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In case anyone was wondering what the Apple Car would have looked like inside, it would have been roughly this.
As an Apple Car™ it makes sense, but as a Ferrari it's incredibly soulless and oversimplified. This Ive design aesthetic (Dieter Rams' aesthetic really) is fine on consumer electronics where you want the device to disappear and give way to the display, but on something as emotional as a vehicle (Ferrari especially), this design falls flat.
I do hope some of the design details work their way through the industry (e.g. using glass instead of gloss black plastic, convex glass to add depth to digital gauges), but I hope the rest of it stays as a one-off experiment demonstrating the hubris and one-dimensionality of a top designer.
EVs have a weight issue that fundamentally constrains their overall design. It is really a tough engineering problem to try to shave weight off of everything, because you are starting out with a 700kg battery replacing a 400kg engine + transmission, so you are ~300kg in the hole, and need to remove 300 kg from the rest of the car. That's why they do crazy stuff like use the battery as part of the structural frame, to save on metal there. Every extra kilogram reduces range. Solid things are made hollow. Metal is replaced by plastic. Fabrics are thinner or replaced with lighter-weight engineered materials. Lots of things are removed. Physical buttons gone, flourishes gone, handles gone. Seats are made thinner and with less material. See how they brag about a simpler new steering wheel that is 400g lighter?
All of that and still they come up with a 2300 kg compact two row SUV.
So, if you are going to be redesigning everything anyway to try to get rid of as much weight as possible, why not hire a designer known for sparse, minimalistic, clean design? It makes sense. It may not be what Ferrari buyers want, but you can't really blame Ferrari for giving it a try. We'll see how well it sells.
I think you are wrong on the "weight issue" regarding EV. ICE cars have a weight issue as they consume more gas depending on the weight, which is the case to a much lesser extent in BEV. At high speed, aerodynamics become the main factor reducing range. With urban stop and go traffic, regenerative braking lowers the weight's impact massively. BMW's i3 was constructed with the same mistake: let’s reduce weight to gain range, which didn’t pay off. It added to the cost due to expensive composite materials, lesser to the range. Manufacturers learned from BMW's mistake and build the body with conventional metal sheets. Nevertheless reducing weight has its advantages: using less material saves expenses and helps driving dynamics. Range is a minor factor.
i think the discussion here is about performance/pleasure cars, where weight is a real handicap. not range or actual convenience
Ferrari will sell all that they make. If you want to purchase one of the highly desirable low-volume models you can't just walk into a dealership and write a check. You first have to purchase a few of the high-volume models to earn enough "points" on their internal customer priority list. A lot of rich guys will buy a Luce just for that purpose, and then leave it in their garage or maybe drive it to the country club occasionally.
For the type of buyer you describe this vehicle parked in the garage, to speculate, may be capable of doing double duty as an automated battery backup for the estate nearby to store energy during times of excess grid capacity and to discharge during periods of high demand or grid interuptions. I would be interested to know if the vehicle includes this capability, or if it could be easily modified to offer this capability. Probably is preferable to an onsite diesel generator for example even if it is not an exactly comparable situation, just due to lower local emissions.
You've got to be kidding. The people who can afford multiple luxury cars aren't going to mess around using them as backup batteries just to save a few bucks on generators for their mansions.
Weight doesn’t make all that much difference to EV range: aerodynamics are a much more important factor.
Handling and “sports car feel” are affected by weight, though, and this is the real reason that Ferrari would want to cut weight to a minimum on their EV.
I wonder what the speed/weight tradeoff is on a Ferrari though. Eg on a Bugatti they can put in a beast of an engine (heavy) because their buyers care only about power output and if it gets 8 miles to a gallon who cares.
On an electric sports car, where does the break lie between extra weight for a powerful battery and too much weight to make the car go vroom?
Side note: I wonder if, in 20 years, petrol cars will the preserve of the very rich and the very poor.
Manufacturers like Ferrari, Porsche and Lotus focus on HP per KG. This is why they build ultralight versions of their cars. Porsche's 911 GT series trade glass windows with plexiglass and badges with stickers. Ferrari omits carpets and inner body panels leaving welds bare. Lotus re-invents everything make things lighter and with less material.
Mercedes, Bentley and Bugatti likes to build road missiles. Fast and comfortable, luxurious cars with insane straight line performance and stats, but not made to be thrown from corner to corner in a track. Since these cars are heavier and have somewhat higher center of gravity, they can't pull higher G numbers on skid pads and tracks. They also have somewhat slower lap numbers (Maybe Mercedes' SLR McLaren is an exception to this, but it's half McLaren, so...).
If you want to go to the edge of it, see McLaren and Pagani. They take the track-optimized, lightweight car design to extremes. Esp. McLaren.
Edit: I mixed up CLK-GTR with SLR. My bad, brain haze. Sorry.
> Side note: I wonder if, in 20 years, petrol cars will the preserve of the very rich and the very poor.
Sure, except the very poor will be eco criminals (due to being unable to maintain their equipment to relevent emission standards/pay the associated offset fees) and will be selectively hounded and exploited by law enforcement.
At some point, the petrol stations start closing, and petrol vehicles start having range anxiety. The antiques get served by a little EV bowser service that comes round and delivers, but you won't be able to drive them in cities.
(diesel will hang on a lot longer, so there may be a period of refinery retuning and petrol stations serving only diesel?)
Well you cant just get rid of Gasoline in the refinery process. Crude oil essentially gets destilled. The different fractions are split based on boiling point/weight. Heavy fuel oil-> Diesel-> Kerosene->Gasoline-> Naphta-> Propane/Butane whatever. That is why making new Plastic is so incredibly cheap. You need (i think) ethylene to make plastic. Ethylene is a byproduct of oil refining. If no one buys it, the whole refinery grinds to a halt because you are not allowed to burn it anymore. They practically give this stuff away. Same thing would happen to gasoline. If fewer people need Gasoline, it will become crazy cheap since you cant really do anything with it, except burn it. So it really isnt that easy. IF you get rid of Diesel/Gasoline you will also get rid of the entire petrochemical industry.Elastomers, plastics, lubricants. A huge lot depends on the sweet dino juice.
Cracking and chain lengthening* were covered in my GCSE in chemistry, and given GCSEs are the UK school leaving qualification, anything in them can't be particularly difficult or mysterious in industrial practice.
Not claiming this would be free or anything like that, just that a well-known possibility exists.
* I forget the technical name, my GCSEs were 26 years ago
Plastic isn't a single material. Some plastic materials (e.g PE, polyethylene or PVC, polyvinyl chlorine, but also others that use ethylene derivatives as intermediates) require ethylene, but there certainly are plastic materials which are produced without any involvement of ethylene or other petrolium derivatives.
In 20 years there will be no shortage of cheap, old EVs on the used car market. Petrol cars will be just for the enthusiasts and collectors.
At least in some jurisdictions, cars old enough (eg 30 years) are considered antiques and are exempted from emissions requirements.
Laws can always change as more and more people make use of loopholes to avoid taxes. Same how EVs lost their subsidies as more and more people are buying them. Governments always adapt to losses in tax revenue by finding new things to tax, it's the only thing they're efficient at.
Only if there are very few of them. If there's a critical mass of EV refuseniks in the future they will be banned.
>EV refuseniks
What about the EV unafordaniks?
At some point EVs will be cheaper on the sticker price and cheaper to run. The US car industry is desperately trying to prevent this, but it looks like China is crossing that point.
(I would be very interested in sticker price / fuel price / subsidy / tax accounting EV vs ICE breakdowns from inside China)
I think they're already cheaper in China, especially on the low-end where (as per Vimes' Boots) sticker price matters more than TCO.
China's got this, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuling_Hongguang_Mini_EV
That's extremely cute. The Euro version is as low as E13,000: https://nikrob.lt/ ; let's not forget that depreciation will make secondhand versions even cheaper.
New EV prices are still falling for entry-level models. This is not the Ferrari, of course.
In a few years new EVs prices will be below equivalent ICE vehicles. Total cost of ownership already often is.
Second-hand EVs already are a bargain. EV owners complain about poor resale prices, but that's good for the buyer.
And in some jurisdictions, there are "incentives to scrap older, more polluting cars in exchange for a grant or discount towards a newer, cleaner vehicle"
e.g.
https://carowl.co.uk/wisdombase/selling/car-scrappage-scheme...
and will be selectively hounded and exploited by law enforcement.
Look at horses, they used to be a commodity used for transport, now they're pets of the rich, being taken care of and used for recreation.
I guess the poor get donkeys...
Horses were always for the rich - knights would use a horse in battle and ride the horse other places to show off their money. The "common man" walked - you (unless you are handicapped - yes I know you are very out of shape) can walk as far in a day as a horse. When the "common man" needed to haul a load they would prefer oxen which while slower than a horse were overall a lot cheaper to feed.
We think about farming with horses, because in the American West the type of plow that worked best needed faster speeds than the oxen could handle and so for 100 years the horse is what farmers used. Horses were also useful for cowboys chasing cows - again an activity most common in the western planes.
> I wonder if, in 20 years, petrol cars will the preserve of the very rich and the very poor.
That's certainly the way it's worked out with horses after petrol cars took over.
We will have some Amish people driving around in petroleum cars, trying to preserve the old days and the old ways.
It won't be Amish, but there'll be for sure people cherishing the old days when cars were simple/fun/different.
Given the heavy use of metal and glass to replace plastic parts, I suspect LoveFrom did the exact opposite of shaving weight off the interior :)
Molicel's P60 (INR-21700-P60C) weighs 75 grams and can produce almost a horsepower. A 500 horsepower battery weighs less than 42 kg. It stores 12 kWh.
Batteries are not heavy, range is heavy. Range is the sacrifice and sports cars don't need range.
> See how they brag about a simpler new steering wheel that is 400g lighter?
As if ferrari -as if all sportscar manufacturers- have not done the same always. Replacing door handles with straps is not new.
The problem is people are conditioned so hard on the "drive till empty then fill up" method of car ownership, that it's totally incomprehensible to imagine not being able to put 300 miles in your car in 5 minutes.
Topping off everyday at home just doesn't register. Driving 7 hours with only one 30 minute charge doesn't register.
It either needs to function like a gas car, or it's not even worth considering.
There are millions of people living in cities that do not own their own home, that cannot charge every day (speaking as an EV enthusiast that rents somewhere that thankfully has public charging across the street). For those that are able to charge at home, there is definitely a mindset shift that needs to happen. I have seen the lightbulb over my friends heads turn on when I ask them how they would like it if their gas cars could fill up 1 gallon per hour at their house, and if so why would they care how long a gas station fill up takes.
Keep in mind that, especially for performance cars, the instant torque and low center of gravity (because those cells can go in the floor) really helps.
Yes, the added weight is bad for handling which is a shame especially in a car like this.
The weight savings aren't that big of a deal, they do that in every car and it's mostly marketing. But if you're one of those brands that can sell the same car, but use some fancy metals and such for a 50k markup, why would you not.
The Porsche Taycan and related Audi e-tron GT are considered basically the best-handling production cars built so far, and these come in at around 2.4 tons or something. They are of course quite low for EVs, barely taller than a 911 iirc.
Even the ridiculous 1019 hp Taycan Turbo GT Weissach edition (a 4-door car with no rear seats, such are the compromises made for the track) at best achieved 7:07.55 around the Nurburgring.
A gas 911 GT3 RS with less than half the horsepower laps it in 6:49.3.
The 911 by most measures is the slower car (10.9s 1/4 mile vs 9.2s for the Taycan, 184mph top speed vs 190 etc). The difference is the 911s superior handling and braking and that mostly comes down to the difference in weight.
I wonder how a taycan with only enough cells to run a lap would perform.
I don’t think most automotive folks or enthusiasts (apart from the track crowd) would agree that car handling and chassis tuning can be expressed in a lap time, even if it is nordschleife.
From what I've heard from auto engineers I know, using the battery as part of the structure is not really done. Transfering mechanical stresses to the battery is something you just do not do.
Additionally the battery must be protected in the event of the crash, so its casing must survive intact.
I mean, it's possible that some manufacturers might do it a little bit to put it on the marketing brochure, but the additional design headaches and safety concerns mean that there's just not that much to gain.
> From what I've heard from auto engineers I know, using the battery as part of the structure is not really done. Transfering mechanical stresses to the battery is something you just do not do.
This is technically true, but structural batteries are not the same as stressed engines like on a motorcycle. In the latter, the engine fully replaces a frame member with essentially just the engine block. With structural batteries the cells themselves are not taking on any stress (they could, but yeah its not a very safe idea) but the outside containment is stil doing double duty. Its a pretty minor weight savings because the battery case does not need to be as strong as the frame does, but its not fair to say that structural batteries are not done. Even when they are just bolting on to a subframe, they're still usually doing things for frame stiffness.
Weight is a non-issue on a batter car because of regen braking.
The inside of the Apple Car looked nothing like this - primarily because "driving" is the main activity the design of this Ferrari is intended to serve, and "driving" was not an activity that the Apple car intended to support.
You're driving it wrong.
It certainly looks like an Apple device. Ive's aesthetic is Apple's aesthetic, so if you hire Ive, that is what you are going to get.
I can see a car company who doesn't care about design stumbling into this outcome, but Ferrari doesn't seem like that kind of company. So the choice must have been intentional.
As Ferrari has been proving over the last few generations, they know how to make engines but Pininfarina knows how to design cars. I'm not even slightly surprised by the Luce.
I wonder if that explains why mahinda's designs are significantly better (if still not great).
Marc Newson is a “Watch Guy” and this also clearly comes across.
Well, that’s the problem with product design — looking at it simply doesn’t suffice. It needs to be experienced in person.
Well, that’s not (yet) possible, but this video does a good job in the meantime:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wv1btxCjVE&pp=ygUQTG92ZWZyb20...
Everything will undoubtedly feel nice/premium as a result of being metal and glass, but you spend more time looking at the entire interior than touching every part of it, so appearance is important.
Car interiors are static so your brain very quickly ignores it while driving or after owning the car for a while.
The interface / ergonomics on the other hand end up way more important than anything else when it comes to personal enjoyment of the interior.
For things like volume, A/C, adjusting mirrors and seats, I really, really want physical buttons. Not sure what I will do after my old Volvo dies, maybe the touchscreen mania will have gone away by then and physical buttons will be back. I can't imagine myself touching a screen while driving, I don't even know how I would be able to do that.
I drive a 2022 EV which has physical buttons for all the things you mention so you're good for a while
I just got a 2026 model year car and all of those items had physical controls.
Even with my other car that is mostly just a screen all but A/C is physical controls, but one really shouldn't be messing around with that while the car is in motion anyways, outside of operating the defrosters. I manage to practically never touch the AC.
It went from below freezing nearly every day to 80F+ in a week. I didn't have to touch the AC controls once. I don't get why people choose to distract themselves by toying around with the AC controls while driving. Focus on driving. Let the thermostat keep the car comfortable.
When the car is in motion you really shouldn't be messing with anything in the center console. I don't even bother with the volume knob on the stereo, just use the media controls on the wheel. Why take your hands off the steering controls when you don't have to?
> after my old Volvo dies
That's another 20 years mate.
I don't know... I've driven my Subaru for five years now and I still get mildly annoyed by the ugly font on the speedometer.
Ferrari interiors have always been spartan and aimed at functionality.
This feels like a modern Ferrari F40 dashboard and I like it a lot.
This is an enormous departure from Ferrari interiors to the point where it no longer looks anything like a Ferrari beyond the emblems inside.
Yes, the dashboard must be tan. Like in Magnum PI.
> but on something as emotional as a vehicle (Ferrari especially), this design falls flat.
Strongly disagree. To each their own...
There will undoubtedly be people that like or love it and there's nothing wrong with that. Design is rather subjective. Fortunately I'm not in the market for a $300,000+ EV made by Ferrari, so I don't have to lose sleep at night over buying this or not :)
I don't quite agree with this statement. I would rephrase it like that: If Apple had built a car, this is the care and though process that we would have seen - incredible attention to details. But it would not have looked anything like what we’re seeing with Ferrari.
I think the Aston Marting with the Apple Carplay Ultra[0] is a pretty good example of what an Apple Car would have looked like.
[0]: https://www.astonmartin.com/en-us/our-world/brand-stories/as...
There was never an Apple Car, but if there was ever a thing that might have become an Apple Car it wouldn’t look anything like this.
I am mostly OK with the wheel and the binnacle(?) cluster of gauges. The things I don’t like is instead of a stalk for the blinkers/turn signal, it is buttons on the wheel? (Should have been two mini paddles above the big paddles). I especially hate the two triangular control modules. They are ugly and useless. It is a Ferrari I want performance mode all the time. For cruise control, it should have been two mini paddles below the big paddles.
The worst is the center Tesla like display. Steve Jobs IMO would have drawn the line there and said no displays. He probably would have said you should connect your phone and fiddle with whatever in the app.
The overhead Launch pull button is really silly. This is screaming look at me and my mid life crisis.
So bland. An iPad put in a holder. I was not exactly hoping for, because I didn't really, but I dreamt of a much more radical design direction.
I first thought that too, but if you take the time to scroll down a bit, you'll see that the instruments are actually three separate screens, and at least the center one has a mechanical needle. Also, the central control panel has lots of physical switches (Musk would hate it) and even a round instrument in the top right corner with mechanical hands, which can be either a clock, a stopwatch or (for whatever reason) a compass. So definitely not an iPad put in a holder.
No not literally, but that is what it looks like.
It would have been much better imho to for instance have lots of tiny screens embedded in the dashboard/console alongside their respective buttons. Each "app" gets their own toggle and physical dials. That would have been expensive and cool and could have been made not-tacky. (Like some cars are, expensive and cool but also without any class whatsoever, they look like a teenage gaming room.)
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At least it's not your living room TV put in a holder. (Hi Elon!)
What is oversimplified specifically (given this is an electric car)
This question's answer would require something more lecture length that dives into fundamentals of design with an equal amount of time spent on automotive design. No one has the time or care for something like that, so I'll try to give a high level answer.
Generally speaking, cars are not about simple designs/shapes. They, especially to enthusiasts, are viewed as something closer to art where care is taken to craft shapes and forms for both function and feel. This is amplified dramatically for Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, etc..
Ive was clearly doing this design work for the Apple EV that never shipped. It followed Apple's historic design aesthetic (driven largely by him) of simplifying things as much as possible--using circles and squircles everywhere, removing as many unnecessary geometry as possible. That's fine for an Apple EV because that's their design aesthetic. That is, demonstrably, not Ferrari's design aesthetic. It's a jarring departure from decades of automotive design and, in my professional opinion, an exercise in hubris.
As we remember that design is largely subjective and that this is all my opinion, I will say that almost everything in the vehicle is overly simplified:
* Steering wheel: an attempt at modern retro, but they added two blobs (to keep the steering wheel simple) to house the dials and buttons instead of incorporating it in a sculpted, thoughtful way. Instead of putting the turn signals in those blobs (or elsewhere), they interrupted the simple steering wheel with a couple circles to act as the turn signals.
* Digital instrument cluster: it's an iPad that connects to the base of the steering wheel. Wasted space in the top corners. Convex glass is a really nice touch however. Gauges are strange to me (gas gauge for an EV, left dial is confusing at first glance, G-force gauge unnecessarily busy), but that can always be changed later so not worth waxing on about.
* The key: a small iPhone 4. It's not terrible, but it's rather uninspired and boring. Ferraris aren't supposed to be boring.
* Dashboard interface: another iPad, but with a Mac Pro handle on it. Might be very nice for moving it, but how often are you going to do that? Does it stick out far enough to act as a wrist-rest as mentioned in their video? The mechanical switches are a nice touch if the display/UI keeps up. The clock/compass/stopwatch in the top right is neat, but almost antithetical to the rest of the design--it's added complexity for the sake of complexity. I still like it though.
* Vents: these make sense to be simplified. I've never loved the number of flaps in most vehicles, but if you have kids you might have issues with toys/food getting lost inside if there's no mesh behind it.
* Seats are nice, but if you removed the Ferrari emblem would you know it's a Ferrari? Is there enough bolstering for spirited driving?
The shapes, iconography, etc. are all carried over from Apple devices. Cars, even in EV form, are not iPads and iPhones. Cars, particularly those like Ferraris, are supposed to be designed, sculpted, given character and flare in order to evoke emotion.
Rivian and Porsche, in my opinion, have designed beautiful EVs (inside and out). They have a design aesthetic that's unique to them and in the case of Porsche stays true to the brand. The Ferrari Luce looks like Ferrari hired Ive to take whatever work he did for Apple and copy paste it over to them. If this was announced as an Ive + Kia/Hyundai/Honda/Lexus/etc. collaboration would it look any more or less out of place? No, because it's been simplified to the point that it doesn't even look designed any more. It almost feels "default" in a way.
This is all just my opinion as someone that's been doing product engineering and industrial design for a long time and happens to love cars--take it with a grain of salt.
+1 to everything you say here, but unfortunately I doubt this will sway anyone who doesn't have similar feelings upon just looking at the thing with their own two eyes.
I can understand the distaste for it, but was specifically curious what it lost in oversimplification. Some of the critique is not about simplification after all but was interesting anyway thanks
IMO if they just had materials with any sort of visual interest to them, this would be pretty beautiful.
Instead it feels like sitting inside an iPad which is an aesthetic already cheaply deployed at massive scale to motels, pharmacies, and shitty coffee shops.
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I think what's missing is the sense of danger. It's very soft, very "nice". But it is giving "high-end induction range" appliance vibes more than bare-metal hold-onto-your-butts styling.
I thought I was going to look at a car when I clicked that link. I scrolled the last 80% of the way out of morbid curiosity. This secondary quest was not disappointing: no car photos. So weird. Perhaps this is a complaint about the title.
But since it's all about the interface, I must say, the idea of a sports car with a touch screen is still rather terrifying.
All the necessary controls are fortunately physical in the Ferrari.
This is way better than what VW and other manufacturers have been doing in the last 5 years. At least VW is going back to physical controls as customers weren't satisfied with the capacitive buttons and hidden menus for essential functions.
BYD has physical controls, which I really like.
I'm not sure there are any essential functions in a menu on a VW. Indicator, light and wiper controls are on physical stalks (kind of wild that "has an indicator stalk" is no longer common ground in cars), while ADAS, audio, climate controls and seat heating have dedicated touch buttons or sliders. The button experience of these touch buttons is mediocre, not as bad as bad physical buttons (since the touch buttons still gives very clear feedback whether they are activated), but certainly not as good as decent physical buttons. The sliders work fairly well, though for volume adjustment specifically it keeps feeling awkward, a rotary knob would be clearly better.
From this point of view the announced change in e.g. steering wheel buttons seems mostly cosmetic rather than fundamental. I hope they still keep the slider functionality on the wheel, it's quite intuitive and quicker imho. The bigger change would be that they're adding a central switch bar back, which seems to have the functions on it that are currently dedicated buttons in the main display. This seems like a clearer UX win to me.
They say elsewhere that it’s part of a series of reveals.
The ev powertrain last October, this, and the exterior in May.
Note that the exact date in May has not yet been announced, but there is a hint: in all the videos and screenshots of displays the date and time is shown as "Mon 25 10:10".
Now when Ive was still at Apple, the first screenshots of iPhone showed a time of 9:42 because that was the time they expected when the device was first shown. And that time was placed in all the official PR images well in advance.
Extracting from that, a Monday the 25th could be the time we'll first see the full car. Going through all 25ths of each month this year, May is indeed the only month where it falls on a Monday, so it's probably the 25th of May.
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Same, even on the web I was not able to find a car photo.
It's a 4-door, 4-seater. Sporty?
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Well, maybe if I win the lottery, I'll be able to afford a Ferrari minivan? I'm so confused.
It worked for the M5.
This is the kind of design I'd expect from Ive: it is designed to look nice. Ease-of-use is another story.
There's a lack of consistency on the wheel controls that make this look more like a UX showcase rather than a usable interface.
Case in point:
- A bunch of rotary knob that perform the same function: to select. But, they all look different and use different ways to represent the selection.
- Some have a lighted indicator, some have a notch, and some are completely ambiguous.
- The 2, 1, *, 0 switch has a hole in it to indicate the currently selected option.
- The plastic surrounding this is is mere millimeters of thickness and I would expect it to break off within a decade.
I think it's fine for wheel controls to look different though. You're adjusting them when engaged with a task that requires constant concentration, so being able to easily identify the control you want and then use it makes sense.
I'd rather have this than all of them look the same. If you're driving in rain and need to swap to wet tyre mode, but have to spend time figuring out which generic knob does the thing, it's dangerous.
Exactly.
My car has every button and knob share the same design language but all subtly - or not so subtly - different so that the moment a control is touched there is zero ambiguity as to a) how to operate it and b) which one it is.
Appearance also comes into play as one doesn't necessarily have to _look straight at_ something to distinguish which is which or what the position is, merely it being somewhere in peripheral vision may very well give just enough clue so that you don't really have to take your eyes off of the road.
Porsche is the only car company that has nailed interior EV design - IMO.
Their interiors look high-end, functional and not just a minimalist big computer screen.
https://www.caranddriver.com/photos/g46528574/2024-porsche-m...
Lexus CT200h is one of the best interiors ever designed. The design language was tactile: every single button or control had a different action or feel.
https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/2022/07/20/94...
There’s a roughly 7 inch above the vents that flips up whenever the car is off, but using the screen is optional. The screen is up near the road, and it’s very safe to use. There’s a small joystick to move the cursor.
Screen up:
https://preview.redd.it/after-about-a-year-of-ownership-post...
CT also has a stateless “springy gear selector” which works the same way as a manual gear selector, but after selecting the gear it springs back, so it’s stateless. It also has tactile blocking for gears you can’t enter yet. It felt extremely satisfying.
CT got a 10/10 from me, like a small aircraft cockpit. Enough knobs and computers to be exciting, but not OTT. Made a hybrid micro hatchback feel exciting.
BMWs interior pre-iPad-glued-to-the-dash is of the same quality. The automatic gear shifter is stateless, by it has an extremely satisfying clunk, buttons and dials for everything. Note that a stateless gear shifter isn't ideal if you ever need to move your car on a dead battery. In a BMW you need to go under the car and screw in a bolt that pushes the parking pall into neutral.
> iPad-glued-to-the-dash
Whoever started this trend has a lot to answer for. It looks tacky as hell and is a technically-inferior solution to literally just having a dock that would let a customer bring their own tablet. It's truly the worst of both worlds and a seemingly pervasive problem across multiple manufacturers in the automotive design space.
CT200h is the nearly perfect hybrid, IMHO, interior included. Thumbs up emoji!
This looks gorgeous.
Looks a little bland to me.
Personally I’m very happy with the interior of my 2012 Cayenne.
What do you mean interior EV design? Why does it have to differ from an EV to a gas powered car? You might have some different gauges, a control or two that is different, but other than that, why does an EV have to look a certain way?
> Why does it have to differ from an EV to a gas powered car?
Because they have different design constraints.
It didn’t take long for car manufacturers to figure out that a horseless carriage doesn’t have to look like a carriage. Early ones such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Velo certainly did. You can even see it somewhat in the Ford model T.
Similarly, an electric car doesn’t need an exhaust, and if the engines are in the wheels it doesn’t need a transmission tunnel.
That changes the design constraints, so chances are the optimal design looks different.
Well it's exactly that. It shouldn't look different, but the other carmakers decided EVs must have annoying interiors.
It still looks like a big computer screen, I'm afraid. Although, making it seamless with the dash is a step up, you're right. That tiny paddle gear shift looks horrendous, though.
I would really like to have analog features back, buttons and all that, in an EV.
It literally is just a big minimalist computer screen. I drive a taycan and it would be significantly better if they were to remove the massive touchpad and replace it with a cluster of physical controls.
Taycan relies too heavily on touch. Not even vent directions are manually adjustable on a Taycan. BMW i4 interior is much better in that aspect: many physical controls. I hope Porsche fixes its mistakes soon.
I'm sorry, this is awful - it's just a bunch of tablets.
beautiful. I hope the next thing to get out of car interiors is the black glossy plastic.
My car has it - shows EVERY spec of dust. Every finger smudge. Cleaning with a microfiber cloth left scratches.
The only thing I can think of is that it's designed to reduce resell value
Dashboard-wide screen and almost absent physical controls? No, thank you.
Ferrari may not have nailed it, but it's a move to the right direction.
The new Cayenne interior is terrible. Macan is good.
Rivian is the only excellent one.
Rivians don't even have a physical vent control (to aim the vents). That alone disqualifies it from anything close to "excellent". And that's before mentioning all the missing physical buttons that should've been there.
Touch screen buttons, especially the ones on the far edge of the center screen, are harder to accurately hit for most people. More physical buttons = better = more premium.
My 4 year old broke off all my vent controls. Turns out you don't need 'em!
Porsche and Rivian (with a nod to Rivian) imo.
looks like a weird mix of nothing, pointless clock, that screen on the right, that only creates discomfort. The big screen that is big only for the trend.
In tesla ( trend setter for this) big screen is functional, and it can show you multi media, when you charge you watch netflix.
this screen is not capable of multi media....
I can't believe Porsche would do the blue LED thing.
We have a different idea of "high-end" and "functional" considering how much of the interior controls are just capacitive surfaces.
The good news is that this won't matter much because it's probably out of consideration for pretty much all of the HN crowd. Ferrari is one of those things which the ultra rich and a small sliver of the population can afford to buy brand new, and those not even lurking here. For everyone else it's something they can try out on a track if they are curious.
That being said, I wonder what can be cloned from this by others. The ICE are huge and refined and people can steal that engineering into other cars. With battery and motors, I feel like everyone is now on a level playing field and starts from zero. I wonder what will set apart a Ferrari from others.
Probably I will be impopular, but the best ferrari in the last 40 yrs is F-40 by engineer Materazzi. Designed all by him, except the japan mad turbo compressor.
That car's interior is a great example of what made Ferrari so iconic and aspirational. It's not trying to be nice and comfortable. It feels stiff, brutalist, direct. It has an immediacy and a danger.
I do not think this is an unpopular opinion at all. In fact, it's one of the most popular ones I believe.
Not unpopular at all. I think it's one of the best Ferrari ever made.
I think Ferraris have gotten especially ugly in the last few generations. I generally like Jony Ive designs. But this is a mismatch. A whole new kind of not-right-is-ugly for Ferrari.
Elements of it are precious and well designed. But it doesn't feel like a car interior.
Oh. I have the exact opposite feeling. I'm not into cars but I love this.
This is precisely why it's the right design for an Apple car and probably the wrong design for a Ferrari.
I knew someone who allegedly worked on the Special Project after a successful career at more familiar premium automotive brands. He was expressing exasperation with the process and said "I don't get why they're letting people who don't like cars design one. You wouldn't send your kids to a school full of teachers that hate children!"
I love cars and absolutely love this interior. It's retro-modern and has clear inspiration from Ferraris of the 80's and 90's. Ferrari's interior in the past few models (296, Roma) was absolutely atrocious, and this is a big step up.
My fear is that it’s the most attractive part of the car design :-)
No actual car is visible in this car promotion website.
I had the same thought, but the article starts with "first look at the interior". So maybe the exterior does not exist yet?
It's exists. Car and Driver and other sites have photos.
Obviously it's weird to not showcase the exterior of a Ferrari, that being pretty much the entire point of Ferrari. The cynic in me can't help but think this may be due to the fact that it looks like a lowered Hyundai with a body kit[1].
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a70279106/ferrari-luce-ev-...
Oh, wow. Yeah nobody is going to convince me that that is a Ferrari.
Wow, first we got SUVs that were like morbidly obese Saloons, now we have this which is like a comically squashed SUV. Horrible.
Does this car also come with an exterior?
I didn't see any.
> Does this car also come with an exterior?
technically no, since it doesn't come at all yet. It has yet to be launched. But the exterior is likely final or close to it by now.
Dripfeeding details in advance is a publicity move. It makes people hungry to see more. Expect to see it some time before launch in 2026.
Seems like the steering wheel comes in three colours: silver, rose gold, and space gray...
This is the closest we've ever got to the Apple Car.
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That is the point that cracked me up the most.
I liked it after watching this excellent video walk through - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wv1btxCjVE
That doesn't look good. I'm very surprised that a brand like them release such a cheap-ass version.
It's a Ferrari EV.. I can imagine the company wanting to treat the project like a proverbial stepchild, while keeping the soul for the fossil-fueled machines..
yeah, seems EV is a hard market to enter. Porsche seems that have had a hard time entering it too (see numbers, am no expert)
I thought it was a joke.
It looks like something from Fisher Price.
But I'm clearly not the target audience.
haha me neither
After the 993, Porsche was a different company. Not exactly cheap-ass, but maybe something less than their often aircraft-quality mechanicals and spartan but hand-made quality interior.
Is there a market for a $400,000+ electric sports car? For me, the excitement of a Ferrari, Lamborghini, etc is the engine and the sound.
> the engine and the sound
At some point you have to accept a technology transition. Otherwise you sound like someone arguing against motor cars because the real thrill of transportation was the horse’s clippity-clop.
You don't need to accept anything when it comes to a $400,000 sports car. Ferrari drivers put like 1600 miles a year on their car, it's not even transportation, it's a weekend toy. They can just buy other toys, like helicopter rides, or whatever other thing will come along that will give them the thrill they want.
A lot more people drive around sports cars than ride around sports horses.
Whoever rides a horse might have no interest in sports cars.
I actually don't have to accept it, same with automatic trans. If I'm going to splurge on something impractical like this, it better be awesome. Can't blame Ferrari for their decisions seeing how they want to be the fastest and also stay in business, but nothing after the F430 is exciting.
( 100+ years of having cars, and there are a large number of people who still spend lots of money to get a horse's clippity-clop )
The sound of horses is vastly more pleasant than an engine.
It will have simulated gear changes if that helps at all...
Really? Simulating a transmission has been tried a few times over the last decade, but it's flopped repeatedly as just silly. It's not likely to impress Ferrari buyers.
The only successful vehicle which has that is a driver-training car built in China. It's electric, but has a clutch pedal and shifter which are inputs to the software. You can even "stall the engine".[1]
[1] https://www.jalopnik.com/this-chinese-electric-car-designed-...
Hyundai Ioniq 5 N nailed it perfectly.
I think by simulating a transmission you mean those internal combustion engined cars with CVT transmissions. Those are terrible yes.
To be honest, it may help for the modern Ferrari driver. It doesn't help for those who appreciate the Ferraris from the '90s and before.
> Ferraris from the '90s and before
That was potentially 36 years ago. 36 years from 1990 would have been 1954.
What changed in technology from 1954->1990, vs change in technology from 1990-2026? Quite a lot.
Today's cars are a lot more similar in technology to those of the 1990s than they were to those of the 1950s.
I can fix a 90s car with 2026 car tools, but I can't fix a 2026 car with 90s car tools.
Because of the electronics. They're vastly different, there's tons more, and they're proprietary.
Tesla Roadster took a bunch of preorders at $50-250k down almost a decade ago, More recently, Taycan did reasonable-ish volume at $100-200k/unit. There (at least once was) a market for such things. Its definitely not the same market as ICE super/hypercars, but there are some that might enjoy a silent, luxurious car with a sub-2 0-60 as a complement to other cars in the garage.
They've been going to turbos in all but their flagships so they generally don't sound all that exciting anyway. Lambo literally draped their styling over a VW/Porsche parts-bin crossover SUV and all the influencers flocked to it. The person who appreciates the high-rpm wail of old timey, power-dense engines is not the same person who drops half a million on a car anymore.
There are simply way more super rich people than before. Simultaneously the fastest car tech isn't necessarily the coolest anymore. I see hypercars all the time and don't even care.
The selling point of electric sports cars is more "the acceleration is amazing" and less "it makes a loud noise".
e.g.
> a 0–100 km/h (62 mph) acceleration time of 2.36 seconds, and a quarter mile (402 m) drag race time of 9.78 seconds. ... unofficially the fastest production car in the world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangwang_U9
> Model S Plaid Takes 2.07 Seconds to Accelerate from 0-100 mph
Acceleration is about the only selling point of a sports EV.
They're so ungodly heavy because of the batteries that they handle like barges. They need giant tyres and so much ESC and software control because these things weigh almost 2000kg or more. You can try and work around it but there's only so much that can be done to make 2000kg take a corner.
Looking at where sports cars will be in 10 years with ICEs being regulated out of existence makes me very sad because it seems like we're about to see the death of the lightweight sports car.
I think if you look at e.g. Model 3 Performance it's not quite so hopeless. 80kwh packed into an EV roughly the same size, weight and performance as a contemporary BMW M3. Even with today's technology (0.2kwh/kg, 3-4 miles/kwh) a Miata-sized 250hp, 2500lb, 200 mile EPA EV is possible. Whether that would be a compelling driving experience and anybody would buy such a thing is another question.
Comment was deleted :(
The McMurtry Spéirling is under 1000kg. Battery technology will only improve and so I expect to see under-1500kg sport EVs generally available eventually.
Under 1000kg for a reasonable price probably means building your own electrified exocar.
The McMurtry is a race car so it's not surprising it's that light. However it still pays a price compared to its contemporaries (go look at the weights of various LMP1 or LMP2 cars, even old cars like the Mazda 787B was ~850kg iirc). The only number I've found so far is "under 1000kg" so I assume it's probably quite close to that 1000kg number.
The weight of the batteries isn't going anywhere anytime soon. I expect car makers will prioritize range. I think the engineering to make an EV truly light like an old Integra Type R (1100kg) will be obscenely expensive and sacrifice so much on practicality it just won't be a viable product as a road car.
The car would be so compromised to be that light nobody will make the car, at least at an affordable price. You'll end up with a limited range, limited power, uncomfortable car for a price way out of line with what you're getting.
I think you could make a ~150kw-180kw EV pretty light, but considering the ongoing power pissing contest in modern cars I'm not sure how well it would market test.
So I expect the market will stick to heavy cars with big power because it's easier to build and easier to sell.
Comment was deleted :(
typo in the title, it should be 0-100 kmh, not mph.
as long as there is a Market, there will be a market for rich boy toys.
I found this video review to be much more informative and compelling.
I find the thin steering wheels sumptuous.
We are here on HN are clearly not the target market for this product.
The ultrabilionaire roam among us on their throwaway accounts.
Not with that attitude.
What, wealthy crypto and AI tech bros? Exactly the target audience for a company specializing in selling the ultimate solution to a mid life crisis for people on 6/7 figure salaries.
A lot of that UI will be difficult to operate with gloves on. And knobs that have to be twisted rather than thumb wheels on the steering wheel seem like strange choice to me; awkward to use even with bare hands.
When Ferrari's hand is forced by the technology, you know it's unstoppable.
Discussion (51 points, 77 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46944978
The Thurstmaster steering wheel for the PlayStation looks nicer
Touchscreen insanity and even rounder corners than Tahoe. I guess I am not their target customer.
This looks like some kids DT project presentation - focusing too much on things that the target audience aren’t really going to care about.
Also, how soulless is this car. Some cars I get into (previous gen Audis, used to with BMWs, Porsche) and feel that they’ve built the interior for the drivers enjoyment. This, no clue.
Unfortunately for a lot of performance and luxury oriented Car manufacturers, EVs are a death trap - since they don't have access to any special battery chemistry, the drivetrain is basically a commodity - you can get more HP from Xiaomi than you can get from a Ferrari. Any advatages / weight savings around say carbon chassis will be negligible and probably more of a nuisance in daily driving.
Moreover the battery will degrade over time so it's not a good long term investment (unlike ICE cars where 100 year old machines still run fine). I'm sure there will still be some buyers but the margins are going to get squeezed and the Rich Oil Sheikh will reconsider their purchasing choices when it gets overtaken by a Chinese EV equivalent at 1/10th of the price. I really don't see how Ferrari can support its brand with a toy car like this.
> Rich Oil Sheikh will reconsider their purchasing choices when it gets overtaken by a Chinese EV equivalent at 1/10th of the price.
A car that John Doe can afford to buy isn’t a status symbol. Why would a rich oil sheik buy that?
They’ll want something that signals wealth.
There's more to this kind of a car the torque and straight-line speed. Take a look at this Tesla Model 3 Performance on the Nürburgring https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tdhYevUGwM, the brakes are overheated after a few minutes of driving.
I had to double check the URL to make sure this isn't a parody.
The interior is akin to something from a compact Chinese car. Nothing to do with Ferrari.
404, no exterior car pictures found
The handle and palm rest, in particular, stick out to me as a step up for anything with a touch screen. Giving you a place to anchor your hand while a finger does something is very nice. That the display can articulate is also nice, though it does add a potential weak point (how long until this gets loosey-goosey and moves around during hard g-forces?).
I scrolled for about a century and there was not a single image with a full view of the car?
It hasn't been revealed yet.
That is released in May
Does it have Lightning adapter or do i need a new cable?
Who will buy this when the X roadster is released that is able to hover etc from SpaceX tech? Legacy auto is toast they move too slow.
with FSD being just a wrapper around Grok, neat!
Physical controls! This is the opposite of Flat UI. I hope others copy this car as opposed to Tesla.
Ferrari is actually using words instead of icons! Hooray!
(I knew they would eventually listen to me!)
not sure why those things are still manufactured to reach 300km/h and advertised at 210km/h when all they do is mostly crowding at 10km/h in city's oldtowns
The shifter looks like a bad joke for a Ferrari, and the whole design would better fit a Skoda or VW.
Why does an electric car need a flappy paddle gearbox?
Nothing against EV, but a full electric Ferrari is almost a profanity IMHO.
Photo collection: https://bookmarker.cc/bora/ferrari-luce
Is there some legal requirement to indicate the location of airbags because they contain explosives? If not, why does the steering wheel have an “AIRBAG” label at the bottom?
Yes, UN ECE 94 requires them.
Comment was deleted :(
Having used sunglasses that project a monitor on to them products I am very surprised that the speedometer is going to move with the wheel.
That said an electric Ferrari is not a car built for me. If I could justify such a car I'd want something practical or that makes a great noise. "Fun" to drive would not be on my agenda.
Funny how I want to say bad things about a car I'll never afford.
Anyway, whether it's a Ferrari or other, I'm always disappointed by touchscreen in cars.
And as I said it before, it always seems and afterthought and just put there because someone forgot about it.
I'm guess I'm getting old but when I'm driving I usually look at the road and couldn't car less about a nice touchscreen.
Once you get used to a nice huge GPS you won't want to go back.
I love the design of the body.
Classic Ferrari. I think?
Um, where is the car? All the images are of (parts of) the interior, and the captioning is bizarre. Ooohh! It has a steering wheel! (And it's a input! Who knew?)
They only shared the interior, not exterior.
I think I'd like this better if the centre console screen was less rounded. The way it is, gives off 'toyish' vibes.
This looks like the controls for a very stylish Italian delivery van. Not an exotic sports car.
Fortunately, there are many physical buttons. In the video, you can see that their functions vary depending on what is displayed on the screen. I think this is a brilliant solution that combines the best of the physical and virtual worlds.
It's stupid because you're driving and can't look at the screen.
Yawn.
I'm not a fan of that bold on iPad, but if they made those displays oil filled like ressence type 3, even with them being digital, they would look pretty nice given the proportions and ux/ui.
The skeuomorphism is a curious choice. I think if I were going for a radical electric car UI I'd use bar graphs from left to right and things like that. Then again, maybe they don't want to alienate their customers.
You know it!
What are people going to do with the G force gauge? Unlike speed, engine RPM, fuel reserves etc., people can sense acceleration perfectly well themselves. They wouldn't be able to put a number on it (although maybe could with training), but what good is that anyway?
And what even is the gauge on the left? It's just numbers without units.
This just looks like a gimmick because they wanted three gauges but lost engine RPM. Excusable for something like a wristwatch which is only there for aesthetic reasons, but a car where the gauges are there for safety reasons?
so OpenAI[0] designed a Ferrari?
OpenAI bought io, not LoveFrom.
Finally, the return of silver, rose gold, and space gray.
Why isn't anyone talking about why the website doesn't work the side bar the loading icon is too far up on the page this is actually embarrassing.
Is the exterior of the car not public yet? Why is the only detail about the control cluster?
Ferrari is announcing the car in three steps: first they announce the electric powertrain details, next they announced the interior details and lastly they'll announce what it'll actually look like.
Where are the emotions? This is just a soulless machine.
The website doesn’t even work properly. I can’t scroll all the way to the end on my iPhone.
The emotions are in the envy of those that can't afford them. In that sense it is no different than your iPhone: people that have these always mention they have them. The difference with your iPhone is they rarely actually drive them.
iPhone is just a solid phone, nothing all that fancy. It's like a Honda Accord, and Samsung is like a Nissan Altima.
Hmm, for me it's the V8 in the back.
What a joke of a car, the "screens" are contagious. Peak design stupidity arrived at Ferarri, does it have the sliding on the screen gear stick too? Retractable door handles? I guess the price of old cars will grow faster than they used it.
The name they gave to their first electric car sounds discouraging.. Why would someone name it Luce.. which sounds like Lose
It doesn't sound like that in Italian. It's loo-che.
All rendering without real photo is off-putting.
The tablet interface looks cheap and low-budget. When you spend that much on a car you don't want the interior to look like a Model S.
I've wondered why they don't integrate the tablet directly into the dash or windshield. It does seem clunky to have a big ipad screwed to your dash. And I think it would also save on weight.
The interior of my Mazda looks more high-end than this... Yikes, Ferrari.
Not only cheap, but boring in a car which wasn't supposed to be boring.
In many other cars that look would have been sleek.
This is not a car for tech bros with no culture, no traditions, and no past. This is a Ferrari.
> This is not a car for tech bros with no culture, no traditions, and no past.
Weird, because that's exactly what it looks like.
Well, the elements look better together on the shown dashboard compared to what appeared on HN yesterday with the elements all separated
I don't know but why all electric cars look similarly bare inside? Why don't you make it more exciting and not so “tesla” moderate?
Probably to save weight, given how much the batteries weigh in electric cars. This is purely an uneducated guess, though...
If you're buying an appliance, why have it manufactured by Ferrari? Modern cars, especially electric ones, are not exciting in any way as cars. Only agenda motivated e car foamers pretend otherwise. Electric cars are exclusively exciting as commodity transportation.
Error 403.
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Jony Ive took one look at a Freightliner Cascadia's digital dashboard and went "Damn, give me some of that in a Ferrari".
https://bigrigs.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CASCADIA-D...
I'm excited to see the Apple car!
> ESC off
It's always funny to me that electronic speed controllers and electronic stability control have the same initials. ESC off, you have disconnected the motor!
I'm ecstatic that I can't afford one of those.
FYI, the Wikipedia article has a little more data on this vehicle as an EV: 4 motors, 1,113 horsepower, an 880 V platform, 122 kWh of battery, range 330 miles (531.1 km).
Not clear yet on the exact charge speed or launch date. Or what the 0-100km/h time is, but expect a low number, of course. That number has to be eye-catching.
Problem is that in an EV world the raw figures are really not going to be that impressive. Plenty of Chinese EVs have 1000+hp at far lower cost, and likely as good or better acceleration that whatever Ferrari can deliver, since EVs seem to be reaching a point where the limit on acceleration is the tires rather than the motor. So don't think Ferrari can deliver anything truly eye catching in those terms. Differentiation needs to come in other domains.
You're right, it's going to be hard to beat the Chinese EVs on pure price vs. specs.
They have to have specs in the same league though, and then differentiate. e.g. the 880 V platform indicates that the charging speed may be up to this year's benchmark for "good".
This teaser for the interior design will be part of differentiation campaign.
I'm surprised no one talks about their overrated "engineering" section showing the chassis as if it's some piece of work from heaven, but in reality their welding quality is absolutely pathetic and even a 12 year old could do a better job than this:
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
That link is from 3-years ago and not related to this new EV.
So, we just discard someone's workmanship history and dump $x,00,000 just because of the brand value? 3 years ago but still relevant for a company who charges $500k for such poor workmanship. This is acceptable from a normal manufacturer like Hyundai (which ironically has much, much better welding standards), not from a luxury car company.
Absolutely, it's incredible how Ferrari is able to rich dullards. Mclaren would sell you an engineering masterpiece for half that price.
How much is this?
More.
Very functional.
What a disgrace
Sorta meh imo. Looks like a more skeletal version of a kia I was in recently
Love the physical knobs, switches and buttons. Looks retro but modern, but more importantly it’s a lot safer.
This looks awesome
yikes this looks awful, unless this is the new mass market Ferrari that's going to start at $30,000
Did they remove the turn signal stalk? Just like Tesla did?
Ferrari removed the stalk over 15 years ago.
I must assume when you go pedal-to-the-metal, there is no vroom-VROOM - just the same sound we know from a cheap laptop cooling fan?
Jony must have got bored of hanging in North Beach with Sam Altman ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"we don't want your electric car, we want your car, but electric!"
Meh. Glad he and Alan Dye are gone. They would have ruined the Apple car. Appel should instead replace their entire design team with the folks from teenage engineering.
> First Electric Ferrari
This is big. Ferrari, as a brand, is the top cult of internal combustion engine.
For them to release an EV is like Apple releasing an Windows computer or Android phone.
Soon, the last holdout of big oil will be the American government.
They've been doing hybrids for a while now. Not to mention the F1 and LeMans prototype cars. This car is more like the iPhone SE or 16/17e line of phones.
I love it, first ferarri that i have said "I want one". I have been an ev driver for over a decade and have no regrets, it has improved my life. The mental health benefits of driving an almost silent vehicle are completely over looked, the addiction to a vibrating noisy gas engine we find quite frankly bizarre in 2026, it is old technology, outdated, and becoming lost in history and thank you to the lithium cell.
dumbest car i've seen this year
Where is the car? All I see is a mock up dashboard that doesn't look very tangible. What does it look like? What does it sound like? What is it like to sit in the cockpit? How does it drive? This seems quite important to selling sports cars to me. This could almost be a commercial for selling for a perfume. Ow noes! No indicator stalks. No need to navigate roundabouts for Ferrari drivers. Going around corners is way too much fun for this car. It is Tesla all over again :S
What a letdown.
After having spent (way too much) time in automotive interior and UI-design and leaving the field based on the realization that classic car design organisations across almost all manufacturers are mostly driven by "aesthetics" and gimmicky "tech"-quirks but do not seem to care about actual usability and utility, i had high hopes that Ive would be the one to come up with an interior that actually makes sense.
This might be harsh, but I'm afraid, this will have the same effect on the car industry as Liquid Glass will spill nonsensical decoration for effect's sake across software outside of Apple, taking years to clean up.
Starting with the Steering wheel - Indicators as buttons, really? Then the control modules on the wheel: Good luck figuring out how to use the ACC. Zero buttons for Volume, Prev/Next or even OK/Cancel to navigate anything - meaning you'll have to take your hands off the wheel for almost everything.
Plus, it's a very thin rim and for a performance car not the best choice IMHO.
Good thing though there's ginormous paddles for "torque control". </s>
The instrument cluster is a giant housing for three display areas that are anything but modern, aka Retrobore and in some cases not very good or clear - eg. tire pressure or the three scales in the power dial per mode that are very similar and probably too technical for most users.
I hope there's going to be some customization.
For the head unit itself, while it's nice having the option to swivel the unit it seems overengineered for a secondary feature.
While I'm happy to see physical switches and a rotary dial, the choice for what is being used as switches seems not ideal since the length of the switches might make it hard to use. People won't feel a shape/form and press it, but rather have to put in some muscular effort to hit the switch from the top or bottom and at the right angle - even if you can rest your palm on the handle of the unit.
As for visual design within the UI it almost seems unfinished and not very polished, let alone "luxurious" - especially the climate control screen.
Overall a missed opportunity that carries on the clutter we see today coming out of car manufacturers and neglects core utility in the automotive context.
It's neither focused and clean like most Apple products have been designed nor very emotional or even close to being "Ferrari".
It's the same problem as with everything automotive interior today (and for way too long already):
Decisions driven by automotive-/industrial designers who are caring for sculptural appearances first.
I sincerely hope that at some point we can see this as a chapter from the past - at a point in time where the DRIVER/passengers and ACTUAL utility are paramount and developed with software (and it's established rules about usabililty and affordance) being an integral part.
To add some more snark: Maybe Ive should care less about being chauffered in a Bentley and spend some actual time behind the wheel.
Showing myself out now.
</rant>
[dead]
[dead]
I think I would be looking for that very real, confident and perfectly even vibration a Ferrari has at idle; the valve train song, an extra octave in the exhaust.
Wow in 2026, I got downvoted on Hacker News for liking the viscerally-appealing aspects of a classic Ferrari. Is nothing sacred?
Crafted by Rajat
Source Code