Jony Ive Designed Ferrari Luce EV Interior
topgear.com
topgear.com
It's all the same design language and materials you'd seen on Apple product. It's almost like someone went "let's make the infotainment a giant Apple watch".
I would expect you call up a good designer and they design something special that works in the language of your product, something uniquely new, but also uniquely Ferrari. But what seems to be happening here is if you phone up Johnny Ive you'll get a slapdash re-run of 2010s iPhone design.
Very little care on aligning the design to the brand design, except for the seat and a few selector switches (which somehow Ferrari seems to have accepted? Strange from such a picky client), no care about keeping refined design elements like stalks for the turn signals and wipers and instead applying this buttons-everywhere-for-every-function approach that is considered a regression in EVs input design.
The screens are just different shapes of iPhones/iPads instead of something uniquely Ferrari-Ive, feels like a Ferrari-Apple car collab.
Really don't understand it, Dieter Rams did a lot with the same design language because he worked for Braun for a long ass time, Ive is completely untethered from Apple so re-applying the same design language he created for the brand unto another brand is just unimaginative.
You criticized it despite not knowing how the exterior looks like, or what Ferrari’s requirements are, e.g “fresh take in the new era”, “distinct look for EV”, “avoid upsetting existing buyers who want to protect their car’s value”, “attract younger affluent buyers who grew up with Apple products”, and so on.
Another thing to consider, this will be a SUV for the mainstream, not the enthusiasts, although it still requires preorder and long waiting time.
Design is very subjective. I personally don’t love this. I like Land Rovers’s much more. Still the criticism here reads a lot like “Jony Ive is no longer cool, so anything he touches sucks”.
[0] - https://f1rstmotors.com/blogs/the-ferrari-testarossa-the-cla...
[1] - https://www.caranddriver.com/photos/g65351444/2026-ferrari-f...
I wonder how many people could have actually known that this is designed by Jonny Ive if they haven't been told before.
There aren't enough buttons, there is too much to read, and all of this while I'm driving.
I remember my friends dad had a Corvette or something in the mid-late 90s, and it had this red projected HUD on the windshield. All of your information was right at eye level, and you never had to look away from the road to see your RPM or speed, and probably more, but that was 30ish years ago, and I barely remember yesterday.
Also, my vehicle is a truck, one of the last places where manufacturers still let you have buttons and knobs to control climate.
Has the manufacturer considered designing and testing for that use case?
The speedo and rev counter are exactly where they should be. What else do you need to read while driving?
What buttons are you missing?
See the multigraph section: https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/ferrari-luce
There are some nice buttons here, and individual components (as photographed) look good on their own.
BUT altogether it still seems like disparate components who share design language, just slapped into a vehicle.
automakers are slowly figuring this out but, unfortunately, the move to electric may retard this realization because "high-tech"
I don't have a heavy accent but as a non-native speaker still do have an accent in English, and I hate the failure modes of voice commands when it misinterprets something since it is much harder to correct. I actively avoid voice commands just due to this 1-5% of failures that are extremely annoying.
This is second hand account but here are my uncle's credentials...
https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/tech/mini-circular-in...
It looks terrible especially running Carplay (which is designed for rectangular screens).
Which is to say, do they know that touch interfaces are bad and do it anyway because it saves money? Or do they go through life thinking they're actually making a usable product?
It's likely the former. Industrial designers are trained on ergonomics so they know the benefits of physical switches.
However, at least in the case of BMW / Mini, they're forced use touchscreens by their management primarily because:
1. Not only it saves money
2. It also enables subscription models for certain features like heated seats and steering wheel. No heated seats? Just remove the UI buttons.
Unless consumers push back (like VW customers did), they will continue to cut costs.
Absolutely heated seats are a luxury feature. That doesn't change the fact that if put heated seats in a car and then have touchscreen only controls, you have created a stupid product that's made to be comfortable in cold temperatures but not usable in cold temperatures.
Of course they should be making cars usable in cold temperatures whether or not it has cold weather luxury features, but the addition on heated seats in a car that you can't operate with gloves on just highlights the stupidity of the screen interfaces.
The manufacturer is considering "what would be nice for a car in cold temperatures" and then skipping over "it would be nice if you could turn the heat or defogger on."
Then I would have managed to avoid the touch screen stupidity entirely.
Why do they go for OLED fake analog gauges? You don't need to switch between a million different faces for gauges. A Ferrari is supposed to be about the driving experience, not the gimmicks.
Their interior infotainment design language? What is that "care" you speak of in this regard? Ferrari has been abysmal on that front. Just watch some Roma reviews. That car will loose its value rapidly only because of the outrageous ergonomic.
Using round oleds with inset bezels and physical needles to emulate a traditional 90s (and earlier) gauge cluster is an interesting idea. Honestly refreshing in a sea of sameness in the car industry today.
It looks like the interior of many cars now except for having stick like manual toggles like a retro control panel. It's not consequential at all, unless they mean "following as a result of".
The paddle shifts got me intrigued, how it's working under the hood?
the emergency lights button should be colored red and elevated because it needs to be interacted with in high-stress situations
temperature should be set with a slider rather than a toggle switch because then a given temperature selection becomes spatially consistent and selecting max-hot or max-cold is instant and obvious
and so on
all in all better than expected and shows that we are moving past the "everything is an ipad" phase of civilizational development
Is it our hubris as armchair UI designers that we miss obvious problems? Is it internal politics? Is it bureaucracy? Is it hardware difficulties?
they also make it difficult to support an "auto" function, because they would need to move automatically to maintain a consistent user experience
sliders aren't used very often in cars now so it is probably harder to find well made components for them
etc
hopefully as the automakers move back to physical inputs they bring back these sorts of controls
Setting the temperature where one end is minimum, the other is maximum, and between them you have a choice of degrees.
Activated vents would probably be better kept as buttons instead of being on a slider, I might want to use the floor vents at the same time as the defroster.
Fan speed (imo) should be on a knob, like a volume control. It would be fun to see it move, like a motorized pot on a receiver.
Some nice details: - There's digital readouts around the binnacle gauges - The physical needle on the speedo comes from the outside to leave the center available for the digital screen - The drive selector has a small screen (light?) in the center as an indicator
The combination seems like it may create a quite polished feel if it's done well in motion.
I like the physical controls. I actually just traded off my truck over the weekend and the climate controls being through the screen were a major part of that decision. It still seems like the switches here are pretty minimal and might be annoying - do you have to go through the screen when your windshield starts to fog?
these links are ok:
https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/1r04f0x/official_ferr...
No mention or picture of any Ferrari or Jony Ive.
But there's absolutely no way the apple car would've had gauges anywhere near this physically complex, or a steering wheel that looks like this with the thin spokes and manettino. A lot of the switches also look significantly more premium that what you'd realistically expect from someone like apple making their first car.
The clock looks like a dollar store alarm clock. The center console otherwise looks okay, environment management can be done easily, that's a good trend to continue.
The instrument cluster has no aura - completely anonymous, doesn't make me think "Ferrari" or "high performance, high technology".
Rounded square design language isn't fit for purpose in a ferrari, which is about aerodynamic shapes that reinforce that you're in a high-performance sports car.
Jony Ive is a garbage-tier car designer. He'd fit in better at Kia. Or Volvo.
But BMW is, in general, very good at finding a design language that fits all the right buttons in the right places while feeling like a mid-to-up market car. It's a blend of usability and aesthetics and brand (+model) identity that finds a really good balance across all three categories.
Heh, my thought on opening the article and seeing the image was "huh, without the badge in the photo, if forced to guess the make, I'd have gone with Kia."
Apple has way too much influence on the world at the moment and people coming from Apple as well. Can't wait before we came move on to some fresh stuff, but that you mean the boomers let go of their powers and they definitely don't want to do that.
It’s a mess. Disparate palettes even in grey is a serious WTF accomplishment. The ring over the Launch button is absolutely superfluous and idiotic at the same time. No function and even worse form.
Ugh. Enzo at least can power the first charge from the output of him spinning in his grave. Yes, I could do better.
This is something that we need to read slowly.
The "ferraristas" have been the most ardent sect on the cult of the internal combustion engine.
If these guys can be converted, then, probably, the last holdout in veneration of oil will probably be the government of the United States.
I'm lucky enough to have driven quite a few modern Ferraris (488, 812, FF, California) and what they have in common is that their interiors are not very pretty or advanced, but everything is where you'd expect and gives the info you need (that is, apart from the horrible non-deterministic placement of the indicator switches on the steering wheel).
This is not a Ferrari interior. It's an interior for rich people who will buy a Ferrari EV and think they have a Ferrari. Like the Purosangue before it, it cosplays as a Ferrari while diluting the brand.
I recently went straight from a California to a Miata ND, and the Miata is just so much more fun in every conceivable way. Cheaper interior for sure, but it can actually be used in fun ways on normal roads and you cannot hide weight with electronics.
I, too, shorted NVDA
Designed by Apple's Jony Ive /s
I wonder how an ai would design it.
Aren't those designs copyrighted by apple?