You know things are bad when the Pope gets involved. No doubt reeling from a launch that somehow went down even worse than Ferrari itself anticipated, the Italian carmaker sought to get the endorsement of none other than His Holiness Pope Leo XIV for its first EV, the Luce.
Guided by Ferrari chairman John Elkann and senior Ferrari executives, in a hillside town about 15 miles southeast of Rome, the pontiff sat in the driver’s seat and listened patiently as test driver Raffaele De Simone explained the vehicle’s controls and driving modes as if he really was speaking to a man clearly in the market for a 1,000-horsepower electric car capable of hitting 62 mph in 2.5 seconds.
Meanwhile, as Pope Leo was no doubt pondering how the Luce could boast one of the largest batteries in any production EV yet still only manage a maximum 329 miles, or how an accelerometer on the rear axle somehow worked like a guitar pickup to create in-cabin sound like an “instrument,” the market was speaking. On seeing the $640,000 car design, not by Ferrari, but LoveFrom, the agency founded by Jony Ive in 2019 upon his exit from Apple, the carmaker’s share price dropped 8 percent in morning trading in Milan, while New York-listed shares fell by 5.1 percent, wiping billions off Ferrari’s value.
Courtesy of Ferrari
Remarkably, Luca di Montezemolo, who was Ferrari’s chairman until 2014, went on camera to share his disgust. “We risk the destruction of a legend,” he said. “I just hope someone removes the prancing horse from that car. This is certainly a machine that the Chinese won’t copy—they won’t need to.”
In social posts echoing the recent calamitous Swatch X AP launch where disappointed watch fans used AI to fashion a product they really wanted from the collaboration rather than a pocket watch, within minutes the furious Ferrari faithful were posting not only AI-generated “fixes” on Ive and LoveFrom’s vision, but also barbed AI images and videos of the Luce in Fisher-Price mode or as a giant automotive Apple mouse, upturned with a USB cable plugged into its underside.
Having changed tune on posts asking followers “What do you think?”, gleefully smelling blood in the water, initially hesitant but now emboldened car commentators and YouTube hosts are piling on, secure in the knowledge of which way the wind is blowing on the Luce.