Yes, the Ferrari Luce is hideous, but you're wrong about the rest

Yes, dear reader, I'm also very outraged about the fact the new Ferrari EV is as hideous as it is. And no, I also wasn't expecting much, which why seeing this shapeless blob full of holes and manhole covers for wheels hurts my retinas even more. And yes, we all agree with the car media and the Redditors that don't like the thing either. We all collectively don't get why Ferrari would even dare to release such a thing.

But instead of kicking open the same open door the rest of the car world is already kicking open, I think this wedge on wheels is actually kind of a genius move from the Italians. It shows they actually don't really like electric cars at all. It shows they respect their customers but also want to weed out the real fans. The ones that have enough money to support the iconic brand through thick and thin. And it shows they kind of knew all along this project was going to be a failure.

Let's start with why Jony Ive and Mark Newson of design company LoveFrom had been picked to design this shitbox. I think it's twofold. Ferrari knew it couldn't ever do justice to an EV. Designing a Italian thoroughbred racing car without a combustion engine would never in a million years sit right with Ferrari-fans, especially not the ones with money. So picking a scapegoat would be perfect.

Not looking in the area of famous car designers was also a smart move. Selecting the tech-nerds insured no hints of any car design from rivaling company's or of any car knowledge in any way shape or form. In other words, as much distance from Ferrari as possible, but close enough to the tech savvy and rich nerds that might be willing to trade in some crypto to be able to show of their new and very weird Ferrari.

You know why don't like the Luce? Because according to Ferrari we are not supposed to like the Luce. It's not for us. We like cars. This isn't one. This is an iPhone on wheels on multiple levels. That doesn't make the blob any better or worse, just different. Think of it like an Apple Car with a Ferrari-badge. Take off the badge, and the thing is perfectly fine for a tech oriented public, put the badge back on, and it for a very wealthy subsection of that tech oriented public.

It's also genius that Ferrari priced the damned thing so incredibly out of the realm of any reasonability (550.000 euro's starting price). This is also twofold. We all know Ferrari isn't really kind to customers. If you want to buy the awesome, highest value cars, you have to buy the shitboxes too. Maybe even two of them. So Ferrari know the truest fans and the biggest investors will still buy a Luce or two. Not because they want to, but because they feel like they have to. And that makes the pricing not matter at all. In fact, in this case Ferrari probably knew this horrendous thing would only be selling a few, so it had to increase pricing to make any return on this incredibly expensive project. It also helps to make the weird tech bro's that want one, be able to flaunt their crypto earnings in a different way.

Further proof of the fact Ferrari didn't actually want to make the Luce and the genius way they tried to cover this up, is the weird high attendance at the press conference and the weird timing of it. I mean, who shows of a car after 22:00 hours in Rome? Nobody who doesn't want to hide from collapsing stock markets.

But more to the point: in the past you had to be hand picked by Ferrari to be allowed to be in the same room as the new car. Usually only a hand full of respectable car journalists. This release was covered by pretty much everybody who even remotely calls themselves a journalist and all the social media influencers Ferrari could find that would just be glad to be invited by the brand.

Ferrari even scheduled an interview with Ive and Newson and a pretty well known YouTuber Clare Abram that knows nothing about cars, but was very willing to let the designers defend their failure. Abram probably agreed to not ask any hard questions or try to challenge the two men in any way, shape or form. All as an insurance to get as little scrutiny about the Luce as possible. All to soften the blow Ferrari knew it would endure after the showing of the wheeled wedge.

In the end, even Ferrari knows the Luce wasn't what everyone hoped it would be. Next to the fact it's horrible to look at, it doesn't have anything going for it technically either. a 122 kWh battery pack and just 530 km of WLTP-range? That's laughable at best. There's a Lucid Air Grand Tourer outside my home right now, that does over 900 km with the same amount of kWh's. And that thing came out more than half a decade ago and doesn't have holes in the body to optimize aerodynamics.

So in the end we're all right: the Ferrari Luce is hideous. But we're all wrong about the rest. Ferrari played their hand exactly the way it should and could. This thing will be rare and very exclusive, which will make it desirable to a certain kind of people. And that people is not us, which is perfectly fine. We just shouldn't act to be offended by this thing as much as we are. The next one is going to be for us again. Not that we'll be able to afford that one either. But it's fun to yell at people that don't care about your yelling, because you're not the one handing them wads of cash.

In other news:

It's always fun when people turn cars into pickups. Even more fun when people do it to cars for which it doesn't make sense. Take the Porsche Cayenne for instance. Who would even dream of taking it to a job site full of cement, lumber, nails and hammers? But here we are. A New Zealander thought it would be a good idea to turn a Cayenne into a pickup. He's now selling it for about 40.000 euro's. Which is kind of a lot, considering you can get a perfectly functioning pickup that was built as a pickup in the first place for less.

The 2CV is making a comeback as an EV. Wonder if you can take it across a plowed field at speed with a basket full of eggs in the back without breaking any of them. If not, this thing will be a failure in my eyes.

Oh no! The builders of the Temu Ferrari are not doing as well as we expected. Getting thousands of pre-orders for your cars apparently only means you get to turn a bigger loss. Xiaomi is selling every car at a loss of about 5.000 euro's. That amounted to a annual loss of about 400 million euro's. The issue is that this number is increasing. The production is increasing, but the financial problems in the Chinese market are also getting worse.