Ferrari (RACE.IT) has just unveiled its first-ever fully electric car — the Luce model, designed in collaboration with Jony Ive, Apple’s former head of design. The result? The company’s shares are down by over 6% today on the Milan stock exchange, and the session opened with a loss of nearly 7%. Over the past 12 months, the share has already lost nearly 27% of its value.

The Luce model shown on the Ferrari website. Source: Ferrari Investor Relations The problem is simple: the Luce looks like something Ferrari fans don’t seem to want. On X, users compared the €550,000 car to a Nissan Leaf priced at $30,000. One commenter wrote that it looked like a “Fiat Panda in a limousine version”. Another asked if it was possible to “buy the Luce’s interior without the bodywork”. Several users set about creating their own redesigns in ChatGPT and Grok — each one came out lower, sharper, more Ferrari-like. Even Chinese electric cars received better reviews in these comparisons. On paper, the car itself is impressive. Four electric motors, totalling over 1,000 hp, 0–100 km/h in 2.5 seconds, a range of around 530 km, and an 880V architecture with 350 kW charging capability. The interior, meanwhile, embodies Jony Ive’s philosophy in metal and glass: physical buttons instead of touchscreens, a steering wheel made from 19 pieces of recycled aluminium, and a unique key with an E Ink display that ‘fades away’ and blends into the dashboard once inserted into the ignition. Jony Ive claims that a touchscreen in a car “would never have occurred to him” — because it requires looking at your hands rather than the road. Industry reviewers admit that the interior is groundbreaking. But the market buys with its eyes, not with specifications.

Investors are concerned about something deeper than just the car’s appearance. Ferrari is worth as much as it costs to be a Ferrari — that is, a brand built on sporting DNA, the sound of the engine and absolute uncompromising excellence. The Luce is the first five-seater saloon in the company’s history, weighs over 2,300 kg and targets entirely new customers — in Scandinavia, California and, in the long term, China. It sounds like expansion, but the market sees it differently: as a risk of diluting a brand that owes its premium valuation precisely to its exclusivity and inaccessibility. The key factor will be how customers in the EMEA region and the Americas — who together form the core of the brand’s sales — react to this model. Source: Ferrari Investor Relations

Against this backdrop, Ferrari’s decision looks all the more bold, given that the entire sector is moving in the opposite direction. Lamborghini has scrapped its plans for a fully electric model and reverted to hybrids. Porsche has scaled back its EV targets following weak demand in China and the US. Jaguar has already experienced its own image crisis following its electric rebrand. Ferrari is going against the tide, but given that one in four cars sold worldwide is now an EV (including hybrids), this could also prove to be a lucrative niche for the Maranello-based brand in the future. Source: Statista CEO Benedetto Vigna insists that Luce marks “a new chapter in the company’s history” and that every engine “has its own sound.” Perhaps in a few years’ time it will turn out that he was right, and Luce will be seen as a groundbreaking strategic decision. But for now, the market is voting with its feet, and the 52-week high of $519 seems like a memory from a completely different era.

The downward trend in RACE is relentless. Since peaking at €477 in the summer of 2024, the price has fallen by nearly 40%, and every attempt at a rebound since the end of last year has ended at the same point — the 100-day EMA (purple line), which has acted as an impenetrable ceiling for months. Source: xStation Mateusz Czyżkowski Financial Markets Analyst at XTB

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