Ferrari CEO Defends First EV Luce After Design Backlash and Share Drop

Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna defended the $640,000 price tag of the luxury automaker's first EV on Thursday, emphasizing the model's innovation and strong customer demand. Despite the CEO's positivity, the electric vehicle has been slammed by Ferrari fans and investors alike. The post Doubling Down on Green: Ferrari CEO Defends Electric Vehicle Slammed by Car Lovers and the Stock Market appeared first on Breitbart.

The Italian sports car maker is betting big on its new EV. But enthusiasts, analysts and an ex-chairman think the Luce is a lemon.

"It Wasn't Copied": Ferrari CEO Defends First EV After Design Backlash Ferrari shares trading in Milan have not recovered since plunging the most in nearly eight months after the company unveiled its first EV sports car earlier this week, breaking with eight decades of petrol-powered tradition. The debut drew immense criticism, with one Wall Street analyst calling the new EV a "mix between a Honda Accord EV and Tesla." By Thursday, Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna was on damage-control duty at an event in Modena, where he defended the design of the battery-powered, four-door, five-seat Luce, which costs a staggering €550,000 ($638,660), according to Bloomberg. "The Ferrari Luce has nothing to do with electric cars you have seen from other players," Vigna said earlier today. "You have to see it and drive it to understand that it wasn't copied — not the interiors, not the exterior, not the performance." Pope Leo was shown Ferrari’s first fully $640,000 electric car in Rome on Tuesday. The pope sat inside the Ferrari Luce and was presented with the vehicle’s steering wheel by Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna. pic.twitter.com/mIxAniwULm — CBS News (@CBSNews) May 27, 2026 Vigna said, "Look at the people writing to us, the people placing orders. Some are existing clients and others are new." "Maybe some people understood that Ferrari was going only electric. We will continue to make all types of powertrains," he added. Vigna noted, "The final answer comes from clients." Customers have already shunned Ferrari hybrid models, as a recent report by Goldman analyst Christian Frenes noted that these hybrid sports cars are depreciating far faster than their petrol-powered counterparts, suggesting buyers still prefer V-8 and V-12 combustion engines. Earlier this week, AIR Capital analyst Pierre-Olivier Essig said the Luce looks like a "mix between a Honda Accord EV and a Tesla." Frenes noted today that Luce's negative reaction was "overblown" ...   He explained: We view the strong market reaction to the Luce reveal as overblown and of less investment significance than media commentary suggest. While the Luce is Ferrari's most controversial product launch of late, we see limited near-term risk to estimates given that both investor and management expectations were already conservative ahead of the event. On long-term product strategy concerns, we equally view recent public commentary as an overreaction: management has explicitly reaffirmed its commitment to powertrain flexibility and made clear that the Luce's design language does not define future models. Ferrari Luce vs. EU Peers: Specification and Pricing Benchmarking For a fraction of the cost and with better all-around performance, the Tesla Model S Plaid outperforms the Luce. Ferrari has been benchmarking the Model S Plaid. Still valid imo, since Ferrari has been benchmarking this car for a couple of years: https://t.co/Td5h6F1Xez You’d think they would surpass it. pic.twitter.com/trLuWBWX3C — Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) May 27, 2026 If car enthusiasts don't care about performance but want a similar design to the Luce, there is the Nissan Leaf. The Luce risks joining the Mondial in Ferrari's hall of shame. Professional subscribers can read the full Ferrari note here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal Tyler Durden Thu, 05/28/2026 - 08:20

Ferrari’s first-ever all-electric vehicle, the Ferrari Luce, was designed to look “entirely new,” the company says, and so far the reaction to the new EV has been polarized. Shares of the Italian luxury automaker fell in premarket trading Tuesday after Ferrari unveiled the car named after the Italian word for “light” on the anniversary of its first Rome Grand Prix victory. [Photo: Ferrari] The Luce, expected to sell for about $640,000, was designed by former Apple chief design officer Jony Ive and Marc Newson through their design collective LoveFrom. Online, people expressed their disappointment. The Luce doesn’t look like Ferarri, some complained, suggesting it has the sleek, compact, and rounded forms of an iPad rather than the automaker’s traditional sports car look of angular, aerodynamic forms. On Reddit, users called the Luce “awful,” and compared it to Waymo. Car & Driver commenters didn’t think it has Ferrari DNA. X users called it a “beautiful ugly car” and asked if it was available on Temu, or designed by Hot Wheels. In a statement, Ive explained that the car’s electric drive train allows for a “radically new architecture,” adding that it encouraged a spaciousness that most sports cars cannot afford. “The design approach was driven by a determination to explore, exploit and celebrate the unprecedented opportunities afforded by a new power source,” Ive said. “While inspired by this extraordinary opportunity, we were mindful of the challenges of moving beyond the visceral engagement and soulful engine noise of the past.” [Photo: Ferrari] The EV has more than 60 new patents, and it could be the closest thing we get to an “Apple car” after Apple dropped its EV project in 2024. Its shell-like form is reminiscent of a computer mouse, as if the whole top is a multi-touch trackpad you can click. [Photo: Ferrari] The exterior design is built on the concept of a glass house with a light and airy interior. The interior lighting effects, meanwhile, are dynamic and futuristic: front and rear lights are transparent and slowly recede after the car is switched off. After docking the key, Ferrari yellow glows from the key to across the interface. [Photo: Ferrari] While much of the Luce looks and feels like a computer, the physical controls give the interior of the car an elevated analog interface with knobs, switches, and buttons that make operating it a physical, tactile experience instead of just tapping on a iPhone screen. “We really wanted every part, every component, to be designed as an individual product. So it’s like dozens and dozens of cameras and watches,” Ive told Fast Company earlier this year when Ferrari previewed the EV’s steering wheel, center console, seat, and dashboard components. [Photo: Ferrari] The negative initial response to the Ferrari Luce is par for the course when it comes to automakers rethinking what a car and car brand should look like as they adapt for EVs. But that’s exactly what Ferrari was going for by tapping outside designers to bring a new perspective and design language to the project. The Luce “lights the way towards the future,” the company said in a statement, “not merely the ‘electric Ferrari’ but an entirely new Ferrari.” [Photo: Ferrari] Priced as high as it is, Ferrari doesn’t really need to convince the wider public to like its new car to actually sell it. There’s only a limited number of customers who can afford an EV that’s more expensive than the U.S. median home sale price. By designing something bold and new, Ferrari hopes to cater to buyers who can afford a car that doesn’t look like anything else out there.

Ferrari’s first fully electric car is already dividing fans. Critics say the $640K EV looks more like a Nissan Leaf or "a bar of soap" than a Ferrari, but the company may not care. Bloomberg's Craig Trudell joins Open Interest to explain why Ferrari only needs a handful of wealthy buyers to make the Luce a success, and how the brand could use the EV to unlock access to future supercars. (Source: Bloomberg)

Ferrari shares fell as much as 7 per cent in Milan trading on Monday, dropping to €290.55 and wiping roughly £3 billion from the company’s market cap. The sell-off came one day after the Italian carmaker unveiled the Luce, its first fully electric vehicle, at the Città dello Sport in Rome. The Luce is a four-door, […] This story continues at The Next Web