Jonny Lieberman: The Semi-Hater’s Guide to the Ferrari Luce EV’s Interior

Cards on the table: I despise the Apple Watch. I once got a free one from Audi (it used a bunch of them to measure journalists’ heart rates during R8 Performance standing-start launches), wore it for about a week, and then stuck it in a drawer. Aside from never once desiring a mini mini iPad on my wrist, I loathed how it beeped, buzzed, and vibrated. Totally not for me. My wife eventually fished it out of the drawer, reprogrammed it for her needs, then a month later put it back in the drawer and purchased a step tracker. More cards: I love driving modern Ferraris, like the F80 I experienced last summer. They are exceptional sports and supercars. But an Apple Watch in a Ferrari? As an Australian would say, naurrrgh mate.

When I first saw the pics of the Jony Ive/Mark Newsome–designed Ferrari Luce interior pieces, my reaction was basically, yeah, man, they would look right at home inside a mass-market vehicle. Think Honda or Audi.

Perhaps Honda is a stretch, but the new Audi Concept C interior—designed under the philosophy of “radical simplicity”—hits like a simplified version of what’s in the upcoming Luce EV. I’m not here to defend modern Ferrari interiors; broadly, they’re pretty much OK and exotic enough, though they’re littered with tiny, fussy bits. Like the puny HELE (High Emotions Low Emissions) button to the left of the steering wheel, which I only know about because it’s how you deactivate stop/start.

I won’t name names here because the stakes are so low, but for the most part, my fellow automotive journalists have been swooning over the Luce’s Appley parts, whereas every car designer I’ve spoken with about it has expressed disappointment. To summarize the critiques: cold, too brutal, no emotion; this is what happens when non-car designers design cars. In other words, phones are great, but cars aren’t phones. While I agree with the all this, my initial take was that I just didn’t get the Ferrari connection. But then I started to look more closely.

Let’s start with the steering wheel. Jony Ive apparently owns a Ferrari 250 Europa, and—surprise!—the basic shape of the Luce’s wheel looks like the one in his Europa. I get it. The Europa’s wheel was splendid: simple, unadorned, and just three elegant spokes. Except back in the middle of the 1950s when the Europa arrived, airbags weren’t even a glint in Ralph Nader’s eye. As such, the center circle on the Europa’s wheel is small. The Luce’s, however, has an airbag, so the center piece is much larger, and as a result the spokes are stumpier. Also, the two arrow buttons used for the turn signals look out of place if not entirely tacked on.

Speaking of tacked on, the two pods below the horizontal spokes not only appear glued in but are actually shaped like the first-generation Audi R8’s distinctive instrument clusters. Worse, both pods are jam-packed with teeny, tiny Ferrari buttons, switches, and knobs. We’re talking grab your reading glasses here. The whole look is reminiscent of some of the home video game/sim racing wheels made by Fanatec.

Admirably, the controls are all aluminum. What if the spokes had just been thickened to include the secondary controls? OK, it wouldn’t have looked like a Nardi wheel from the ’50s, but so what? The more I look at the Luce’s wheel the less I like it. The gauges behind it are mostly just fine. Nice colors, kinda retro, kinda not, but evocative of what exactly?

The real party foul, however, is the central touchscreen. Hang around the automotive internet long enough, and it’ll hit you over the head that every touchscreen in every car looks like they glued on an iPad. Well friends, this one isn’t so much glued on as it is hung on some sort of hinge. But, like, that’s a fricking iPad, man. More precisely, it looks like an iPad running some sort of scientific gear. An oscilloscope? Geiger counter? Ham radio? Something that’s just not sexy Italian chic, which again, you’d think every Ferrari ought to be, even an electric one like the Luce. Also, a screen that moves side to side? Hope you can lock it in place while cornering (I’m sure you can). Oh, and the bar that runs across the bottom? To hang small towels from? I have no idea. But for reals, that’s an iPad, man.

To reiterate, nothing here is exactly bad. It’s all clean, modern-industrial Silicon Valley design. Straight out of Cupertino, if you will. There are also elements of the interior I like very much. The clock/stopwatch/compass, for example, is super cool. As is the launch-control switch on the roof. Also, of course, none of us have yet seen the Luce. Maybe the interior fits the way the actual car looks? Maybe the Luce itself is designed with LoveFrom-style aesthetics (LoveFrom is Ive and Marc Newson’s invite-only design consultancy). Hell, who knows, maybe LoveFrom has done the Luce itself. I mean, Newson did design the incredible 1999 Ford 021C concept that inexplicably never made it to production. Maybe he’d like another crack at a real car?

If nothing else, The Ferrari Luce EV is going to have a memorable interior. Yes, some people will love it; some will hate it. I’ll never forget an incident back in 2013: MotorTrend had just awarded the Telsa Model S its Car of the Year trophy; we then received another Model S to test for a year. There’s a Supercharger station at SpaceX three miles from MT’s old headquarters. I’d spend a lot of time while our Model S was charging, talking to owners charging theirs. It was always fascinating to speak with folks who just dropped around six figures on a brand-new electric car from a very young company. The one owner I’ll never forget told me he bought one because he liked the center screen.

What? Yeah, he explained to me that his wife’s friend worked for Tesla and picked them up for dinner in an early Model S. He jumped in the back seat and became transfixed by the then-giant touchscreen. “I love phones,” he told me. “And that screen was just the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I just had to have one!”

Could this be the type of customer Ferrari is banking on for the Luce? Sure seems like it to me. We’ll find out a lot more about the car soon this spring when Ferrari reveals the full package.