Ferrari Luce: A Bold Brand Segmentation for a New Generation of Customers

Following the launch of Ferrari Luce, it was immediately clear that Ferrari’s first all-electric model stands at a considerable visual distance from the brand’s past design language. Public reaction was overwhelmingly negative, and Ferrari’s share price fell sharply.

But how could Ferrari’s management possibly fail to see that this was such a stylistically different, high-risk design?

The challenge Ferrari faces is this: what should a company do when the core of its new product conflicts with the core of the brand it has built for decades?

There is a widely quoted line attributed to Enzo Ferrari: he sold engines; everything else was simply there to hold them.

Today, when electric vehicles cannot be absent from the future market, what strategy can Ferrari use to break through?

More importantly, Ferrari’s existing customer base is extremely stable. In 2024, roughly 80% of new Ferraris were sold to existing customers, and nearly half of those buyers already owned more than one Ferrari. These sales were almost entirely based on internal-combustion vehicles.

How does a brand like this enter the electric vehicle market?

Ferrari may therefore have made a rare and courageous decision: to create a new segmentation, and execute it with precise and almost uncompromising determination.

To break into the electric vehicle market, Ferrari should not try to persuade its existing gasoline-car owners to like this electric car. Instead, it should create a new group of customers—people who, when they decide to buy an electric vehicle, believe they should buy a Ferrari electric vehicle.

The audience Luce may be trying to create includes technology founders, new wealthy individuals from the AI era, and high-net-worth consumers in software and finance.

These people may not enter the Ferrari brand through traditional car culture. Engine sound may not necessarily resonate with them. By contrast, the environmental and technological associations of electric vehicles may create a stronger connection.

Given their purchasing power, Ferrari’s brand status, technical capability, and scarcity still hold considerable appeal.

If this is the goal, then the involvement of LoveFrom, led by Jony Ive and Marc Newson, becomes highly logical.

This is not an ordinary design collaboration. It is arguably one of the highest-level product design choices available anywhere in the world.

For a brand at Ferrari’s level, if it is going to make a major bet on a new customer segment, why not place that bet on Jony Ive—one of the most commercially influential product designers in the world?

It is also tempting to speculate: Ive spent years observing and participating in the Apple Car project, which ultimately never reached the market. Could some of the design thinking developed through that process now be finding an application in the Luce project?

From a communications and marketing perspective, the segmentation strategy becomes even clearer through Ferrari’s media arrangements.

Most media outlets were given approximately thirty minutes with Luce. They were not allowed to use their own equipment, and filming and visual materials were tightly controlled by Ferrari.

This arrangement clearly helped Ferrari manage the first wave of public discourse. It also gave most media outlets limited time to dwell on exterior criticism or make detailed on-site comparisons.

However, two figures outside the traditional automotive media world were given more complete access to advance interviews and long-form content opportunities:

MKBHD and Cleo Abram.

They are certainly not the most typical media choices for Ferrari’s existing customer base, nor are they primarily followed by people who only care about performance cars and traditional automotive culture.

But on YouTube, they are among the most influential voices in technology, product design, innovation, and future lifestyles.

This is not simply a media strategy.

Ferrari is choosing who gets to define Luce first. It is also publicly drawing a new segment.

From a branding perspective, this is a high-risk strategy.

It may make existing customers feel unfamiliar with the product, while the new audience may not immediately embrace it.

But the direction is very clear: existing Ferrari products continue to serve the existing customer base, while Luce is responsible for opening a new market.

This is not a short-term publicity move. It is a long-term positioning strategy for the next generation of electric vehicles.

Still, even if Ferrari intends to create a new customer segment, could Luce not have retained more of Ferrari’s established visual language? Was it necessary to move so far away from a visual tradition built over decades?

This raises a more interesting question: by choosing Jony Ive and Marc Newson, did Ferrari also choose to accept Marc Newson’s design language?

Ford 021C Concept Car, designed by Marc Newson, 1999. Image: Marc Newson Ltd.

If so, it suggests that Ferrari was willing to allow external design expertise into the most central level of product decision-making—and to accept the changes that such expertise might bring.

For many brands and business owners, this is extraordinarily difficult. That is precisely why this decision is so noteworthy.

Ferrari is a century-old brand. Yet its management appears capable of, and willing to, trust external expertise. Even after seeing the controversy, it is still willing to bear the consequences of that decision for a longer-term strategic position.

The final result will still take time to reveal itself.

But at this moment, the decision deserves applause.