How did Ferrari make a mistake in designing its first electric car?

For nearly 80 years, Ferrari has occupied a unique cultural space in which its cars were aspirational, even to people who resented those who could afford them. Price, exclusivity and The opacity of the purchasing process It allowed Ferrari to sail above normal criticism. You may not be able to afford one, but you still want one.

With launch Los all-electric this weekHowever, the company fell to the ground, sparking Internet outrage in the form of ridicule, Sarcastic memesand AI slope. People compared him to him emptinessMagic Mouse, most insulting, Nissan leaf.

The Luces have arrived at a moment when wealth inequality and corporate excesses have rarely been so evident or so frowned upon. In that environment, a car that cost more than most people would earn in a decade, yet looked like a nice, mass-market thing, always landed hard. Ferrari has always sold desire across classes. The $640,000-plus Luce homologates the aesthetic while maintaining Ferrari’s price tag, angering loyalists and fans alike.

“The reaction demonstrates how a brand’s identity, expectations and design are intrinsically linked to each other.” Derek Jenkinssaid Lucid’s senior vice president of design and brand Edge. “I can see some things in the exterior design that still nod to the brand. The taillights for one, the red color option, and finally the logo. Everything else — the proportions, the lack of visual agility, even the expression of performance — is missing from the outside. The face of the car is unrecognizable… It’s a mismatch with the brand.”

The car was designed in partnership with the famous Apple company Designers Jony Ive and Marc Newson, through their company LoveFromIt features four engines, with a power of 1,035 horsepower, and an electric range of about 500 kilometers. Ive has been known to criticize car designers in the past, saying… She found some of the recent appearances “shocking.”But he recently admitted that he was surprised How difficult it is to design a car.

The Luce is the longest Ferrari ever built, eschewing the brand’s traditional sharp, aggressive lines for a more sweeping, aerodynamic appearance. It’s also Ferrari’s first five-seater, with a low stance that makes it look like a hatchback. It is as if the elegant and dark “glass house” cabin is nested within a separate aluminum shell. Instead of a traditional mesh, it features an S-shaped channel that slides down. It’s confusing to look at.

like Raphael ZammitTransportation Design Chair in College of Creative Studies At Michigan, industrial design and automotive design are two completely different disciplines, he explained, and skills from one don’t consistently translate to the other. Ive’s design for the Apple iPhone made the physical phone disappear, and was “100 percent suitable for a digital communication device that you hold in your hand,” Zammit said. But Ferrari is not an iPhone.

Ferrari’s decision to hire LoveFrom was a choice with built-in logic, Zammit said. “I’m a brand,” he said. “When you hire Brad Pitt, you expect to get Brad Pitt.” The Luce’s interior has been praised for its mix of analog and digital touchpoints. He added that the interior language would likely be closer to home in a small luxury city car, such as a Fiat 500 or Cincocento, rather than a supercar that retails for half a million dollars.

Ferrari shares It fell about 8 percent in Milan and 5.3 percent in New York The day after the unveiling, and hovering around this level Until Wednesday, with analysts pointing to a combination of “Hate design“And investor concerns about R&D costs and return on investment. Despite the general negative reaction, Ferrari “Interest has been strong,” CEO Benedetto Vigna said Thursday. In Los Angeles, especially with new clients, the stock has since risen back to pre-launch levels.

stephanie brinley, Automotive analyst in Standard & Poor’s Global MobilityHe said that the backlash has intensified as a direct result of the economic and political moment we are experiencing. “It may end up being just a blip in Ferrari’s overall history,” she continued. “I don’t understand why this particular car needs to destroy Ferrari’s heritage.”

Mass trolling moment

Criticism of the design has come from everywhere, including harsh words from Italian officials and even the former president and chairman of Ferrari. Indeed, it has spread far beyond the automotive and Wall Street media, reaching general culture sites, political accounts, and food feeds without any special interest in cars.

Competitors in the supercar world were watching, too. Lamborghini CEO Stefan Winkelmann said, without commenting directly on Los His company’s decision to scrap its electric car plans and focus on plug-in hybrids was “the right way to go,” adding that innovation should not be in and of itself or imposed on customers.

Among car designers, the criticism is no less severe. “It’s very nice, actually. It really looks as if it was designed by artificial intelligence. It’s like a mathematical average of a lot of different subjects,” Zammit said, adding that it’s “almost worryingly devoid of identity.”

There’s a lot to hate about Luce. For example, the stance and proportions are all wrong for Ferrari, known for its graceful, aggressive lines. The front end of the car is general, even with an air vent above the windshield (video From the executives showing the car to Pope Leo explains that you can run your entire arm through it).

“It’s not a sports car, it’s not an electric city car, and it’s not really luxury,” Zammit said. “It looks like they may have been snowed in or oversold by LoveFrom… The strategy is very muddy, because of what they do versus what they say in different parts of the car.”

Ferrari may have an ulterior motive in its design choices. Company It has been open about its desire to expand its presence in ChinaAs electric cars become mainstream, large gasoline-powered cars face heavy taxes, and many Chinese cars look a lot like Ferraris.

Chinese buyers usually account for about 100% 10 percent of Ferrari’s total sales, But this share has declined in recent years. The Luce, with its large glass surfaces, minimalist/maximal interior, and polarizing exterior, looks less like a Ferrari and more like something designed to compete in a market where domestic brands in China are launching ultra-luxury electric cars in large quantities.

If these calculations sound familiar, they should be. BMW has spent the better part of a decade expanding its kidney grilles to proportions that have drawn near-universal ridicule in Western markets. Head of Design at BMW, Adrian van Hooydonk eventually confessed Frankly, “In certain parts of the world, like China, it’s good; people are still asking for big networks.”

BMW has since moved to the Neue Klasse design language, a global reset intended to resonate everywhere rather than being optimized for one market. The lesson most automakers have learned from BMW’s move is that when a brand built on a specific emotional identity suddenly shifts toward a different buyer, the original audience notices immediately and tends to take it personally.

Benedetto Vigna, a former semiconductor industry executive, took over Ferrari in 2021, and described the Los as “Jump moment“In the company’s history, saying he considers himself lucky to lead it. That conviction may be well placed on the engineering side, but whether the physical design lives up to the Ferrari badge is another question.

Ferrari’s entire cultural function, as a gesture, as a provocation, investment, It relies on being unambiguously true to itself, its heritage and, most importantly, its design.

When you remove the engine, the most emotionally resonant element in Ferrari history, you have to replace it with something compelling, Zammit points out, and Luce’s design doesn’t do that.

Despite the design’s failure, Zammit was careful to separate it from the long-term health of the brand, describing it as “a bit of a flop, both in concept and execution”, but said Ferrari had too strong a track record to be permanently damaged.

One thing is clear in the face of all the negative coverage: in trying to signal a new era for Ferrari, Lucy has suddenly made everyone more interested in the old era.