While Ferrari has recently revealed its first electric vehicle (EV), the five-seat Luce, the company is making it clear this isn’t simply a stepping stone to a sportier two-seat version.
The Luce is a landmark car for Maranello. It’s the first fully electric Ferrari, the first with five seats, and only the second four-door model after the Purosangue. But Ferrari says the five-seat layout isn’t a compromise on the way to something else – it’s the point of the car.
Ferrari says the packaging was settled around the amount of battery energy on board, and that the five-seat configuration is the optimum balance for this particular model. A smaller, lower two-seat version isn’t part of the plan, because it would work against what the Luce is trying to be.
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What’s more interesting is Ferrari’s insistence that a car like this could only have been built as an EV in the first place.
“Making an electric car was not a marketing feature. It was the only way to make a car like this today,” said Andrea Binotti, head of vehicle concept design and architecture at Ferrari. “We started thinking outside the box, comparing our ideal car with a Ferrari that does not exist yet, and that was only possible with electrification.”
Ferrari says the key reason is the steering. On the Luce, the steering is woven into the car’s vehicle dynamics control loop, sharing information with the rest of the chassis systems through a central vehicle control unit.
“The steering is in the loop of the information. It is a key element,” Mr Binotti said. “It is not steer-by-wire. It is a power steering setup, but it shares its channels with all the other systems, so that everything can give back the best and quickest response possible.”
Ferrari says that kind of integration simply wasn’t achievable with a traditional combustion layout.
It also explains the four-motor, all-wheel drive setup. With one motor per wheel, Ferrari says it can drive, brake and steer each corner independently, then coordinate them to follow a single steering input. The company describes the breakthrough moment in development as the point when all four wheels began working as one, calling it a level of natural driving it had never achieved before.
Ferrari is at pains to stress this doesn’t spell the end for its combustion cars. The Luce is part of what the brand calls its multi-energy strategy, where petrol, hybrid and now fully electric models sit side by side.
The company says the electric car opens up a completely new type of Ferrari rather than replacing anything, with more models in the pipeline that each deliver different feelings.
In other words, the Luce is exactly the car Ferrari set out to build, not a preview of something to come. For buyers who’ve waited to see how the brand would approach electrification, that’s a clear signal of intent.