New details continue to emerge about the Prancing Horse’s first electric car. The new Ferrari Luce reportedly did not take shape inside the Centro Stile led by Flavio Manzoni, but largely in the offices of LoveFrom, the studio founded by Jony Ive and Marc Newson. This represents a significant choice for a brand that has always carefully protected its design identity and, in this case, appears to have deliberately entrusted the lines of its first battery-powered model to an external team.
Ferrari Luce, a six-month silence behind the design process
A Ferrari engineer reportedly reconstructed the story, explaining that after an initial meeting in Maranello in 2021, LoveFrom returned to San Francisco and entered a silence that lasted around six months. “We talked a lot about the choices we made. Then they went back to San Francisco and had no contact with us for about six months. Not even a phone call, nothing,” he said.
LoveFrom then returned in 2022 with books, ideas and numerous sketches focused on the car’s exterior lines. The same engineer described those proposals as very close to the model now revealed. “Those sketches were not very far from what we have now seen in the presentation,” he explained. The most debated design choices therefore do not appear to be last-minute corrections, but the result of a vision defined from the very beginning.
The Ferrari Luce has attracted attention for its huge horizontal windscreen wipers and for the opening in the nose, designed to channel air towards the upper section of the car. These elements make the car immediately recognizable, but also divisive. Some see them as a bold move, while others view them as an excessive break from the Prancing Horse’s design tradition.
Giorgetto Giugiaro, while acknowledging the creative freedom granted to Maranello, reportedly summarized the matter by saying that a brand like Ferrari can afford to do whatever it wants. Other designers, however, have taken a much harsher view, criticizing both LoveFrom’s approach and the very idea of handing such an important part of the project to an external studio. It remains to be seen whether the Luce will stand as an isolated chapter or mark the beginning of Ferrari’s electric design language.
