2028 Ferrari Luce First Look: Ferrari’s First EV Revealed—So Long, Comfort Zone
It’s electric-powered and has four doors. But it also has 1,035 hp and will do 193 mph.
“It takes time to absorb it,” warned Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna when he spoke about the Ferrari Luce in October last year, well before anyone other than select insiders had seen the car. And he’s not wrong. It is without question the most radical Ferrari in the company’s history. A cab-forward four-door with limo-like room inside, it defies all Ferrari convention—a car that stampedes the fabled Prancing Horse deep into unfamiliar territory.
0:00 / 0:00
The Luce is the largest and heaviest Ferrari ever built, the only Ferrari whose interior and exterior have been shaped by a company based outside Italy, and the first Ferrari without an internal combustion engine. There’s a lot to unpack here.
Ferrari’s Biggest Gamble Yet
Ferrari has already revealed the Luce’s powertrain and chassis technology in detail, but here’s a quick recap. Each wheel is driven by a radial-flow permanent synchronous magnet e-motor hooked up to a 122-kWh battery by an 800-volt electrical architecture and overseen by high performance silicon carbide inverters. The four e-motors have their magnets arranged in what is called a Halbach array, a setup used in Ferrari’s F1 powertrains that directs the magnetic flux toward the stator to maximize torque density. Each front motor develops 140 hp and 103 lb-ft of torque, each rear motor 415 hp and 262 lb-ft. Total system output is 1,035 hp and 730 lb-ft, and Ferrari says the battery, which can accept charge rates of up to 350 kW, will deliver a range of 330 miles on the WLTP test, which suggests a likely EPA-rated range of 280 miles.
The Luce rolls on an aluminum-intensive skateboard chassis with an upgraded version of the active suspension system used on the F80 and Purosangue, overseen by the latest generation of Ferrari’s accomplished Side Slip Control vehicle dynamics system, dubbed SSC X. The standard rear wheel steering system can independently turn each rear wheel a maximum of 2.15 degrees. Carbon ceramic brakes, with 15.4-inch rotors up front and 14.6-inch units at the rear, are also standard, though they won’t be used much in even relatively spirited road driving as the Luce’s powertrain will deliver up to 0.68 g of lift-off regenerative braking, sending up to 500 kW back into the battery. Despite its 4,982-pound curb weight, the SSC X-controlled active torque vectoring, active suspension and rear wheel steering mean the Luce should feel lighter and much more agile than its size and mass would suggest.
Inside Ferrari’s 1,035-HP EV Revolution
The car’s interior and exterior are largely the work of LoveFrom, the uber-cool San Francisco design shop founded in 2019 by Jony Ive, the British designer who shaped the look and feel of Apple products for almost 30 years, and Australian industrial designer Marc Newson, who worked with Ive on Project Titan, the stillborn Apple car project, and created the brilliant 021C concept for Ford in 1999. “It is a Ferrari, but it doesn't look like a Ferrari,” said Newson of the Luce. “It doesn't have all the typical design cues—we came to the conclusion that was actually the point of the exercise. There aren't any five seat Ferraris around, so this is by definition unique.”
At 197.8 inches from nose to tail, the Luce is the longest Ferrari ever made, 2.0 inches longer overall than the Purosangue, yet it rolls on a wheelbase that’s 2.3 inches shorter. The Luce is also 1.1 inches narrower and 1.8 inches lower overall than Ferrari’s pseudo-SUV. Big wheels, 23 inches up front and 24 inches at the rear—the largest diameter wheel ever fitted to a production Ferrari—help disguise a mass that’s accentuated by relatively flat bodysides that pivot off a gently undulating shoulder line. The circular taillights in the black panel across the rear of the car are perhaps the only obvious Ferrari design cues.
“What we set out to do with this car, we understood could only be done on an EV platform,” says Newson of a project that began when Ferrari executive chairman John Elkann first discussed a collaboration with LoveFrom in 2019, and took shape when Vigna, a physicist who developed the three-axis accelerometer and gyroscope that allowed early iPhones to detect motion and enable screen rotation, was appointed Ferrari CEO by Elkann in 2021. “I guess they got us on board because—and this has nothing to do with the design team at Ferrari because we worked very, very closely with them—this is a different animal, and I think it needed a different approach and a different way of thinking,” Newson said.
The exterior of the Luce appears to float around a sleek, dark, aerodynamic cabin structure. “One of the big founding ideas was this one surface that sort of circles the entire car,” said Ive. The effect is most striking at the front end, where bodywork that connects the tops of the two front fenders forms a bridge over a cabin structure whose profile flows without a single break from the top of the roof all the way down to the front bumper (which is why the wipers are parked at the A-pillars rather than at the base of the windshield). It’s also evident at the rear, where the outer body surfaces appear to enshroud a separate inner structure.
Ive is very aware the Luce is a polarizing car, but he defends its deceptively simple surfacing and somewhat slab-sided form. “Whether people respond favorably or not, there's a reason behind every single surface,” he said. Added Newson: “With an EV aero is everything. It's probably the most challenging parameter to work within. But by separating [the body and the cabin forms] we gave ourselves a little more latitude to be able to play. You've got everything that keeps the people inside, and then you've got the car on the outside.”
