Last week I was sitting on the 27th floor of San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid, where I was among the first to be shown the interior of Ferrari’s long-awaited EV – which we were told just moments before would be named Luce.
The cabin (as well as the exterior, which we will see in May) had been penned by former Apple design boss Jony Ive’s firm LoveFrom, so hype was understandably high – even in the context of this being the first electric car to wear the Prancing Horse on its nose. And when I was listening to Ive and the full set of Maranello’s top brass wax lyrical about how amazing and groundbreaking this interior is, it was easy to get caught up in the bluster.
But even now, with the dust settled and my thoughts collected, I believe this truly is a brilliant bit of a design. And I can confirm that the terrible CGI pictures Ferrari has officially released really don’t do this cabin justice.
The key for me is, simply, how intuitive it feels to use. Ive told me he wanted to create a cockpit that offered a degree of physical experience yet would be easy to operate while travelling at speeds. And while I’ve yet to use it in an actual car, that brief carries through to the final product.
The biggest surprise is how many physical controls there are. Given the man who designed the iPhone held the pen, I expected something much more screen-heavy – the new Mercedes-Benz GLC EQ’s dashboard-wide 39in touchscreen was something I had in mind as inspiration. But it really is anything but that.
I got hands on with every bit of the Luce’s cabin and everything felt like it was there for a reason. “If something doesn’t work, it’s ugly,” Ive said, adding that “beauty is derived from function”.
Yet that focus on functionality doesn’t come at the cost of form: there wasn’t one element with any perceptible concession to cost – pretty important for a car that will command a six-figure price tag. The switches below the iPad-esque central touchscreen, the glass drive selector, the chunky steering wheel paddles and even the air vents all felt expensive and satisfying to operate. In fact, I just wanted to push and prod them – and isn’t that the mark of a job well done?