- We’ve got our first proper look at the electric Ferrari Luce
- The cockpit was designed by Jony Ive and Marc Newson
- Ive says he’s not a fan of touchscreens in cars
Jony Ive never got around to making a car while he was head of design at Apple, but he has now partnered with Ferrari to design the cockpit of the upcoming Luce electric car – while taking a swipe at the interiors of Tesla vehicles.
Teslas are well known for their large touchscreen dashboards and lack of physical dials and buttons. That wasn’t the way I wanted to go with his own creation, made with his design partner Marc Newson, according to roundtable quotes provided to The Drive and Autocar.
“I think a big touch screen practically, functionally, doesn’t work,” says Ive. “It’s indisputable. You’ll see [at it]which you shouldn’t be. You designed it [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 must be digital is nonsense. It makes no sense to me at all,” he added.
This may be surprising, since Ive is largely responsible for the aesthetics of the iPad and iPhone. But the touchscreen on these products “served a purpose,” Ive says, noting that the inside of a car is “such a challenging and different environment.”
Inside Luce
Picture 1 of 4
On to the Ferrari Luce then, and so far we only have a teaser of the cabin for the electric car. A full reveal is expected in May, but we now have an official look at the steering wheel, gauge cluster, dashboard and center console.
There’s a central touchscreen that can be moved around to suit the driver, but there’s also plenty of dials, buttons and levers to play with. That physicality and tactility seems to have been an important consideration for Ive and Newson.
“One of the things that we felt strongly about was that we wanted to explore an interface that was physical and that was engaging, and that was taking the most powerful parts of analog displays and combining them with digital displays,” Ive said at the unveiling.
Ferrari’s first fully electric car has been a long time in the making, and was originally planned to appear in 2025. The name Luce was chosen as 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 posted on this highly anticipated electric car as we get closer to the full reveal from Ferrari.
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