In case anyone was wondering what the Apple Car would have looked like inside, it would have been roughly this.
As an Apple Car™ it makes sense, but as a Ferrari it's incredibly soulless and oversimplified. This Ive design aesthetic (Dieter Rams' aesthetic really) is fine on consumer electronics where you want the device to disappear and give way to the display, but on something as emotional as a vehicle (Ferrari especially), this design falls flat.
I do hope some of the design details work their way through the industry (e.g. using glass instead of gloss black plastic, convex glass to add depth to digital gauges), but I hope the rest of it stays as a one-off experiment demonstrating the hubris and one-dimensionality of a top designer.
It certainly looks like an Apple device. Ive's aesthetic is Apple's aesthetic, so if you hire Ive, that is what you are going to get.
I can see a car company who doesn't care about design stumbling into this outcome, but Ferrari doesn't seem like that kind of company. So the choice must have been intentional.
EVs have a weight issue that fundamentally constrains their overall design. It is really a tough engineering problem to try to shave weight off of everything, because you are starting out with a 700kg battery replacing a 400kg engine + transmission, so you are ~300kg in the hole, and need to remove 300 kg from the rest of the car. That's why they do crazy stuff like use the battery as part of the structural frame, to save on metal there. Every extra kilogram reduces range. Solid things are made hollow. Metal is replaced by plastic. Fabrics are thinner or replaced with lighter-weight engineered materials. Lots of things are removed. Physical buttons gone, flourishes gone, handles gone. Seats are made thinner and with less material. See how they brag about a simpler new steering wheel that is 400g lighter?
All of that and still they come up with a 2300 kg compact two row SUV.
So, if you are going to be redesigning everything anyway to try to get rid of as much weight as possible, why not hire a designer known for sparse, minimalistic, clean design? It makes sense. It may not be what Ferrari buyers want, but you can't really blame Ferrari for giving it a try. We'll see how well it sells.
The inside of the Apple Car looked nothing like this - primarily because "driving" is the main activity the design of this Ferrari is intended to serve, and "driving" was not an activity that the Apple car intended to support.
I don't quite agree with this statement.
I would rephrase it like that: If Apple had built a car, this is the care and though process that we would have seen - incredible attention to details. But it would not have looked anything like what we’re seeing with Ferrari.
I am mostly OK with the wheel and the binnacle(?) cluster of gauges. The things I don’t like is instead of a stalk for the blinkers/turn signal, it is buttons on the wheel? (Should have been two mini paddles above the big paddles). I especially hate the two triangular control modules. They are ugly and useless. It is a Ferrari I want performance mode all the time. For cruise control, it should have been two mini paddles below the big paddles.
The worst is the center Tesla like display. Steve Jobs IMO would have drawn the line there and said no displays. He probably would have said you should connect your phone and fiddle with whatever in the app.
The overhead Launch pull button is really silly. This is screaming look at me and my mid life crisis.
I've wondered why they don't integrate the tablet directly into the dash or windshield. It does seem clunky to have a big ipad screwed to your dash. And I think it would also save on weight.
I thought I was going to look at a car when I clicked that link. I scrolled the last 80% of the way out of morbid curiosity. This secondary quest was not disappointing: no car photos. So weird. Perhaps this is a complaint about the title.
But since it's all about the interface, I must say, the idea of a sports car with a touch screen is still rather terrifying.
All the necessary controls are fortunately physical in the Ferrari.
This is way better than what VW and other manufacturers have been doing in the last 5 years. At least VW is going back to physical controls as customers weren't satisfied with the capacitive buttons and hidden menus for essential functions.
I think it's fine for wheel controls to look different though. You're adjusting them when engaged with a task that requires constant concentration, so being able to easily identify the control you want and then use it makes sense.
I'd rather have this than all of them look the same. If you're driving in rain and need to swap to wet tyre mode, but have to spend time figuring out which generic knob does the thing, it's dangerous.
It's a Ferrari EV.. I can imagine the company wanting to treat the project like a proverbial stepchild, while keeping the soul for the fossil-fueled machines..
After the 993, Porsche was a different company. Not exactly cheap-ass, but maybe something less than their often aircraft-quality mechanicals and spartan but hand-made quality interior.
Um, where is the car? All the images are of (parts of) the interior, and the captioning is bizarre. Ooohh! It has a steering wheel! (And it's a input! Who knew?)
Tesla Roadster took a bunch of preorders at $50-250k down almost a decade ago, More recently, Taycan did reasonable-ish volume at $100-200k/unit. There (at least once was) a market for such things. Its definitely not the same market as ICE super/hypercars, but there are some that might enjoy a silent, luxurious car with a sub-2 0-60 as a complement to other cars in the garage.
They've been going to turbos in all but their flagships so they generally don't sound all that exciting anyway. Lambo literally draped their styling over a VW/Porsche parts-bin crossover SUV and all the influencers flocked to it. The person who appreciates the high-rpm wail of old timey, power-dense engines is not the same person who drops half a million on a car anymore.
At some point you have to accept a technology transition. Otherwise you sound like someone arguing against motor cars because the real thrill of transportation was the horse’s clippity-clop.
FYI, the Wikipedia article has a little more data on this vehicle as an EV:
4 motors, 1,113 horsepower, an 880 V platform, 122 kWh of battery, range 330 miles (531.1 km).
Not clear yet on the exact charge speed or launch date. Or what the 0-100km/h time is, but expect a low number, of course. That number has to be eye-catching.
Problem is that in an EV world the raw figures are really not going to be that impressive. Plenty of Chinese EVs have 1000+hp at far lower cost, and likely as good or better acceleration that whatever Ferrari can deliver, since EVs seem to be reaching a point where the limit on acceleration is the tires rather than the motor. So don't think Ferrari can deliver anything truly eye catching in those terms. Differentiation needs to come in other domains.
The skeuomorphism is a curious choice. I think if I were going for a radical electric car UI I'd use bar graphs from left to right and things like that. Then again, maybe they don't want to alienate their customers.
It still looks like a big computer screen, I'm afraid. Although, making it seamless with the dash is a step up, you're right. That tiny paddle gear shift looks horrendous, though.
I would really like to have analog features back, buttons and all that, in an EV.
looks like a weird mix of nothing, pointless clock, that screen on the right, that only creates discomfort. The big screen that is big only for the trend.
In tesla ( trend setter for this) big screen is functional, and it can show you multi media, when you charge you watch netflix.
Lexus CT200h is one of the best interiors ever designed. The design language was tactile: every single button or control had a different action or feel.
There’s a roughly 7 inch above the vents that flips up whenever the car is off, but using the screen is optional. The screen is up near the road, and it’s very safe to use. There’s a small joystick to move the cursor.
CT also has a stateless “springy gear selector” which works the same way as a manual gear selector, but after selecting the gear it springs back, so it’s stateless. It also has tactile blocking for gears you can’t enter yet. It felt extremely satisfying.
CT got a 10/10 from me, like a small aircraft cockpit. Enough knobs and computers to be exciting, but not OTT. Made a hybrid micro hatchback feel exciting.
What do you mean interior EV design? Why does it have to differ from an EV to a gas powered car? You might have some different gauges, a control or two that is different, but other than that, why does an EV have to look a certain way?
Taycan relies too heavily on touch. Not even vent directions are manually adjustable on a Taycan. BMW i4 interior is much better in that aspect: many physical controls. I hope Porsche fixes its mistakes soon.
It literally is just a big minimalist computer screen. I drive a taycan and it would be significantly better if they were to remove the massive touchpad and replace it with a cluster of physical controls.
I love it, first ferarri that i have said "I want one". I have been an ev driver for over a decade and have no regrets, it has improved my life. The mental health benefits of driving an almost silent vehicle are completely over looked, the addiction to a vibrating noisy gas engine we find quite frankly bizarre in 2026, it is old technology, outdated, and becoming lost in history and thank you to the lithium cell.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 90.4 ms ] threadAs an Apple Car™ it makes sense, but as a Ferrari it's incredibly soulless and oversimplified. This Ive design aesthetic (Dieter Rams' aesthetic really) is fine on consumer electronics where you want the device to disappear and give way to the display, but on something as emotional as a vehicle (Ferrari especially), this design falls flat.
I do hope some of the design details work their way through the industry (e.g. using glass instead of gloss black plastic, convex glass to add depth to digital gauges), but I hope the rest of it stays as a one-off experiment demonstrating the hubris and one-dimensionality of a top designer.
Well, that’s not (yet) possible, but this video does a good job in the meantime:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wv1btxCjVE&pp=ygUQTG92ZWZyb20...
[0]: https://www.astonmartin.com/en-us/our-world/brand-stories/as...
Strongly disagree. To each their own...
I can see a car company who doesn't care about design stumbling into this outcome, but Ferrari doesn't seem like that kind of company. So the choice must have been intentional.
This feels like a modern Ferrari F40 dashboard and I like it a lot.
All of that and still they come up with a 2300 kg compact two row SUV.
So, if you are going to be redesigning everything anyway to try to get rid of as much weight as possible, why not hire a designer known for sparse, minimalistic, clean design? It makes sense. It may not be what Ferrari buyers want, but you can't really blame Ferrari for giving it a try. We'll see how well it sells.
The worst is the center Tesla like display. Steve Jobs IMO would have drawn the line there and said no displays. He probably would have said you should connect your phone and fiddle with whatever in the app.
The overhead Launch pull button is really silly. This is screaming look at me and my mid life crisis.
But since it's all about the interface, I must say, the idea of a sports car with a touch screen is still rather terrifying.
The ev powertrain last October, this, and the exterior in May.
This is way better than what VW and other manufacturers have been doing in the last 5 years. At least VW is going back to physical controls as customers weren't satisfied with the capacitive buttons and hidden menus for essential functions.
There's a lack of consistency on the wheel controls that make this look more like a UX showcase rather than a usable interface.
Case in point:
- A bunch of rotary knob that perform the same function: to select. But, they all look different and use different ways to represent the selection.
- Some have a lighted indicator, some have a notch, and some are completely ambiguous.
- The 2, 1, *, 0 switch has a hole in it to indicate the currently selected option.
- The plastic surrounding this is is mere millimeters of thickness and I would expect it to break off within a decade.
I'd rather have this than all of them look the same. If you're driving in rain and need to swap to wet tyre mode, but have to spend time figuring out which generic knob does the thing, it's dangerous.
Anyway, whether it's a Ferrari or other, I'm always disappointed by touchscreen in cars.
And as I said it before, it always seems and afterthought and just put there because someone forgot about it.
I'm guess I'm getting old but when I'm driving I usually look at the road and couldn't car less about a nice touchscreen.
At some point you have to accept a technology transition. Otherwise you sound like someone arguing against motor cars because the real thrill of transportation was the horse’s clippity-clop.
Not clear yet on the exact charge speed or launch date. Or what the 0-100km/h time is, but expect a low number, of course. That number has to be eye-catching.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_Luce
https://youtu.be/ujl0NYeDJoI?t=810
https://youtu.be/6Wv1btxCjVE?si=_1mvIHT3r_CQsuTZ
https://www.core77.com/posts/109822/A-Look-at-Some-Wild-1980...
Their interiors look high-end, functional and not just a minimalist big computer screen.
https://www.caranddriver.com/photos/g46528574/2024-porsche-m...
I would really like to have analog features back, buttons and all that, in an EV.
In tesla ( trend setter for this) big screen is functional, and it can show you multi media, when you charge you watch netflix.
this screen is not capable of multi media....
Rivian is the only excellent one.
https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/2022/07/20/94...
There’s a roughly 7 inch above the vents that flips up whenever the car is off, but using the screen is optional. The screen is up near the road, and it’s very safe to use. There’s a small joystick to move the cursor.
Screen up:
https://preview.redd.it/after-about-a-year-of-ownership-post...
CT also has a stateless “springy gear selector” which works the same way as a manual gear selector, but after selecting the gear it springs back, so it’s stateless. It also has tactile blocking for gears you can’t enter yet. It felt extremely satisfying.
CT got a 10/10 from me, like a small aircraft cockpit. Enough knobs and computers to be exciting, but not OTT. Made a hybrid micro hatchback feel exciting.
Ferrari may not have nailed it, but it's a move to the right direction.
My car has it - shows EVERY spec of dust. Every finger smudge. Cleaning with a microfiber cloth left scratches.
The only thing I can think of is that it's designed to reduce resell value
[0] https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/