- We take a first look at the electric Ferrari Luce
- The cabin was designed by Jony Ive and Marc Newson.
- Ive says he’s not a fan of touchscreens inside cars
Jony Ive never built a car while he was chief designer at Apple, but now he’s teamed up with Ferrari to design the cabin of the upcoming Luce electric car, while looking at the interior look of Tesla vehicles.
Teslas are well known for their large touchscreen dashboards and lack of physical dials and buttons. That wasn’t the way he wanted to go with his own creation, made with his design partner Marc Newson, according to roundtable quotes given to The Drive and Autocar.
“I think a large touch screen practically and functionally doesn’t work,” Ive says. “That is indisputable. You have to look [at it]which you shouldn’t be. you have designed [something that’s] layers and layers deep.”
I’m clearly not a fan of Tesla interiors. “This idea that because the power source is electrical the interface should be digital is nonsense. That doesn’t make any sense to me,” he added.
This might come as a surprise, given that Ive is largely responsible for the aesthetics of the iPad and iPhone. But the touchscreen on those products “served a purpose,” Ive says, while noting that the interior of a car is “a very challenging and different environment.”
inside the light
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Moving on to the Ferrari Luce, and so far we only have a glimpse of the electric vehicle’s cabin. A full reveal is expected in May, but now we have an official look at the steering wheel, gauge cluster, dashboard, and center console.
There’s a central touchscreen that can be moved to suit the driver, but there are also plenty of dials, buttons and levers to play with. That physicality and touch seem to have been an important consideration for Ive and Newson.
“One of the things we were very aware of was that we wanted to explore an interface that was physical and engaging, and that was taking the most powerful parts of analog displays and combining them with digital displays,” Ive said in the presentation.
Ferrari’s first all-electric car was a long time coming and was originally scheduled to appear in 2025. The name Luce was chosen because it means light source in Italian and is also a colloquial term for electricity.
There’s extensive use of anodized aluminum and reinforced Corning glass here, which is another callback to the iPhone and iPad. We’ll keep you updated on this highly anticipated electric vehicle as we get closer to Ferrari’s full reveal.
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