Episode Details

Ferrari's first electric car is a massive gamble for a company steeped in heritage. So is tapping the designer of the iPhone to create a revolutionary new interior and make a statement about the place of screens in cars today.

This week, the automaker revealed the cabin of the Ferrari Luce designed by LoveFrom, the firm founded by Jony Ive, the former head of design at Apple, and his partner Marc Newson. It's a retro-modern centerpiece that's very much Ferrari meets the Apple Car: restrained simplicity, aluminum and glass everywhere, lots of squircles, and clever touches like a pivoting center screen that looks like a giant Apple Watch. Critically, there's also an emphasis on physical controls like buttons and toggles for all key functions.

Ive and Newson have never worked on a production car before, so it tracks that the Luce's interior is like nothing else we've seen before. That's by design, because Ferrari can't act like its first EV is just business as usual.

There's a lot on the line, and not just for Ferrari. Ive is very open about how he thinks the auto industry learned the wrong lesson from his work at Apple. Giant screens in cars might feel like "the future," but they aren't the answer to designing a functional interior; in fact, routing critical controls through a screen you can't operate by feel while driving is dangerous.

The unintended consequences of his creations are one of the reasons why Ive left Apple in 2019, and why he and Newson felt compelled to take on the Luce project. So can two legendary designers and automotive outsiders show the car industry the error of its ways?

• Electric Ferrari Luce’s Interior Revealed: When Apple Meets Ferrari
• Why ‘Luce’ Is the Perfect Name for the First Electric Ferrari
• iPhone Creator Jony Ive Slams Tesla-Style Touchscreens: ‘Easy and Lazy’
• Here’s Why the Ferrari Luce’s Interior Has No Carbon Fiber

00:00 Intro

02:49 The Apple Ferrari?

13:08 Steering wheel

19:05 Gauge cluster

24:52 Center screen

28:16 Why glass and aluminum?

33:31 Lessons for the industry

40:12 Ive's regrets about screens

46:11 Outro

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