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Ferrari’s first EV looks like it was designed by Apple and the internet is furious
Jony Ive and his firm LoveFrom spent five years rethinking the interior of Ferrari’s first electric car, the Ferrari Luce. The result is one of the most polarizing automotive interiors in recent memory. Designers are praising it. Enthusiasts are attacking it. The argument isn’t really about glass, aluminium, or screens. It’s about what a Ferrari is supposed to feel like.
The response falls into two clear camps. Designers and HMI (Human-machine Interface) specialists see a serious reset; a rejection of the touchscreen arms race and a return to tactile interaction. To them, this is an EV interior designed for use, not for swiping.
Enthusiasts and online communities often see something else: something too calm, too polite, too Apple. Not Ferrari enough. Some call it elegant. Others call it soulless. Both reactions make sense because this interior is the collision of two design cultures.
The Luce doesn’t follow the standard EV playbook. There’s no giant central tablet and no wall of glossy black screens trying to simulate excitement.
Instead, the cabin is built as a single, calm volume. Symmetry, circles, and rounded rectangles define the layout. Physical dials, toggles, and switches replace touch-heavy interfaces. Displays are small and purposeful rather than theatrical.
Materials carry most of the emotional weight: glass, brushed aluminium, leather, and jewel-like controls. Every component looks machined and deliberate. It feels less like a traditional dashboard and more like a piece of precision equipment or, depending on your perspective, a very expensive Apple product.
Why designers are praising it
Across design media, the praise tends to land in a few areas.
First, the interior has a clear philosophy. It isn’t trying to please everyone or chase trends. It’s built around one idea: driving first, screens second. In a market full of screen maximalism, that alone feels radical.
Second, the emphasis on physical controls makes the experience more intuitive. You can operate the car by muscle memory instead of hunting through menus. For HMI professionals, this feels like a long-overdue correction.
Third, the material quality stands out. No cheap plastics. No fake finishes. Just machined aluminium, glass, and leather. Many designers see this as a more durable form of luxury than digital graphics that age in a few years.
And finally, there’s the strategic angle. Most EV interiors look like variations of the same idea: a big screen, minimal surfaces, soft lighting. The Luce refuses that formula.
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Why enthusiasts are pushing back
The loudest criticism isn’t about usability or materials. It’s emotional.
Many Ferrari fans feel the interior is missing something fundamental. Ferraris are supposed to be dramatic, a little chaotic, slightly irrational. The Luce feels calm, symmetrical, and precise.
Some say it looks like a simulation rig. Others say it feels like an Apple product. A few argue that without the badge, it could belong to a far more ordinary car.
The core complaint is simple: it doesn’t feel like a Ferrari.
And for a brand built almost entirely on emotion, that’s not a small accusation.
One word keeps surfacing in the backlash: soulless.
Not badly designed. Not cheap. Not ugly. Just emotionally flat.
Minimalism works for phones because phones are tools. You want them to disappear into your life. You want them to feel quiet and neutral.
A Ferrari isn’t a tool. It’s a spectacle.
The Apple DNA in the Luce is also hard to miss: glass, brushed aluminium, soft geometry, jewel-like controls, and tiny displays integrated into physical parts. Everything looks machined, precise, and inevitable.
Some see this as a strength. Others see it as an Apple worldview dropped into an Italian supercar.
The difference is context.
Minimalism made phones feel revolutionary. But a Ferrari isn’t supposed to feel minimal. So the same discipline that made the iPhone iconic is now making a supercar feel unsettling.
That tension is the entire story. What worked perfectly in one category feels controversial in another, not because the design is poor, but because the emotional expectations are different.
The design process debate
There’s also a quieter argument about the design process. LoveFrom reportedly spent months on research and produced several books of insights before presenting a single design concept.
For some, that signals seriousness. For others, it’s a red flag.
The design industry has developed a romance with process: thicker decks, longer timelines, more frameworks. Everyone feels smarter. Everyone feels safer. And somewhere along the way, the process begins to resemble the product.
But the person buying a Ferrari isn’t buying a methodology. They’re buying a feeling. They don’t experience the research phase. They don’t read the insight decks. They don’t sit through the workshops.
They sit in the driver’s seat, wrap their hands around the wheel, press the accelerator, and ask one simple question: Does this feel like a Ferrari?
If the answer is yes, the process was worth it. If the answer is no, no amount of research makes up for that gap.
Process can guide the work. It can reduce risk, reveal patterns, and sharpen decisions. But it can’t substitute instinct, taste, or emotional impact.
In the end, nobody falls in love with a process. They fall in love with the result.
Lastly, my personal opinion is Jony Ive inherited his design approach from Steve Jobs, and applied it to this project:
- Simplicity is sophistication
- Question everything
- Start with experience then work backwards
- Perfection in the details
- People don’t know what they need
- Integrate hardware + software
What do you think?
This isn’t about Ferrari
The Luce isn’t just a car interior. It’s a cultural test.
Can minimalist product thinking live inside emotional performance objects?
Can a Ferrari feel calm and precise instead of loud and theatrical?
Can tactility replace screen spectacle as the new marker of luxury?
Right now, nobody agrees on the answers. That’s the tension.
Because this debate isn’t just about one car. It’s about where design is heading when technology removes the old sources of drama and forces brands to find new ones.
The Luce forces an uncomfortable question onto the industry: Take away the noise, what’s left to make it feel like a Ferrari?
My take
Personally, I find the backlash predictable.
Every time a legacy brand tries something genuinely different, the first reaction is discomfort. Not because the design is bad, but because it breaks a mental model people have carried for years.
Ferrari, in most people’s minds, is supposed to feel loud, mechanical, and even dramatic. This interior is the opposite. It’s calm. Precise. Composed. And that contrast is exactly what’s making people uneasy.
A lot of the criticism boils down to one idea: it looks too much like an Apple product.
But that argument ignores a simple fact. The visual language people associate with Apple: clarity, restraint, premium material, obsessive detail, was shaped by Jony Ive himself. Of course, it feels familiar. It’s his design vocabulary.
The real question isn’t whether it looks like Apple.
The real question is whether Ferrari should stay trapped in a nostalgic idea of itself.
Because if every Ferrari has to look like the last great Ferrari, the brand isn’t evolving. It’s just repeating its own past.
In the EV era, much of the old mechanical drama disappears. So the emotional core has to come from somewhere else: interaction, tactility, material presence. That’s exactly where this interior is focused.
In a market full of giant screens glued onto dashboards, that restraint feels almost rebellious.
I’d rather see Ferrari take a controversial, opinionated swing than release a safe interior that quietly blends into the EV crowd.
Safe Ferraris are forgettable Ferraris.
Ferrari’s real danger isn’t controversy.
It’s irrelevance.
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