Op-ed: We asked a car designer for his honest take on the all-electric Ferrari Luce

The Internet has had much to say about the Ferrari Luce, most of it angry. We asked automotive designer Nir Kahn to cut through the hyperbole and get to the bottom of why Ferrari’s debut EV has caused such a stir.

It was all a bit silly, wasn’t it? Not the Ferrari Luce itself, but the blood-spitting outrage surrounding it.

When Ferrari launched its first all-electric car late on Monday night, to say it split the room is an understatement. And as always happens, the usual contingent were already lamenting the “death of Ferrari” before motoring publications worldwide had written up their reports.

Those of red trousers and matching faces decried its non-traditional looks as “a computer mouse on wheels” or compared it to a Toyota Prius. They also suggested that Enzo Ferrari, a personal friend of theirs, of course, would be “spinning in his grave” at the thought of electricity powering one of Maranello’s finest, rather than a ‘thoroughbred’ V8 or V12.

If you know anything at all about Enzo Ferrari, then you’ll know he’d not care for the exaggerated outpouring of grief and really quite cringy fawning. His primary goal was to sell cars to fund his race teams. Considering the Luce is priced from around €500,000, “The Old Man” would be laughing all the way to the bank.

Then there were the threats of violence issued towards the Luce’s designers, Sir Joni Ive and Marc Newson. Sure, the Luce is no 458 Italia, but to menace those behind what’s essentially a lump of (very expensive) aluminium and quite a lot of cow is pathetic.

That sort of behaviour reflects poorly on all of us in the car community. There is absolutely no place for it.

Finally, and my biggest point of confusion, is that Ferrari has said nowhere that the Luce’s divisive design language will influence its future internal-combustion models. Nor has it said it will become an EV-only brand in the future. So… where’s the problem, exactly?

To cut through the online noise and my one-sided opinions, EV Powered reached out to automotive designer, Nir Kahn, to provide some much-needed clarity around what’s already one of the most divisive and controversial cars of recent years.

Here’s what he had to say: “As the first electric Ferrari, the Luce was always going to have a hard time from people who are very passionate about the brand. The company seems to have leaned into that inevitable ire by making it not very Ferrari-like in appearance either.

“I don’t think that this in and of itself was a mistake or a bad idea. It’s quite acceptable for it to have a different aesthetic from a combustion-engined Ferrari.

“I think that what is bothering most people is not that it doesn’t look like Ferraris of the past, it’s that it doesn’t look like it’s moving. This is the source of the complaint that it looks more like a computer mouse than a car.

“Cars are dynamic products and especially for one with sporty aspirations from the most historied sports car maker on the planet, they really need to project motion in a way that static products don’t. This is what Sir Jony Ive and Marc Newson have seemingly failed to appreciate – they are very accomplished and talented industrial designers, but they are not car designers and it shows.

The Ferrari is not a bad piece of car design in its own right. There is nothing wrong with the overall design language, the problem is that it’s not very Maranello.

“It could have worked just fine for an EV marque selling an appliance, but a Ferrari demands a certain dynamism that the Luce lacks, and its visual weight is pulling it down rather than pushing it forwards.

“It’s not an especially bad design for a car and it has a lot of nice details and surfacing, but the proportions are wrong for a Ferrari and whether the keyboard warriors realise it or not, I believe that this is the source of their anger.”