Ferrari has stunned the automotive world with the $1 million electric car it promised never to build.
The car rivals are afraid to make.
While top-end brands are shying away from high-priced electric vehicles, Ferrari has forged ahead with an ambitious EV that will divide supporters.
Named Luce – pronounced loo-chay, Italian for light – the car arrives next year for an undisclosed price expected to be well over $1 million. It could be Australia’s most expensive electric car.
The machine represents a significant break with tradition for Ferrari.
Not only is it the first model without a combustion-powered engine, it’s the first family-focused five-seat car with a huge boot.
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And the first styled by design house LoveFrom, a firm founded by former Apple designers Jony Ive and Marc Newson.
Newson, one of Australia’s greatest design exports, said it was “an honour” to be the first Australian to take a significant role in shaping a new Ferrari, and that he was “beyond proud” of the result.
“It was an absolute dream to be able to work with Ferrari,” he said.
The brand unveiled its new machine at a gala event in Rome this week.
There, Ferrari chief executive Benedetto Vigna, told us expects the Luce to be dismissed by some customers simply because it does not have a conventional engine.
“There will be people that will not even like to take a ride in the car,” he said.
“And then there will be people more open, more willing to drive these cars, and I believe that when they will drive this car they will be in love with it.”
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Even as the likes of Lamborghini and Porsche press pause on flagship EVs, Vigna believes now is the time to launch such a machine.
“Five years ago would have been too early, and five years later would have been too late for us,” he said.
“This is the right time.”
That time is roughly 15 years after former chairman Luca de Montezemolo said “you will never see a Ferrari electric, because I don’t believe in electric cars”.
The car’s mere existence will rankle traditionalists.
Even if Ferrari has followed tradition in creating the car.
Like every other model sold by the brand, the power unit is made in-house at a factory in Maranello, Italy.
Ferrari chose not to source a battery or electric motor from established manufacturers, choosing instead to forge its own path.
The result is a car with extraordinary hardware. There are four electric motors here, with total power exceeding 772kW (1050 horsepower, for traditionalists), enough to hit 100km/h in 2.5 seconds, and reach a top speed of more than 310km/h.
Ferrari’s own battery has more than 530km of range, a number that many cars can match or exceed.
But the brand wanted its car to feel like a Ferrari, so a slightly smaller battery keeps weight down.
And clever electronically controlled suspension that can resist weight transfer from front to back, or side to side, combines with four-wheel-steering and next-generation torque vectoring from independent motors attached to each wheel.
The latter element, according to Ferrari’s top test driver, Raffaele de Simone, revolutionised the way the car behaves in a way “which was possible only with electrification”.
“It overtook any forecast of what was possible in driving dynamics,” he said.
“It was the only way possible that a car like this exists today.”
We don’t know exactly what the car will feel like to drive.
But we know what it sounds like thanks to engineers such as Antonino Palermo, who worked to give a voice to the electric Ferrari.
Rather than playing digital sound files or synthesised effects, Ferrari technicians installed microphones and sensors throughout the car’s motors and other hardware, then amplified that sound to produce techno-roar worthy of a groundbreaking supercar.
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“If you have ever played an electric guitar without an amplifier you would not hear much. An electric guitar needs a pick-up to bring the sound out of the body,” Palermo said.
“This sound is authentic even if it’s amplified
“It’s not fake at all.”
Benedetto said technology applied to the car is a step beyond what you might find in existing electric cars.
“When you do a strategic component, you do it internally,” he said.
“You can buy a motor of a washing machine, but if you want to have a true high-performance motor, these are coming from F1.
“The configuration of magnets in this motor is the same configuration that you find in the particle accelerator in Geneva. It’s using something that today is only used in high-end laboratories – I don’t think a mass market car can use that kind of engine.”
