Ferrari’s New Jony Ive–Designed EV Is Swathed in Glass and Aluminum

Ive says the emphasis on physical buttons, each serving a unique purpose, is to allow the driver to keep their eyes on the road and off the screen. “When you look at this, you don’t wonder, ‘How many layers deep am I going to have to go to find something that warms my butt?'” he said.

“You don’t touch anything other than aluminum, glass or leather,” several Ferrari employees said repeatedly during the event. (The only pieces of plastic they had were a few gears in the control panel.)

The result is a truly tactile experience. Everything feels clicky or twisty in a satisfying way. The aluminum buttons, unsurprisingly, feel incredible. The glass buttons were just as smooth. We were particularly impressed with the air vents, which feature aluminum shields that flip over when you open and close them. We played with this over and over again until the Ferrari people came and told us it was time to leave the room.

Familiar friends

Ferrari’s glass partner is Corning, the company whose Gorilla Glass has been used on all iPhone models. Corning says there are more than 40 glass parts in the Luce, including buttons, screens and even the center console housing and shift knob.

Ive calls glass an “authentic material.” Compared to a more standard plastic option, glass certainly feels more valuable as a knob or shifter. But will it shatter in an instant if you get into a wreck? Let’s hope not, because Corning says its technicians have performed countless crash tests to ensure this version of Gorilla Glass is safe enough.

The steering wheel features the three-spoke design that Ferrari is famous for. It is almost a circle but its bottom is crushed which gives the wheel a shape reminiscent of a dumpling (or a flat tire). The steering wheel, of course, has a leather grip all around, but clickable aluminum buttons right next to your fingers let you cue or change music tracks and volume.

Behind the steering wheel is the passenger compartment, the console where the odometer, speedometer and other indicators are placed. Taken alone, the screen looks like a large iPhone in landscape mode with three Apple Watches positioned in the center. Convex lenses with parallax effect magnify the circular OLED screens supplied by Samsung, with which Ferrari partnered for the display technology. Additional icons appear in the upper right corner to indicate things like road conditions.

Although the cabin is dominated by screens, very select bits are entirely analog. Namely the speedometer and odometer needles, which are made of aluminum and polycarbonate. When the car is turned off, the gauge screens darken and the hands appear to float in a black void. When the screens light up, they also illuminate the hands, making them glow.

Take control

To the right of the wheel is a control panel screen, a rectangular screen with smooth curved edges and almost no frame. In other words, shaped like an iPad. However, the screen is mounted on a ball joint and therefore can be moved in a way reminiscent of another relic of Ive’s tenure at Cupertino, the iMac G4.