, though it is neither "a common thing" nor achieved solely through dropping trou and evacuating directly onto the vehicle (nor always human).

Also pretty much every Ferrari has always been decent house money, and these days a decent house can go for 600k easily. There hasn't ever been a Ferrari that isn't overpriced relative to its competitors. If someone's in the market to be able to consider buying a Ferrari, that isn't an issue for them. Ferrari is never going to be competitive with their pricing because they don't need to be and they don't care.
Okay, but this doesn't seem to be actually related to anything in particular.

At best you seem to be agreeing with the second and third paragraphs I wrote but you didn't quote?

Personally, I don't think it'll be a sales flop in specific terms: it won't sell well in general terms, nor in comparison to its best-selling cars (the 458 Italia sold about 15k in six years, with the 458 platform generally making it to 20k), but Ferrari will probably sell every one it plans to build. Which will be in the hundreds a year, maybe as much as two a day on average early on.

That's not just because it is generally a poor piece of design both in overall look (too tall, too slab-sided, too much of a Leaf rip-off) and in general detail (pug underbite, droopy front-fell-off-a-Bricklin, pooping out a Corvette-lighted Saab 9000, thumb-operated battery cover at random on the sides, hey why not park the wipers like that, no design lineage from any other Ferrari as far as I can make out), but because it's ugly and it's $640,000.
If you tl;dred right through that: it's ugly and it's expensive, which is why it won't sell well in general terms and is also likely not to sell well in Ferrari terms, but will sell well enough in the sense that Ferrari will probably sell every one it plans to build so won't be a "sales flop".

I doubt Ferrari is planning on it being a cornerstone of its offerings, or even a double-digit percentage, hence my estimate of two cars a day. Ferrari sells about 14,000 cars a year, so 700ish would be 5%ish.

As a reminder, your comment was the rather Trumpian:

Plenty of people are saying it's going to be a sales flop simply because it's ugly,
My response is that, from what I've read, they don't seem to be saying that. In fact I've seen comments that it will sell despite being ugly because it's a Ferrari (which also seems to be the second part of your response).

However the more considered responses are that it's both ugly (in the sense of being generally bad design, but also not Ferrari enough to keep legacy customers or capture new ones who want a Ferrari) and way too expensive (particularly for customer capture) at the same time.
 
Okay, but this doesn't seem to be actually related to anything in particular.

At best you seem to be agreeing with the second and third paragraphs I wrote but you didn't quote?
You spent a good chunk of your last post italicizing the price and comparing it to a Polestar that's a quarter of said price, so that seems pretty clearly like you were trying to say it was overpriced to me, so I replied by saying whether a Ferrari is overpriced or not doesn't matter and they've always been historically? Why do you think that's not related to anything.

no design lineage from any other Ferrari as far as I can make out), but because it's ugly and it's $640,000.
Also... it's there, I don't get why people don't see this? It has the quad lamps in the rear, it has the black bar across the front like the old Daytona and the other new-age Ferraris, just done in a different way. The interior is straight out of the 70s and 80s era of the company. But since it's a different take on the design that people don't like suddenly those very intentional design cues are invalidated? Or the lineage just doesn't exist anymore?

Ferrari doesn't exactly have another old sedan in the lineup to go copy the homework of, this is the first one, so yes it's going to be carving out a new niche inherently.

However the more considered responses are that it's both ugly (in the sense of being generally bad design, but also not Ferrari enough to keep legacy customers or capture new ones who want a Ferrari) and way too expensive (particularly for customer capture) at the same time.
I mean what I'm mainly trying to argue against here is everyone seems to now be the gatekeepers of what a Ferrari is and isn't, which I think is ridiculous. We'll see how the sales go and if it does end up being a flop I suppose, but I'm pretty confident this car is destined mainly for the Chinese market and the rising upper middle class that the tech industry's wealth created. They're trying to exploit potential new customers in a new market. so of course it isn't going to be a traditional hypercar that looks like an F80 or a grand tourer that looks like a slightly raised 12Cilindri.



Also James May likes it too and that's all the vindication I need.
 
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Yeah, I see all the flame about it not being a Ferrari. This is their version of a “VGT” of sorts like they’ve done before. Obviously, if they didn’t want to build it they wouldn’t have. Should be interesting to see how they are in traffic. Shouldn’t blend in like the only Purosangue I’ve ever seen in the metal.
Nearly home, had to pull over for this one. Edit: It’s about one million AUD as the drive-away price(includes taxes).
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I mean what I'm mainly trying to argue against here is everyone seems to now be the gatekeepers of what a Ferrari is and isn't, which I think is ridiculous.
Also called being stuck up ****ers with no idea how business works. I'd hazard a guess that those same people also complained about the Cayenne not being a Porsche, and the Urus not being a Lamborghini, but the former basically saved the entire company from going under and the latter sold so much that the production lines had to be expanded.

Another thing, about the design, is that it's extremely function driven. For a long time people have ridiculed EV manufacturers for building "normal" looking cars and not taking advantage of the missing engine and what it can do to the packaging, and now when Ferrari does exactly that it's a bad thing. It's obvious that they didn't want to make another electric powered normal car, they wanted to try something that can't be done with a massive lump of metal that needs a lot of room somewhere. And it makes a lot of sense from a mechanical point of view.
 
You spent a good chunk of your last post italicizing the price and comparing it to a Polestar that's a quarter of said price
I italicised the price once, from two mentions of it, and that was to highlight the fact you'd entirely omitted it as a consideration.

The Polestar comparison was a single sentence/paragraph and highlighted the fact that something very similar that isn't a dog's breakfast already exists for less money.

so that seems pretty clearly like you were trying to say it was overpriced to me, so I replied by saying whether a Ferrari is overpriced or not doesn't matter and they've always been historically? Why do you think that's not related to anything.
You're making assumptions again. I don't try to say things, I say them - and this is very much an issue here where you're making up stuff I didn't say and responding to that instead - and where did I actually say it was overpriced? I said it was expensive and indeed "too expensive" with a very specific reason.

"Overpriced" is a largely meaningless and quite subjective term, used by people to mean "I wouldn't pay that for it" to intimate that no-one else should either, but sometimes meant more specifically as a term that defines something priced higher than the general market for such an item will pay (even if a handful of people still would). If I say I think Ferrari will still sell all the Luces it makes, by definition I cannot think it is overpriced.

But it is too expensive to, as I did say, entice too many existing customers out of their $650,000 12Cilindri, while conquest customers tend to go entry level (and I'm not sure who in the Chinese upper-middle class is going to be able to afford one; it's ~40 times their annual income). Of course there are always collectors who have to have the latest one, and the guys who order 22 of everything to store for... ever. Either way, it will sell pretty much exactly what Ferrari intends to sell, which is going to be well shy of 1,000 units a year.

Also... it's there, I don't get why people don't see this? It has the quad lamps in the rear,
Only occasionally something Ferrari does, and not something particularly denoting a Ferrari: Chevrolet (not just the Corvette either; the early-00s Impala), Nissan/Infiniti, Bugatti, even the Mk5 Golf (when illuminated) all have round dual lamps. No current other Ferrari has round dual lamps either - the last was the 812 Superfast, unless you want to include the squircles on the SF90 - and those that do employ a dual lamp motif of some kind only illuminate in bars. The 12Cilindri, Amalfi, Purosangue, 849 Testarossa, and 296 GTB/GTS all have a light bar.
it has the black bar across the front like the old Daytona and the other new-age Ferraris, just done in a different way.
Very different, in that it isn't really there. The black portion you can see next to the C-shaped headlight clusters is in fact part of the entire front portion of the car up to the windscreen scuttle and acts as an air duct. A body-coloured (umm... the bits other than black) section sits over that in a similar but different way to how the Pista was set up.
The interior is straight out of the 70s and 80s era of the company.
I'm not totally sure Ferrari would thank you for that one, but about which bit are you speaking? The podding of everything isn't particularly Ferrariesque (squint a bit and I might see less-fussy Lamborghini Jalpa), it's stuck with a three-spoke wheel since ever (without loads of buttons it takes up back pre-00s and without shift paddles it takes us back pre-90s), and the ribbed seats which are the closest to a 1980s Ferrari have been an option on pretty much all of them.
Ferrari doesn't exactly have another old sedan in the lineup to go copy the homework of, this is the first one, so yes it's going to be carving out a new niche inherently.
It does though have lots of current cars and there was no need to go blank-sheet; it's absolutely possible to make a car that looks a bit like your other cars but also not entirely because it's not limited by traditional ICE constraints.

Ferrari didn't go blank-sheet for the Purosangue and it wasn't like it had another old SUV in the lineup of which to go copy the homework...

I mean what I'm mainly trying to argue against here is everyone seems to now be the gatekeepers of what a Ferrari is and isn't, which I think is ridiculous.
That wasn't part of the original post, and hasn't been part of any of what I've said thus far. Feel free to quote and respond to other people who are saying that if that's the thing you want to argue against, rather than those of someone who isn't.

What you were initially arguing against was a fantasy position that people think it's the worst car ever (who? Where?) and that they think it won't sell purely on the basis of being ugly, and that was what I was responding to.

Like people froth at the mouth with so much hate for this car even saying "I don't love it but it's an ok car you guys, it's not the worst one ever made" is a controversial opinion.
I'll just assume it's hyperbole because this is apparently the worst car of all time.
Plenty of people are saying it's going to be a sales flop simply because it's ugly,
I was pointing out that you're missing the price as part of the reason it won't sell well by comparison to other cars (and other Ferraris), not just because it's a crap design (overall and in detail), but also stated that it won't be a "sales flop" because Ferrari will sell every one it intends to sell. Nothing more, nothing different, nothing you need to think I was trying to say but somehow couldn't or didn't. Just that.

And, for what it's worth, I don't love it (not even close) but I'm sure it's several steps above being an okay car and definitely isn't the worst one ever made. It's not a controversial opinion and you don't really need to qualify it with a notion of being persecuted for it. Oh wait, they're coming for me now. Call the carabinieri! Wait, it is the carabinieri, aaargh. Etc.


If you want to discuss Ferrari gatekeeping, what a Ferrari is and isn't can be defined in one simple phrase: if it's something Ferrari stuck a Ferrari badge on and called a Ferrari, it's a Ferrari and if it isn't it isn't. Ferrari stuck a Ferrari badge on the Luce and called it a Ferrari, so it's a Ferrari. It can be weird, ugly, bizarrely proportioned, and any other property, but it's a Ferrari.

I'm not sure what else needs to be added or argued about that.

So are we done now? I don't really want to make any more posts where the bulk of the response is pointing out things you're replying to that I didn't say as if I did, and reiterating things I did say again.
 
And idk if Ferrari thinks they have a business case here then hopefully it goes well for them and this car is like a huge smash hit for sales over there and proves everyone wrong lol. That would be interesting to see after all of this "disaster of the millennium" outrage.
I never said that? Plenty of people are saying it's going to be a sales flop simply because it's ugly, but completely ignoring that it wasn't meant to be a hypercar in the first place and is going after a specific market that's grown a huge amount in the last decade.
I don't know if it'll be a smash hit in China, but Ferrari has confirmed their order sheets are currently sold out through 2027.

What that means for actual production numbers is any one's guess right now.
 
I don't know if it'll be a smash hit in China, but Ferrari has confirmed their order sheets are currently sold out through 2027.

What that means for actual production numbers is any one's guess right now.
Well... there's estimates :lol:

I've seen... a few, but most stick around the high-00s. Here's the FT quoting unnamed analysts (in an article about stuck-up mouthbreathers who don't know how business works resulted in the share price of Ferrari falling 8.4% on the Luce's reveal) at an initial 800 per annum:



In principle, the redeveloped production line (the "e-building") could produce 20,000 cars a year across all models. As Ferrari has pretty consistently sold 13,xxx cars a year for the past four years (having only gone over 10k in 2019 and remaining at 10,xxx through 2020 and 2021), it gives a 6,xxx-car headroom which a new line could grow to occupy.

But the purpose of the facility isn't to increase output directly, rather profitability per car primarily by shortening development times. Vigna even said "We want to grow the company but not because we increase volumes"; in 2025 it sold 0.8% more cars than 2024 but increased revenue by 7%, largely through personalisation options...

Problem is Ferrari doesn't share individual model sales figures, so we don't know how much of that 112-car increase was swallowed up by the aforementioned $650,000 12Cilindri coming online in 2025... which I also think looks gopping (but better than the 849). A lot of the articles on sales figures - which rarely take into account the difference between registration figures and actual sales - say that the profit increase was driven by the 12Cilindri and SF90XX, but since they all seem to say that I'm assuming it was in a press release.


Quoting myself here, but:

If you want to discuss Ferrari gatekeeping, what a Ferrari is and isn't can be defined in one simple phrase: if it's something Ferrari stuck a Ferrari badge on and called a Ferrari, it's a Ferrari and if it isn't it isn't. Ferrari stuck a Ferrari badge on the Luce and called it a Ferrari, so it's a Ferrari. It can be weird, ugly, bizarrely proportioned, and any other property, but it's a Ferrari.
The guy whose job it used to be to do that and incredibly successfully too, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, said he hopes Ferrari takes the Ferrari badge off it...

If I had to say what I think, I would do harm to Ferrari. It's risks destroying a legend and I'm deeply sorry. I hope that they take the Prancing Horse from that car. This is surely a car that at least the Chinese will not copy.

... and that's interesting now I think about it.

Waaaaay back in the day, and this won't be news to anyone here, Ferrari made some cars and didn't put a Ferrari badge on them (or even use the Ferrari chassis numbering system for them). Instead, Enzo made a new brand called Dino - named for his son, Alfredo "Dino" Ferrari, who was credited with having the idea for the V6 which powered them - to create a Ferrari V12 line and a Dino V6 line.

It is becoming de rigueur again for brands to make new brands to sell different types of car. Toyota's gone full-90s'-Mazda and will soon have four: Toyota, Lexus, GR, and Century. Maybe Scion will come back too?

One wonders then if there's a possibility that, given the reaction generally from not just people classed as stupid for not liking it but also the dummies who invest in it, Ferrari may consider doing this again. Perhaps even a "Luce" brand for EVs to distinguish them from ICE/Hybrid cars as with V12/V6s.

Then again, would that be a death knell for a car that will owe a lot of its sales* to that fact that it has the Ferrari badge?

*Any bets Ferrari will make the next application-only supercar contingent on Luce ownership?
 

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