What you’re looking at here is arguably the most consequential car interior, well, ever. It sits inside the Ferrari Luce – now we know the name – and its unveiling is phase two of the three-step launch process for the Italian legend’s first all-electric car. Why the significance? Because it’s the work of Sir Jony Ive, the man who steered the design trajectory of Apple alongside the late, great Steve Jobs.
We cannot overstate this: in terms of design and technology, and their impact on the wider culture, these are the two most influential figures of the past 50 years.
Apple, of course, recently abandoned its long-gestating plans to enter automotive, leading to one of the great ‘what-ifs’ of recent times. Ive had already left the company to co-found a new design collective called LoveFrom, and since 2019 has been free to tackle new areas. A long-time friend of Ferrari executive chairman John Elkann, the prospect of working on a Ferrari was something the car-loving Ive – and his equally visionary business partner, Marc Newson – couldn’t resist. Imagine if they were entrusted with the design of the electric Ferrari… What a meeting of minds that would be.
Five years later, here we are. We won’t see the Luce’s exterior until May, but in many respects how LoveFrom has redefined the interior, and the user interface, is arguably the bigger story. In short, if you love Apple products – the MacBook Air, iPhone, Apple Watch – this one’s for you. The guys who inadvertently helped usher in the touchscreen era in car design have finally arrived to show everyone how it should be done.
As ever, the devil is in the detail. With its main binnacle, three-spoke wheel and self-contained central infotainment display, the Luce’s HMI looks deceptively simple at first glance. Behind them is an aluminium sub-strate, punctuated with four gorgeous air vents. Yet, as anyone who’s driven a modern car knows, simplicity in this context is the most difficult thing of all to achieve.
“We wanted to explore an interface that was physical and engaging,” Ive tells TopGear.com on a personal guided tour during the reveal near LoveFrom’s San Francisco HQ, “and to take the most powerful parts of an analogue display and combine them with a digital display. The first thing we did was try to understand the foundation and architecture of the interface, how things were organised. This isn’t something that’s often apparent.
Fortunately, the best engineers in the world are at Ferrari
“The binnacle and steering wheel are intimately connected. This is about driving, and everything else augments that experience. This is what’s essential to be able to drive, and the binnacle is about output and the steering wheel is about input. All the controls are physical and mechanical. We stress tested these big organisational principles. We felt they were very important, but we also worked hard to verify the assumptions we were making. Fortunately, the best engineers in the world are at Ferrari.”
So the ergonomics adhere to first principles. Beyond that, this is a story of materials excellence – as well as imagination and creativity. The unveiling is spread across a handful of ‘work stations’, with components disassembled in order to show the meticulousness of their design and construction, including the seats (no cheap runners here). Never mind the tactility of the steering wheel, the Luce’s 12.86in instrument binnacle itself is a thing of sculptural beauty. The edges are rounded off, and invite investigation. There is no plastic on the wheel column surround (in fact, there’s no plastic to be seen anywhere), and the tolerances are millimetrically perfect.
Much of what you see is made of anodised aluminium, and even the elements that aren’t visible have been designed and manufactured with obsessive care. Aluminium is suitable for precision machining, and it’s been hewn here from solid billets using 3- or 5-axis CNC milling tech. The result, says Ferrari, is an ultra-thin, surface hexagonal cell microstructure that’s as resilient as it is lovely to look at. Security screws are an unavoidable part of the process but, as on Apple devices (which use Pentalobe screws), even they justify themselves aesthetically.
The wheel is made of a specially developed aluminium alloy, 100 per cent recycled, and consists of 19 separate CNC-machined parts. There are two little pods beneath the main spars; on the right is a dial that alters the Luce’s mighty 1,000bhp-plus powertrain (Range, Tour and Performance), on the left a reimagined manettino governs chassis configuration, with a damping and wiper control next to it. The way each of these feels is both haptically satisfying and entirely intuitive. The paddle shifters – the right one oversees the Luce’s Torque Shift Engagement for a palpable step up in acceleration, the left does the regen braking – are similarly calibrated and handsomely mounted.
“Everything is founded on being functional. It’s not styled, it’s not garnish, because that’s a distraction and it doesn’t last well,” Ive insists.
Then there are the dials themselves, which Ive and Newson say were influenced by avionics, and old helicopters in particular. There are three principal dials, with the central one delivering the key information. LoveFrom and Ferrari enlisted Samsung here, whose slim-line overlapping OLED (organic light-emitting diode) houses individual pixels that can be turned on or off independently. So you get a perfect black and infinite contrast ratio, and what’s called a ‘Parallax’: an apparent shift in an object’s position when viewed from different angles.
Clever lenses are used here, and the dials’ graphics are clearly inspired by the Veglia and Jaeger instruments in classic Ferraris. The needle is a physical item, made of anodised aluminium, back-lit by 15 LEDs. The overall effect, its creators claim, is to reduce cognitive load on the driver, but of course it looks outrageously cool. There are more controls in an overhead panel close to the rear-view mirror, amongst them one for launch control. Another avionic touch.
The 10.12in central control screen is mounted on a ball-and-socket joint, so that it can pivot round for the driver or passenger. The action is buttery smooth. There’s also a palm rest so that the operator isn’t jabbing his or her finger at the screen. Ive is especially proud of this solution, as he is of the physical switchgear for climate control. Despite owning numerous classic cars between them – including a Bentley Continental S3, Bugatti Type 59 and a Ferrari 250 GT Europa – the team’s love of old-school toggle switches isn’t a romantic affectation: they’re convinced the functionality is superior.
Top right on the central screen is a multigraph with four functions: a clock, chronograph, compass and launch control info. It uses a proprietary movement with three independent motors and multiple gear sets. Crazy stuff. (The touch screen itself is smaller, and wasn’t hooked up for this demo, frustratingly. We’ll get back to you on that.)
“We treated every single element as if it was a camera or a watch,” Ive continues. “Nothing was vague or hand-wavy. You can see how obsessive the collective teams have been. It felt like designing hundreds of products, but in aggregate it feels singular and coherent. Over time your respect and affection actually grows.”
The drive shifter and centre console receive equal love. Glass is a material that Ive will happily rhapsodise about, and it’s one of the reasons your iPhone is so functional and robust. (It uses so-called Gorilla glass, chemically strengthened and reinforced following a dip in a hot potassium salt bath.) Apple’s long-term supplier Corning has worked wonders inside the Luce, developing techniques never previously used in a car to arrive at something called Fusion5®. (NB: the company’s been around since 1851, and did the glass on Thomas Edison’s lightbulb.)
Lasers were used to sink 13,000 tiny holes in the glass panel, into which the ink for the graphics was then deposited. The area has a semi-matte finish so that it doesn’t end up festooned with finger-prints. The key looks similar to the current Ferrari key, with the Prancing Horse logo on the familiar yellow background. Place it into the magnetised dock beside the shifter, though, and it goes from yellow to black (thanks to something called ‘e-ink’). The control panel and main instrument display also light up. The Luce is not immune to a bit of showbiz extroversion.
Ferrari has yet to confirm the car’s price, and debate continues to rage and sizzle over exactly how big the market is for ultra high performance and expensive EVs. We already know that the engineering beneath the Luce is next-level, and now the interior adds another resounding USP. We’ve simply never seen anything like it before. It’s also a clever – and brave – thing for Ferrari to have embarked on.
“In the Sixties and early Seventies there was an opportunity to translate new design codes,” Ferrari’s chief design officer Flavio Manzoni says of Italy’s golden era. “And this is exactly what we wanted to do with this collaboration with John and Marc – to create the opportunity for cross-fertilisation between two different fields. Initially we shared some thoughts, then left LoveFrom for about six months in total autonomy. They came up with a very holistic proposal with all the aspects linked perfectly – exterior, interior and user interface. The approach was very human centred.”
Make no mistake, this is a generational car for arguably the most famous automotive name in the world. No stone, it seems, has been left unturned.
“It’s been assumed that it would be called Elettrica, but it was felt that Elettrica would be a little bit of a limitation,” says John Elkann. “Because what we have been working on together is more than just an electric Ferrari. What we have done here is not only very, very difficult to conceptualise, it’s difficult to do. That will make the Ferrari Luce unique. Consumer electronics is a world associated with obsolescence. But there are elements here that are timeless, things that will truly last.”
That’s clearly important, as Ferrari searches for soul in its long-awaited new electric car. But so is the spirit with which the machine has been created. “The older I’ve got, the more I’ve been up to, I’ve felt a real shift in what I care about,” Jony Ive concludes. “And to me, who I work with has become much more important than what I work on. One of the characteristics of this project is a sincere and authentic friendship. We actually really like each other.”