We can’t overstate this: in terms of their impact on design and technology and broader culture, these are two of the most influential figures of the last 50 years.
Five years later, here we are. We won’t be able to see the exterior of Luce until May, but how LoveFrom has redefined the interior and user interface in many respects is arguably the bigger story. In short, if you like Apple products – MacBook Air, iPhone, Apple Watch – this is for you. The people who inadvertently helped usher in the touchscreen era in car design have finally come to show everyone how it should be done.
As always, the devil is in the details. With its main peak, three-spoke wheel and self-contained central infotainment display, Luce’s HMI looks deceptively simple at first glance. Behind them is an aluminum substrate, which is equipped with four gorgeous air vents. Yet, as anyone who has driven a modern car knows, simplicity is the hardest thing to achieve in this context.
“We wanted to figure out an interface that was physical and engaging,” Ive told TopGear.com during a personal guided tour near LoveFrom’s San Francisco headquarters, “and take the most powerful parts of an analog 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 organized. This isn’t something that’s often obvious.
Luckily, the world’s best engineers are at Ferrari
“The binnacle and the steering wheel are intimately linked. It’s about driving, and everything else enhances that experience. It’s essential to being able to drive, and the binnacle is about output and the steering wheel is about input. All the controls are physical and mechanical. We tested these big organizational principles. We thought they were very important, but we also worked hard to verify the assumptions we were making. Luckily, the world’s best engineers Are in Ferrari.”
Therefore ergonomics follows first principles. Moreover, it is a story of excellence of content as well as imagination and creativity. The unveiling is spread across a handful of ‘work stations’, in which components, including the seats (no cheap runners here), are taken apart to show the intricacies of their design and construction. Never mind the finesse of the steering wheel, the Luce’s 12.86-inch instrument binnacle is a thing of sculptural beauty in itself. The edges are rounded, and scrutiny is invited. There’s no plastic around the wheel columns (in fact, no plastic to be seen anywhere), and tolerances are millimeter correct.
Everything you see is made of anodized aluminum, and even the elements that are not visible have been designed and manufactured with great care. Aluminum is suitable for precision machining, and it is cut from solid billets here using 3- or 5-axis CNC milling technology. The result, says Ferrari, is an ultra-thin, surface hexagonal cell microstructure that is as lovely to look at as it is flexible. Security screws are an inevitable part of this process, but like Apple devices (which use pentalobe screws), even they justify themselves from an aesthetic point of view.
The wheel is made of specially developed aluminum alloy, is 100 percent recycled, and consists of 19 separate CNC-machined parts. Below the main spars are two smaller pods; On the right is a dial that changes the Luce’s powerful 1,000bhp-plus powertrain (Range, Tour and Performance), on the left a reimagined manettino controls the chassis configuration, with a damping and wiper control next to it. The way each of these feels is surprisingly satisfying and completely intuitive. The paddle shifters – the right one overseeing the Lucid’s torque shift engagement for a crisp step up in acceleration, the left regen braking – are evenly calibrated and beautifully placed.
“Everything is based on being functional. It’s not styled, it’s not decorated, because that’s distracting and it doesn’t hold up well,” Ivey insists.
Then there are the dials themselves, which Ive and Newson say were influenced by avionics, and especially vintage helicopters. There are three major dials, with the central dial providing the main information. LoveFrom and Ferrari have listed Samsung here, whose slim-line overlapping OLED (organic light-emitting diode) features individual pixels that can be turned on or off independently. So you get a perfect black and infinite contrast ratio, and what is called ‘parallax’: an apparent change in the position of an object when viewed from different angles.
Clever lenses are used here, and the graphics of the dial are clearly inspired by the Veglia and Jaeger instruments in classic Ferraris. The needle is a physical object, made of anodized aluminum, illuminated by 15 LEDs. Its creators claim the overall effect is to reduce the cognitive load on the driver, but it certainly feels extremely good. An overhead panel close to the rear-view mirror has more controls, one of them for launch control. Another aerial touch.
The 10.12-inch central control screen is mounted on a ball-and-socket joint, so it can rotate round for the driver or passenger. The action is smooth as butter. It also has a palm rest so that the operator does not rub his finger on the screen. Ive is particularly proud of this solution, as he is about the physical switchgear for climate control. Despite owning several classic cars between them – including a Bentley Continental S3, a Bugatti Type 59 and a Ferrari 250 GT Europa – the team’s love of old-school toggle switches isn’t a romantic influence: they’re convinced that functionality is better.
At the top right on the central screen is a multigraph with four functions: a clock, chronograph, compass and launch control information. It uses a proprietary movement with three independent motors and multiple gear sets. Crazy stuff. (The touch screen itself is small, and frustratingly it wasn’t connected for this demo. We’ll get back to you on that.)
“We treated every single element as if it were a camera or a watch,” Ive adds. “There was nothing vague or vague. You could see how passionate the collective teams were. It felt like designing hundreds of products, but overall it felt singular and cohesive. Your respect and affection really grows over time.”
The drive shifter and center console get equal love. Glass is a material I will happily discuss, and it’s one of the reasons your iPhone is so functional and sturdy. (It uses so-called Gorilla Glass, which is chemically strengthened and reinforced after being dipped in a heated potassium salt bath.) Apple’s long-term supplier Corning has done amazing work inside Loos, developing technology that’s never been used before in a car, leading up to something called Fusion5®. (NB: The company has been in existence since 1851, and put the glass on Thomas Edison’s lightbulb.)
A laser was used to create 13,000 tiny holes in the glass panel, into which ink for the graphics was deposited. This area has a semi-matte finish so that it is not prone to fingerprints. This key looks similar to the current Ferrari key, with the Prancing Horse logo on the familiar yellow background. However, place it in the magnetic dock next to the shifter, and it changes color from yellow to black (thanks to something called ‘e-ink’). The control panel and main instrument displays also illuminate. Luce isn’t immune to a little showbiz extroversion.
Ferrari has not yet confirmed the price of the car, and there is debate over how big the market is for ultra high performance and expensive EVs. We already know that the engineering underneath the Luce is next level, and now the interior adds another great USP. We have never seen this before. It’s also a clever – and bold – thing for Ferrari to introduce.
“The late sixties and early seventies were an opportunity to translate new design codes,” Ferrari chief design officer Flavio Manzoni says of Italy’s golden age. “And that’s what we wanted to do with this collaboration with John and Mark – create an opportunity for cross-fertilization between two different areas. At the beginning we shared some ideas, then left LoveFrom in complete autonomy for about six months. They came up with a very holistic proposal in which all aspects were completely connected – external, internal 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. It seems, no stone has been left unturned.
John Elkann says, “It was considered that it would be called Elettrica, but it was felt that Elettrica would be a bit of a limitation.” “Because what we’re working on together is much more than just an electric Ferrari. What we’ve done here is not only very hard to conceptualize, but also hard to do. It’s what 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 really last.”
This is clearly important, as Ferrari is searching for the soul in its long-awaited new electric car. But the spirit with which the machine has been made is also similar. Jony Ive concluded, “The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve moved, I’ve felt a real shift in what I care about.” “And for me, who I work with has become more important than what I work on. One of the characteristics of this project is honest and authentic friendship. We really like each other.”
<a href