Secret project in Maranello: The man behind the iPhone who spent 5 years at Ferrari, radical verdict on electric cars
The current trends in the car industry are contradicted by one of the designers who worked for five years in Maranello, the headquarters of Ferrari, on the project of the first 100% electric model of the brand, according to the car magazine Italpassion.
Jony Ive, who coordinated the interface rethinking of the future Ferrari model, is the former iPhone designer and a prominent figure in Apple's design department. His work was carried out as part of a secret project, which took place over the course of five years, at the end of which he concluded that turning an electric car into an object full of touch screens was a mistake.
The designer believes that the power source should not automatically impose a digital interface, arguing that “it just doesn't make sense”. In his opinion, a sports car must offer a sensory experience without the driver being distracted by complex screens.
The project, called Luce, was developed by Ferrari in collaboration with LoveFrom, the creative collective founded by Jony Ive and Marc Newson. The team of interface specialists and industrial designers worked directly within Centro Stile Ferrari, alongside design director Flavio Manzoni and Piero Ferrari.
In this process, Jony Ive focused on rethinking the interface between the driver and the car, arguing that the driving experience should not become entirely digital.
“There's this weird idea that if the power source is electrical, then the interface has to be digital. It just doesn't make sense,” explains the designer.
The objective was to create an intuitive interior. “If an object is well designed, it must look almost natural, as if it had never been designed,” the designers explain.
Instead of an exclusively tactile interface, the team maintained a physical relationship with the car. In the Ferrari Luce model, functions such as climate control are accessed via mechanical buttons. The solution, called the “articulated dashboard”, combines the digital screen with physical buttons so as not to distract attention from the road.
A central element of the new Ferrari is the treated aluminum steering wheel, inspired by Formula 1 single-seaters and classic models. The first tests on the Balocco circuit were described by the participants as an “almost illegal” experience, writes the car magazine.
Ferrari's mission is to prove that an electric model can retain the emotion and simplicity of the brand. According to Jony Ive, the key is resisting the temptation to turn your car into a “giant tablet on wheels.”
