{"id":1760881,"date":"2026-02-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1760881"},"modified":"2026-02-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T21:00:00","slug":"ferrari-boss-on-building-a-luxury-ev-we-need-to-worry-about-the-next-generation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1760881","title":{"rendered":"Ferrari boss on building a luxury EV: “we need to worry about the next generation”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Image: rendered by Andrei Avarvarii for Top Gear<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019re 45 seconds in, and Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna has just asked me what I like most about the new Luce<\/a>. The boss fixes me with a titanium-plated glare, then smiles. And here I was thinking I was the one asking the questions\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Be in no doubt, this car represents an unknown for the world\u2019s most celebrated luxury car brand. Ferrari is 80 years old in 2027, and as well as giving us some of the greatest cars of all time, that has also allowed the company to build a relationship with its clients that\u2019s the envy of the business. They\u2019re part of the family, and while the hunger for Ferrari\u2019s top cars is insatiable, it\u2019s an appetite that\u2019s ingeniously managed.<\/p>\n

But Ferrari\u2019s investors are unsure about the diversion into electric, and demand for high-end EVs remains, shall we say, unproven. If anyone can move the needle, surely it\u2019s these guys, right? We had the engineering debrief last October<\/a>, and the internet is enjoying its usual measured response to anything new following this week\u2019s interior reveal. That\u2019s been led, as you\u2019ll know by now, by Sir Jony Ive, Apple\u2019s former chief design officer, and Marc Newson, his partner in the LoveFrom design collective. They\u2019re pretty choosy about who they work with, but the list includes Airbnb, Apple, Moncler, and most intriguingly, Sam Altman\u2019s Open AI. And, for the past five years, Ferrari.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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They\u2019re arguably the most influential product designers of the past 50 years, but Ferrari\u2019s design office, guided by the visionary Flavio Manzoni, is doing great \u2013 and challenging \u2013 work by itself. So why did the company feel the need to seek external assistance for the design of its first fully electric car?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou look around to see who has done a good job in terms of the user interface,\u201d Vigna says. \u201cI also worked with them at Apple. If you want to break the idea that electric means digital and too many screens, something that\u2019s too difficult for the user, then work with the people who have the experience. This combination of analogue and digital is fundamental to the cars that we aim to do. John [Elkann] actually asked me about LoveFrom when we were talking about the Ferrari CEO position. We are talking about a new kind of car, a new kind of technology, so I think it\u2019s good to work with them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Vigna was himself a leading player in the tech world when Ferrari came calling in 2021, and spent time in California early in his career. He helped develop a three-dimensional motion sensor first used in airbags, later adapted for use in the Nintendo Wii and the iPhone\u2019s screen rotation function. This is a ferociously intelligent, highly pragmatic man with deep roots in engineering.<\/p>\n

I tell him I tried the Waymo self-driving taxi the previous day. \u201cYou did? I like to have a person driving, I don\u2019t trust chips,\u201d he says crisply. I can\u2019t tell if he\u2019s joking or not. We\u2019re on safer ground discussing the Luce, and the methodologies that guided its development. One wonders how smooth the process was.<\/p>\n

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\"ferrari\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Left to right: Benedetto Vigna, John Elkann, Flavio Manzoni, Sir Jony Ive, Marc Newson<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe had meetings in which we explained the constraints, with a mechanical engineer, an aerodynamicist,\u201d he replies. \u201cThere were some basic building blocks that had to be put in place, things we had to explain, the homologation criteria, for example. Then they came to us with ideas, and we were able to say, \u2018this is OK, this is not OK’. There has been a bi-directional flow of information, with a continuous interaction between Maranello and the team in San Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s no secret that Italian companies do things differently from American, British or Japanese ones. That\u2019s a form of diversity right there, for which we should all be grateful. But it does bring challenges. \u201cThere are cultural differences,\u201d Vigna confirms. \u201cThe beauty of working in hi-tech is that you deal with many cultures, and in a previous life I had 21 design centres around the world \u2013 in Turkey, Israel, the Czech Republic, India, Japan, Taiwan and China. You have all that culture, and each is talking in its own way.<\/p>\n

“So I was able to act as an intermediary between here and Italy. It\u2019s not just the language that is different. The time management is different. For me, it was no problem, but for an Italian who has never dealt with people in California it could be interesting, let\u2019s say.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to have a call early on to help them to integrate, but after that initial phase things went smoothly. I\u2019ll give you an example: I might say \u2018yes\u2019 because I understood you, not \u2018yes\u2019 because I agree with you. We learned a lot about the materials used, but on a personal level we now have different people in the company that understand the culture. And that\u2019s a big asset.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vigna is also open enough to admit that the collaboration with LoveFrom has helped deepen his understanding of the importance of design, both in the Ferrari context and in general. Ive and Newson had their team produce a stunning four-volume brand book on Ferrari, documenting the company\u2019s history and major touch-points. During a visit to LoveFrom\u2019s San Francisco HQ, TopGear.com had a look; the effort expended is extraordinary, as you might expect, and goes way beyond the customary mood boards.<\/p>\n

\u201cPersonally, I wasn\u2019t so immersed in design,\u201d Vigna admits. \u201cDo you know what design is if you\u2019re in the technology world? It\u2019s engineering. If you\u2019re talking about a design centre, it means how to design a chip. You might not like this, but to me design was synonymous with styling. I got this completely wrong. Working on this collaboration, I got to appreciate the value of industrial design. Look, I\u2019m a physicist. What I\u2019ve learned is that design has the same depth to it as any other discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Do you know what design is if you\u2019re in the technology world? It\u2019s engineering<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As to the uncertainty around electrification, if Vigna is the captain of a ship, the course ahead is plotted and it\u2019s one he intends to stick to. We talk about psychologist Daniel Kahneman\u2019s work in the field of behavioural economics (his book Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/em> is worth a read), before he invokes another famous figure.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsaac Newton said that he could calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people,\u201d Vigna says. \u201cWe focus on what is under our control, and what we commit to. We believe that doing an electric car is important because we are a leading luxury company, and if we want to continue to be a leader we need to show that we are not afraid to embrace change.<\/p>\n

“We are here to lead awareness, and to deliver unique emotion to our client. I also talk to them and you can see the pressure that is coming from their sons and daughters. We need to worry about the next generation, and act rather than just use words. Innovation and sustainability \u2013 what I call \u2018innovability\u2019 \u2013 is key. Also, if the client is happy, the investor is happy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image: rendered by Andrei Avarvarii for Top Gear We\u2019re 45 seconds in, and Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna has just asked me what I like most about the new Luce. The boss fixes me with a titanium-plated glare, then smiles. And here I was thinking I was the one asking the questions\u2026 Be in no doubt, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-1760881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1760881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1760881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1760881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1760881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}