The Ferrari Luce Is a Design Masterclass – and It’s Not About the Car
Let’s be honest: when a $640,000 EV drops with Jony Ive’s name on it, the internet is going to have opinions. But underneath the breathless specs and the inevitable price-tag discourse lies something genuinely worth examining – a rare example of technology and analog craft being blended not just successfully, but brilliantly.
Ferrari’s first fully electric car, the Luce, is one of the most important design statements of the decade. Not because of the horsepower (1,035 of them, from four electric motors). Not because of the 0–100 km/h time (2.5 seconds). But because of the buttons.
Yes, the buttons.
The Right Person for a Radical Job
Ferrari made an unusual call: for their most radical car in decades, they went outside. They hired LoveFrom – the creative collective founded in 2019 by Sir Jony Ive and fellow designer Marc Newson – and gave them five years and total creative freedom over the exterior, interior, and interface of the Luce.
Why Ive? Because nobody alive has a better track record of making technology feel human.
Think about the iPod click wheel. In 2001, every digital music player was a menu-diving nightmare. Apple introduced a single circular interface that you could operate by touch and feel, without ever looking down. It was intuitive, physical, satisfying – and it became one of the most iconic pieces of consumer design ever made. The technology served the human, not the other way around.
That same philosophy is all over the Luce.
“We wanted to explore an interface that was physical and engaging and to take the most powerful parts of an analogue display and combine them with a digital display.”
Analog and Digital, Together on Purpose
The interior of the Luce is, in Ive’s words, a celebration of hundreds of discrete products – each one meticulously considered. The cabin features precision-engineered mechanical buttons, dials, toggles, and switches throughout the dashboard and side panels, all paired with multi-functional digital displays. A mechanical clock adds a layer of analog warmth. The steering wheel – three-spoke, machined from 100% recycled aluminum – has integrated controls that work without you taking your eyes off the road.
There is no ‘one giant touchscreen and nothing else’ here. That approach – the Tesla-ification of car interiors – trades tactile satisfaction for minimalism, and asks the driver to navigate menus at 180 km/h. Ive rejected it entirely.
What struck me most was the key. There’s no blade – it’s an all-fob design with a small screen on its face. To start the car, you place it in a cradle in the centre console. As it’s ‘accepted,’ the yellow colour on the fob’s screen visually travels to the gear shift indicator, signalling the transfer of power. It’s a tiny, cinematic moment – a piece of storytelling built into a product interaction.
That’s not engineering. That’s craft.
The Ferrari Design Page That Stopped Me in My Tracks
Visit the Ferrari Luce design page and something unusual happens: they explain their decisions. Not just what – but why. Why buttons are placed where they are. Why materials were chosen. What experience each element is meant to produce.
I’ve reviewed a lot of car websites. I have never seen a manufacturer explain button placement. I’ve never seen them treat the interface of a vehicle as something worthy of that level of documentation. It reads less like an automotive spec sheet and more like a product design philosophy statement.
Capturing the Essence of Ferrari
Ive and Newson didn’t just design a beautiful interior. They made it feel undeniably Ferrari. The vintage-inspired interface elements, the analog gauges holding their ground alongside the digital displays, the obsessive material quality – all of it whispers to the brand’s heritage while pointing toward something new.
Ferrari Executive Chairman John Elkann had known Ive and Newson for years, and believed this was a partnership waiting for the right project. The Luce was that project: Ferrari’s biggest departure from tradition (four doors, five seats, fully electric), and the perfect vehicle for a design statement that could only work if it remained authentically Ferrari.
They pulled it off.
What Digital Product Designers Can Steal From This
The Luce isn’t just a car. It’s a case study in design thinking that applies to any interface – digital or physical. Here are the lessons I keep coming back to:
1. Beauty, style, and function are not competing forces
The biggest lie in product design is that aesthetics and usability trade off against each other. Ive has built his entire career proving otherwise. The iPod was gorgeous and it was the easiest music player ever made. The Luce cockpit is visually stunning and the most tactile, intuitive car interface in the segment. Stop treating ‘pretty’ and ‘functional’ as a slider. Design for both, together, always.
2. Tactile feedback is an undervalued design tool
We’ve spent the last decade stripping physical affordances from every interface in the name of minimalism. The result? A generation of products that feel like nothing. The Luce makes the counter-argument: there is real, meaningful value in a button that clicks, a dial that turns with resistance, a key that slots into a cradle and triggers a light animation. Your app can’t replicate this literally – but it can replicate the principle. Consider what feedback (haptic, auditory, motion) you’re building into your interactions.
3. Design as storytelling
The moment when the Luce’s key transfers its yellow indicator glow to the gear selector is a product story told in under two seconds. It communicates: power is transferring, the car is now yours, something important is beginning. What are the micro-stories embedded in your product? Onboarding moments, state transitions, success states – these are all narrative opportunities most designers leave blank.
4. Justify your decisions – publicly
Ferrari’s design page doesn’t just show the interior; it explains it. That kind of radical transparency builds trust with your users in a way that no amount of polished photography can. If you can’t explain why a button is where it is, maybe it shouldn’t be there.
5. Respect the context you’re designing into
Ive didn’t erase Ferrari. He extended it. Every vintage-leaning design choice, every callback to the cockpits of the 1960s prancing horses – all of it was intentional. When you design for an existing product or brand, your job isn’t to impose your aesthetic. It’s to understand the DNA so deeply that your additions feel inevitable.
The Ferrari Luce costs €550,000 and most of us will never sit in one. But the design thinking that went into it? That’s free. Pay attention.
