Nice Car. Wrong Badge.
What a great looking electric car. Clean lines, strong presence, real confidence. If this rolled out of a Dodge event or a BYD launch, we would be saying all the right things. But this is Ferrari. And that changes everything.
This is the Ferrari Luce. A five-seat, four-door liftback EV at 550,000 euros with 1,035 horsepower and a 0 to 62 mph time of 2.5 seconds. The first Ferrari in history you could park next to a Kia and nobody walking past would do a double take.
Ferrari's First NPC Car
Ferrari has built some questionable cars over the years. The Mondial from the 1980s was basically Ferrari's first crack at this same idea, a practical four-seater that copped serious criticism at the time. But the Mondial was still unmistakably Ferrari. Still weird. Still turned heads. Still made people stop and stare even if they were not entirely sure why.
The Luce is none of those things. This is Ferrari's first nothing car. The first car from Maranello that blends in. Pull up next to it at the lights and your brain does not fire. There is no moment. There is no reaction. It just sits there looking like a very expensive item from a brand you cannot quite place.
And with the wave of sharp, well-designed Chinese EVs flooding the market right now, the Luce is going to disappear into that crowd completely.
Those Tail Lights Are Not Enough
Ferrari reached back to the F40 for the horizontal brake light signature. That is a car that earned every single design choice it ever made. Grafting that detail onto a four-door liftback is not a tribute to the F40. It is Ferrari waving its own history at you hoping you do not look too hard at the rest of it.
In my opinion, it does not work. It reads like a badge and a set of tail lights trying to do the heavy lifting that the actual design should be doing on its own.
https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/media-centreWhere Ferrari Actually Got It Right
The interior is the real story here and it genuinely deserves credit. Jony Ive's influence is all over the cabin. Physical switches, satisfying toggles, anodized aluminum, and a clock with real hands sitting inside a digital screen. Ferrari refused to hand the whole car over to a touchscreen and that decision alone makes this interior worth talking about.
The engineering underneath is serious. Four permanent-magnet motors, one at each corner, active suspension from the F80 supercar, rear-wheel steering, and a right-paddle power level system that lets the driver dial up torque progressively. Ferrari clearly obsessed over how this thing drives.
But you have to look at it first. And right now, looking at it is the problem.
We Already Lost Jaguar
We watched Jaguar walk away from everything that made it Jaguar. Not the company, not the badge, but the soul. A lot of us felt that one and said nothing because what was there to say.
In my opinion, this is the first time Ferrari has stepped into the room and not commanded it. Ferrari has never put a foot wrong in my lifetime, and I genuinely hope the drive proves me completely wrong about all of this.
But a car that sells for 550,000 euros should stop traffic just sitting still. And this one does not.
