Most car launches do not involve a Pope.
Ferrari’s unveiling of the Luce, its first fully electric production car, managed exactly that.
Ferrari chairman John Elkann drove to Castel Gandolfo on Tuesday to present the new model to Pope Leo XIV at his papal residence, just days after the car made its formal debut in Rome. The pontiff climbed into the driver’s seat, got a personal rundown on the steering wheel controls from Ferrari test driver Raffaele De Simone, and received the steering wheel itself as a gift. For the record, Italian President Sergio Mattarella also got an early look. Not a bad guest list for a car reveal.
This is not your grandfather’s Ferrari. Or your father’s. Or, frankly, any Ferrari you have seen before. The Luce is a four-door, five-seater, a format the Maranello brand has never touched in production form. Four electric motors, one per wheel, push it to 100 km/h in 2.5 seconds and give it a claimed range of over 530 kilometers. It was designed with input from Jony Ive, the former Apple design chief behind the iPhone, and his partner Marc Newson through their studio LoveFrom. The result is deliberately, defiantly minimalist.
The criticism is not just about the powertrain. It is about what the car looks like, what it seats, and what it says about where Ferrari is headed. The brand has quietly walked back its earlier EV ambition, too. Its target for fully electric models making up 40 percent of its lineup by 2030 has been revised down to 20 percent. That is a significant retreat, and it suggests even Ferrari is not entirely sure how fast this transition should move.
That is the question the Luce forces you to ask. It is fast enough, brutally so. It is priced like a Ferrari at half a million euros in Italy. And it carries the prancing horse. But a silent, five-seat luxury cruiser designed by the guy who made your MacBook sleek? That is a genuinely new animal. Whether purists warm to it or write it off, Ferrari has made its move, and it came with a papal photoshoot, no less. The Church, at least, seems to give a blessed vote of approval.