Ferrari has been making internal combustion engines for 78 years. It has won more Formula 1 championships than any other constructor. It has produced the 250 GTO, the F40, the Enzo, and the LaFerrari. On Sunday evening in Rome, it drove five electric cars through a light show and introduced the world to the Luce.
Ferrari presented its first fully electric car on Monday, marking a high-stakes shift by the luxury sports car maker as competitors including Porsche and Lamborghini scale back their EV ambitions, citing weak demand. With a starting price of €550,000 — approximately $640,000 or £475,000 — the Ferrari Luce combines up to 1,050 horsepower from a four-motor electric drivetrain with radical new styling. “It’s the result of five years of work,” CEO Benedetto Vigna told more than 200 reporters gathered in Rome. Ferrari’s share price fell. This was not entirely surprising.
The car itself is remarkable. The Luce features four electric motors — one per wheel — delivering more than 1,000 horsepower, a top speed above 310 km/h, 500 kilometres of range, and rear-hinged doors. It seats five people. It has a 600-litre boot. It is Ferrari’s first five-seater, which is either a bold democratisation of the brand or a very expensive family car depending on how you look at it. It goes from zero to 100 kilometres per hour in 2.5 seconds. The name means “light” in Italian. The interior defers to traditional Ferrari luxury, with leather, glass, and anodised aluminium surfaces alongside several physical controls — a deliberate choice in an era of minimalist touchscreen interiors that the automotive world has been complaining about for a decade.
The design is the conversation. The Luce was developed in collaboration with Jony Ive and Marc Newson of LoveFrom — the collective formed by Apple’s former Chief Design Officer after he left Cupertino in 2019. The man who designed the iPhone, the iMac, and the Apple Watch has now designed a Ferrari. The result is a car that looks like no Ferrari before it — larger, glassier, more architectural than muscular — and the internet has responded with the measured, considered restraint for which it is well known. Ferrari’s head of product marketing was refreshingly candid: “The reaction we’re going to have among our customer base is going to be very much mixed. People will love it, and people will hate it.” One appreciates the honesty.
There is also an engineering party trick that deserves specific attention. Ferrari’s EV will not use conventional gears or “shifting” — instead operating through what the company calls “power levels.” The car also amplifies natural vibration sounds from its EV powertrain to maintain the visceral appeal of a traditional Ferrari — an approach that will divide opinion even more cleanly than the design. Artificial engine noise in a Ferrari is either heresy or pragmatism, and the line between those two positions depends almost entirely on whether you have ever driven a V12 with your left foot on the clutch.
The context in which Ferrari is launching the Luce is significant. The premium EV segment is being aggressively contested by Chinese brands with better technology at lower prices, yet Ferrari has chosen this moment to enter with a €550,000 four-door. Meanwhile, Lamborghini pulled the plug on its first electric car earlier this year. Porsche and Mercedes have both trimmed their EV ambitions. Ferrari, characteristically, has looked at the prevailing winds and driven directly into them.
Production will take place at Ferrari’s e-Building in Maranello. European deliveries begin in Q4 2026. American buyers will need to wait until Q2 2027 — assuming they have $640,000 available and can make peace with a Ferrari that took a rather different path to glory than its predecessors.
Whether the Luce succeeds commercially is almost beside the point — Ferrari sells around 14,000 cars a year by design, and the Luce will represent a small fraction of that. What matters is what it says about where electric vehicles are heading at the very top of the market: toward five seats, 500 kilometres of range, a boot you can put things in, and a design brief handed to the man who once convinced the world that a phone needed only one button.
Enzo Ferrari, one suspects, would have had something quite direct to say about all of this. His engineers would probably have found a way to make it work anyway.
