When a Ferrari is not a Ferrari
Ferrari has unveiled the Luce, its first fully electric car, developed with Jony Ive and Marc Newson’s LoveFrom. It is fast, expensive, technically serious, and instantly divisive. Ferrari presented the car in Rome this week, with reporting describing it as a four-door, five-seat EV priced around $640,000, powered by four motors, and capable of 0 to 100 km/h in 2.5 seconds. (apnews.com)
That is not why people are angry.
The backlash is not really about Ferrari making an EV. The electric supercar market is genuinely hard. Lamborghini has pulled back from its all-electric supercar plans, citing weak demand among luxury performance buyers, while other high-end automakers have also slowed or reworked their electrification plans. (theguardian.com)
The problem is simpler and more dangerous.
People looked at the Luce and did not see Ferrari.
They saw something optimized, smoothed, efficient, anonymous, expensive, and technologically correct. They saw the future, but not the future of Ferrari. They saw a Ferrari badge applied to an object that seemed to have forgotten speed, power, beauty, lust, and above all, Italy.
What the coverage shows
• The Luce is a deliberate break from Ferrari’s visual grammar. AP reported that Ferrari’s first EV drew immediate negative reaction from internet commenters and auto critics who said it strayed from the brand’s usual aesthetic. The Guardian described the minimalist Jony Ive-influenced design as a departure from Ferrari’s petrol sports cars, while MotorTrend called it a cab-forward four-door that “defies all Ferrari convention.” (apnews.com)
• The car is being framed as a future object, not a traditional Ferrari. Ferrari chairman John Elkann said the Luce inaugurates a new chapter for the company and turns Ferrari’s vision into reality. That is corporate language for a strategic reset. The risk is that a reset can become an erasure if the future product no longer carries the emotional code of the brand. (apnews.com)
• The public reaction has been brutal. TechRadar reported that the Luce received a mixed to hostile reception, with commenters comparing it to Waymo and calling it worse than they imagined. Cybernews reported that the design was described as polarizing and aimed less at traditional petrolheads than at people who already own an EV. (techradar.com)
• Wall Street was not convinced either. Ferrari shares fell after the launch, with The Guardian reporting that the stock dropped as much as 8% in Milan before recovering to a roughly 6% decline. AP similarly reported market skepticism around the first EV, especially as luxury rivals pull back from aggressive electrification. (theguardian.com)
• The engineering is not the problem. The Luce has serious performance credentials: roughly 1,035 horsepower, a 122 kWh battery, 0 to 62 mph in 2.5 seconds, and a top speed around 193 mph. Those are Ferrari numbers. The issue is that the performance is wrapped in a form many people do not emotionally recognize as Ferrari. (ev-database.org)
The point
The Luce is not bad because Ferrari moved toward the future.
Ferrari should move toward the future. Every great brand has to. A brand that only repeats its own past becomes a museum, not a company.
But the future of Ferrari still has to be Ferrari.
That is the distinction the Luce seems to miss. Ferrari is not merely a manufacturer of expensive fast cars. Ferrari is racing heritage, Italian theater, danger, beauty, mechanical excess, impossible red paint, Maranello, Modena, Enzo, Lauda, Schumacher, V12 memory, and the feeling that a machine can be both irrational and inevitable.
A Ferrari is not supposed to look like a product category.
It is supposed to look like desire.
Jony Ive’s design language made sense at Apple because Apple was giving form to computation. Phones, tablets, and laptops are abstractions with screens attached. They needed a language of reduction, smoothness, clarity, and invisible mechanism.
Ferrari is the opposite kind of object. Ferrari did not need its essence removed so that it could become pure technology. It already had an essence. The job was not to make Ferrari feel like the future in general. The job was to make the future feel like Ferrari.
That is where the Luce appears to fail.
Not because it is electric. Not because it is advanced. Not because it is expensive. Because it takes a brand built on abundance and expresses it through restraint. It takes a brand built on sensation and expresses it through smoothness. It takes a brand built on Italy and expresses it through global design neutrality.
The future is not the problem.
The forgetting is the problem.
The AI parallel
This is why the Ferrari story belongs in an AI brief.
AI promises to do to every creative, professional, and cultural category what the Luce appears to do to Ferrari: optimize the output while sanding down the essence.
Writing becomes clean but voiceless.
Design becomes efficient but anonymous.
Legal work becomes complete but judgmentless.
Music becomes plausible but bloodless.
Brands become consistent but interchangeable.
Products become smooth but spiritually vacant.
The technology works. The performance is real. The speed is real. The cost savings are real. The productivity gains are real.
But the same question now being asked about the Luce will be asked about AI-generated everything:
Is this still the thing?
Or is it a technically competent replacement wearing the thing’s badge?
A Ferrari without speed, power, beauty, lust, and Italy is not a Ferrari. It is a $640,000 EV with a prancing horse on it.
A novel without a voice is not a novel. It is a sequence of plausible sentences.
A legal memo without judgment is not a legal memo. It is a structured citation wrapper.
A brand without memory, taste, contradiction, and desire is not a brand. It is a logo on an optimized surface.
Orthogonal Take
The lesson of the Luce is not anti-technology. It is anti-amnesia.
The future of the thing is not the same as the essence of the thing. A company can modernize its drivetrain, its workflow, its tooling, its interface, its operating model, and its cost structure. But if it modernizes away the thing people actually loved, it has not evolved. It has defected from itself.
That is the core risk of AI for founders, brands, firms, creators, and institutions.
AI is extraordinary at smoothing the surface. It can reduce friction, accelerate production, standardize quality, and generate competent first drafts at scale. Used well, it makes the human layer stronger. Used badly, it replaces the human layer with the median version of everything that came before.
The mistake is not using AI.
The mistake is letting AI decide what should be preserved.
Ferrari did not need a car that proved EVs can be expensive, fast, and technologically sophisticated. It needed a car that proved electricity could still carry Ferrari’s madness, sensuality, danger, beauty, and Italian soul.
That is the same challenge every AI-enabled company now faces.
Modernize the process.
Modernize the throughput.
Modernize the infrastructure.
Modernize the cost structure.
Do not modernize the soul.
The Prancing Horse is supposed to look like it is running.