I lived through similar dynamics (though not at Ferrari, of course).

The management knows that they need something new and out of their comfort zone. Someone (from within or without) suggests an idea that would never been accepted in the olden days.

The management, for the sake of their company, would suppress every instinct they have built over the years, often over-correcting. This inevitably results in some questionable choices seeping in, in the name of openness to new paradigms.

And not every time this goes well.

I'm not saying this is what's happening here. These are world-class engineers and designers, but nobody is immune from a bad decision or two.

When I saw the design, I thought "This looks like a Tesla".

I'm sure it's an awesome car, and also a high quality premium experience. The question is whether it can command supercar prices - they are selling it for $650,000, and I don't quite understand the value proposition of a superior Tesla selling for that much.

Now you can say, well what is the value proposition of the other ICE Ferraris selling for that much? And that's the point, when they first came out, they didn't sell for such high prices, it was a long period of decades in which collectors were bidding up the prices due to their interest in collecting Ferraris and reselling them, at which point the cars became an investment and collectible item, rather than just "expensive high end vehicles".

So when you break from that tradition, but assume you can carry over the collector premium -- particularly for a disposable tech-heavy EV -- then that is where Ferrari made a mistake, and not only Ferrari, but there is a reason none of the EV supercars have sold well, or will sell well. Tech and collectables don't mix.

If you want an example of a brand that is doing this well, look at Rolls Royce. Rolls is selling actual luxury experiences, and their prices reflect the unique ownership experience, not the collectible value, as all Rolls Royces suffer massive depreciation, and have always suffered massive depreciation. No one buys a Rolls Royce expecting it to go up in value, it's understood that in 30 years, you can pick it up for less than the cost of the tires on the brand new model. In that environment, EVs work very well, and Rolls is having success with their high priced EVs that none of the automakers are having in the hypercar market.

Where is the Ferrari in this at all? I completely agree that they missed the mark in design. While the interior is 100% Jony Ive, the exterior screams "design by committee."

An electric Roma successor would have been much better received and possibly cheaper for them to develop (who knows?).

The silver lining in all this is that it means that the EV arm will not cannibalize their ICE cars.

The exterior is just a magic mouse! At least those switches in the dashboard are real switches, not touchscreen buttons.

It reminds me of a rant that my friend sometimes goes on with regards to really low quality items, particularly about music...

someone wrote it, someone performed it, someone mixed it, someone approved it, someone developed marketing for it, someone helped get it on shelves, and then someone played it.

There were plenty of points along the way where the disaster could have been averted.

People have said the same of the first Porsche Cayenne, yet the Porsche SUVs have been outselling their sports cars for years.

"(for now)" is important, Jaguar used to have luxury-performance status by the neck - and they used their affordance of failed product luxury too excessively. Now, they're in a hole they cannot escape.

I think they have to make and sell some EV, just to have experience of it. If it isn't attractive, that doesn't matter. You can't, in this year, be so behind in EVs that you haven't ever sold one to customers if you are to be expected to make cars in the longer run, because in the medium term, even things like petrol stations are going to disappear.

Cayenne wasn't $647k USD.

I think this will flop. Even amazing halo car EVs have poor resale value, and this one isn't it. It will not keep value like an analog Ferrari, but may be better than Rimac because it's a Ferrari and if they limit supply.

I'm all for EVs by the way, I drive a Model 3 Performance and I love it. Just not feeling this design at all.

> There are enough people who would pay any money to have an electric Ferrari.

Are there? That's a pretty bold claim.

I'm sure they think the same at Ferrari, but plenty of successful companies create products that flop miserably based on the wrong assumptions.

I would personally think that the public interested in high-performance combustion-engine luxury cars is not interested in generic-looking electric cars even if they come from the same company.

>There are enough people who would pay any money to have an electric Ferrari. The fact that it's a rather everyday car—and not a supercar—makes it a very attractive option for rich people who need to show off.

In case it wasn't clear, the Luce is a 1,000+ HP car and will cost over $300,000 USD.

I guess it will be an iconic car in 10-20 tears, like the F40 is still appraised today.

Maybe it feels an extreme change, but the solution like making batteries core part of the body might pay well. I am looking also for the first track tests, to see if their claims are real

> They legitimately expect this thing to sell to its target audience.

"Selling" is not an issue that Ferrari has. Of course this thing will sell. They produce so few cars that every car they make will sell.

Whether it will help or hurt their brand in the long run is a much more interesting and important question.

I just hope it doesn't lose signal when you touch the metal.

For Dubai you gotta consider the resale value. Which doesn't seem very high to me once the initial hype bump is over. (Sir why dont you buy this famous ugliest ferrari ever for the bargain price of 500000)

Unrelated personal take: the tray screen is very nice. Great for changing navigation when your partner is helping you. There are some nice touches.

Exterior is not my style, but then again, I'm not the target.

If you look recently Ferrari is already getting killed on SF90 sales which was "just" a hybrid, this costs about as much ($750K out the door with options) and is a pure ev that looks unimpressive. These will not do well.

Every other expensive EV is doing awfully on the resale market, Rimac, Lucid, Taycan, Bautista, etc.

Corporations are afraid of taking chance, and Ives have been elevated to this design guru for his work at Apple. This is despite the fact that he clearly had some terrible designes approved at Apple, but no on had the balls or status to tell him to go back to the studio and make an actual good design.

Ives also had a ton of really excellent and classic designs, but maybe the world needs to stop pretending that everything that man touches is instant classics and best in class. Maybe consumer electronics design doesn't translate well into other fields. I still think it due to companies refusal to take risk, and in some cases, like with OpenAI, wanting to get some association with Apple. Better hire Ives, because then no one can critic the design, because everyone know that Ives is the world greatest designer.

For Ferrari I don't get it. They already have good designers and I think their customers would prefer an EV that looks like a Ferrari, not a Ferrari that looks like Mac.

I think that this just emphasizes how much Ive needed Jobs as a constraint. The early stuff they did together was genuinely good and changed the industry for the better. But his later work after Jobs got sick seemed significantly worse. Definitely a relationship that needed both sides.

I'm sure everyone at Ferrari HQ dutifully applauded when this was revealed.

You buy a Ferrari for the sex appeal.

But you nailed it. It's the Ferrari Priuso.

I have a lot of issues with the Ive era and the Mac... but every iPhone he designed was a banger. I think the 12-14 era is the only era of iPhones I thought were bad and that was after him.

I suppose the iPhone 6 was bendable but that was a hardware engineering issue as shown by the same form factor not being bendable for the 6s through 8.

Either you were still day dreaming, or your school history class was pretty bad. That Taj Mahal story is a myth.

I definitely think they could have made it more sporty, and that might have hit a sweet spot. Personally I love it, and that extreme difference in opinion is exactly why I think it'll be iconic. Also I wonder if you've earned the harsh criticism you spew. I doubt it.

This piqued my interest but I learned this is actually a myth.

It's a Veblen good.

The point of the Ferrari is it's high price point. People turn their heads to look at a Ferrari because it's expensive, not because it's a practical and reasonably priced luxury car (eg some lower end Porche models). The higher price makes it more attractive to a certain demographic and most of us in the comments don't belong to that group.

I think they will eventually get to the point of technological differentiation but they've got to start somewhere: they must first have an electric car on the market before they can start experimenting with it to improve the performance 1.5x, 2x, 10x.

At some point, EVs are going to pull ahead of ICE cars not just incrementally, but categorically. Instead of 0-60 in 3 seconds, it'll be 0-60 in under a second: the limits are physics and the human body, not the engine. Full self-driving, native to the architecture. Over-the-air updates that do things like improve the car's range by 5% (Tesla did something like this). And more no one's thought of yet.

So, this is their beachhead. You've got to start somewhere: they're starting here.

The cabin definitely is something that costs 5x any other car’s interior.

The Model S is also a plasticky shitbox from the inside. This Ferrari will be colossally better in terms of build quality, ergonomics and handling compared to the S.

And the Model S is no longer in production due to poor sales. How many of these $650k family sedans could Ferrari possibly move?

>And it looks the same

Yeah! My first though about the design was "This looks like a Tesla SUV-type thing" and about as sporty as a minivan. It is 1544mm high. The Lotus Esprit (which is my standard for a cool sportscar) is over 400 mm lower. The batteries do need to go somewhere... but isn't there room around the cockpit instead of under? Or a way to have a thin layer of batteries below the entire car?

Well, at least Ferrari has hopefully higher quality materials.