6 min read
Luce means "light" in Italian. It is an unusually gentle name for the car that may be the most argued-about Ferrari in decades: the first in the company's history with no engine at all.
Ferrari unveiled it in Rome on 25 May 2026. Within hours the design was being mocked online and the company's shares had fallen by somewhere between 6% and 8%. A few months later, the first production car sold at auction for $40 million. Both of those things are true, and that is what makes this story worth reading.
What the Luce is
Forget the mid-engined supercar shape. The Luce is a tall, four-door grand tourer with five seats and a real boot, and it is the first Ferrari with three seats across the back. The design did not come from Ferrari's own studio. It came from LoveFrom, the firm of Jony Ive, the man behind the look of the iPhone, and Marc Newson.
| Ferrari Luce | Figures |
|---|---|
| Power | 1,035 bhp, four electric motors |
| 0–100 km/h | 2.5 seconds |
| Top speed | 310 km/h |
| Battery and range | 122 kWh, up to about 530 km |
| Fast charging | Up to 350 kW |
| Weight | 2,260 kg |
| Boot | 597 litres |
| Price | From about €550,000 in Europe |
Why people were so angry
Three things came together. The first was the shape: a Ferrari that did not look like what people expect a Ferrari to look like, though some designers praised how restrained it is. The second was the price, three to four times that of the fastest electric saloons from Porsche, Lucid and Mercedes-AMG. Chief executive Benedetto Vigna defended it publicly as a fair price for innovation.
The third was the sound, or the fear of its absence. For most buyers, the engine note is half the reason to own a Ferrari. Ferrari chose not to fake one. A sensor on the rear motors picks up real vibrations and amplifies them into the cabin, and the paddles behind the wheel imitate the feel of gear changes. Whether that replaces a V12 is the question owners will now have to answer for themselves.
And yet it sells
A report citing the Financial Times says the 2026 allocation sold out despite the reaction, although Ferrari itself does not publish sales figures. The first production car, Chassis 0, went for $40 million at RM Sotheby's in Monterey in aid of the Ferrari Foundation. That is a charity sale, so it says more about collectors than about the car, but it is still a remarkable number for a model that had just been laughed at online.
Ferrari's stated plan is for first deliveries in the fourth quarter of 2026, with other markets following later. We have not seen a confirmed date for the Middle East.
Does this mean the end of the V12?
No. Vigna has said Ferrari will keep selling combustion and hybrid cars alongside the Luce, and the company chose to build a new kind of car instead of making electric versions of its existing range. Think of it as an addition, not a replacement.
The comparison that interests us most is the one inside Ferrari's own family. The company already has a tall, four-door car with room for adults in the back, and it has a 6.5-litre V12:
| Luce | Purosangue | |
|---|---|---|
| Power source | Four electric motors | 6.5 V12, naturally aspirated |
| Power | 1,035 bhp | 725 PS |
| Seats | 5 | 4 |
| The sound | Amplified motor vibrations | Twelve cylinders |
That second car is in our fleet. If you want to know what the Luce's critics are afraid of losing, the Ferrari Purosangue and the V8 F8 Tributo are both in our Ferrari fleet in Dubai.
Sources
- Auto Express: full specifications
- The Next Web: the market's reaction
- TimesLIVE: Ferrari's chief executive on the price
- CarExpert: the $40 million auction
- Root Nation: the 2026 allocation
Photo: Ferrari Luce at Pebble Beach, 2026. Banhada, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
