AUTOMOBILE
Why the Ferrari Luce Backlash Won’t Stop It Selling Out
<p>The Luce arrived in Rome on the night of May 25, the first fully electric car in Ferrari&#8217;s 79-year history, and the internet did not wait for a test drive. By the next day&#8217;s close, Ferrari&#8217;s Milan-listed shares (ticker RACE) had fallen sharply, the kind of reaction that erases billions in value in a single session. The complaints came from car fans, rival designers and politicians at the same time.</p>
<p>Ferrari has been mocked into a sellout before. The last time fans called a new model a betrayal, the car ended up with a waiting list that ran for years. The Ferrari Luce&#8217;s fate will be settled by the order book, not the memes, though trading a combustion engine for batteries adds a risk the company has not faced until now.</p>
<h2>The Pile-On That Cost Ferrari $5 Billion in a Day</h2>
<p>The reaction was about money and looks in equal measure. At about <strong>$640,000</strong> before personalization, the five-seat, four-door Luce costs more than a house in much of Italy, and critics lined up to compare its smooth, shell-like body to the far cheaper Nissan Leaf. The car was shaped by LoveFrom, the studio run by former Apple design chief Jony Ive and designer Marc Newson; even Lucid&#8217;s design chief, Derek Jenkins, threw some shade.</p>
<p>The political class joined in. Italy&#8217;s deputy prime minister and transport minister, Matteo Salvini, mocked the price and the styling on X, calling it anything but a car worthy of the prancing horse. Headlines declared that &#8220;the market has spoken.&#8221; You can read the design brief that started it all on <a href="https://www.lovefrom.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the LoveFrom design studio behind the Luce</a>.</p>
<p>The numbers under the noise were stark.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>&euro;4.6 billion ($5 billion)</strong> erased from Ferrari&#8217;s market value in a single trading session</li>
<li><strong>8.4%</strong> fall in the Milan-listed RACE shares, with the U.S. listing down 5.3%</li>
<li><strong>&euro;550,000</strong> list price before Ferrari&#8217;s Tailor Made personalization options</li>
</ul>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter featured-image" style="margin:1.5em auto;text-align:center;"><img class="aligncenter" src="https://budgyapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ferrari-luce-electric-car-backlash-and-order-book-outlook-explained-for-buyers.webp" alt="Ferrari Luce electric car backlash and order book outlook explained for buyers." style="width:100%;max-width:800px;height:auto;border-radius:8px;display:block;margin:0 auto;" /><figcaption style="text-align:center;font-size:0.85em;color:#888;margin-top:0.5em;">Ferrari Luce electric car backlash and order book outlook explained for buyers.</figcaption></figure>
<h2>How the Same Crowd Came Around on the SUV</h2>
<p>Ferrari has watched this movie before. When it revealed the Purosangue in 2022, its first four-door, the reaction was close to identical: purists called an SUV (sport utility vehicle) from a sports-car house sacrilege, and reviewers compared the shape to a Mazda CX-30.</p>
<p>Then the orders came. Ferrari said the SUV&#8217;s first two years of production were <strong>sold out for its first two years</strong>, with multi-year waiting lists that stretched into 2026. More than 1,500 examples left the factory in the first eight months of 2024 alone.</p>
<p>Two years on, the verdict flipped. The four-door became one of Ferrari&#8217;s quiet profit engines, and there is little evidence the brand lost any shine because of it. The car the internet wanted dead turned into a car you could not get.</p>
<p>That pattern is exactly why Ferrari&#8217;s executives can watch the new round of mockery with some calm. The reception is already tracking <a href="https://budgyapp.com/ferrari-luce-china-bmw-playbook/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a familiar luxury-market script that other premium brands have run before</a>. The loudest online reaction and the eventual order book are often two different ledgers.</p>
<h2>Why the Order Book Outweighs the Outrage</h2>
<p>The economics behind that calm start with who actually buys a Ferrari. <strong>More than 80%</strong> of the roughly 14,000 cars the company delivered last year went to people who already owned one, according to figures Ferrari cites. These are repeat customers with standing relationships and, often, a place in line they do not want to lose.</p>
<p>Chief executive Benedetto Vigna says the Luce is already pulling orders from that base and beyond. &#8220;We&#8217;ve already received bank transfers, clients who were there want it,&#8221; he told reporters, adding there was &#8220;strong interest, including from new clients.&#8221; He also pushed back on the price grumbling, arguing the car &#8220;has nothing to do with Chinese EVs.&#8221; Why the math still favors Ferrari comes down to four levers:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Scarcity by design:</strong> Ferrari caps volume on purpose, so demand only has to clear a deliberately small build number, not win a popularity contest</li>
<li><strong>Repeat buyers:</strong> existing owners order to protect allocation for future models, not because they love every line of every design</li>
<li><strong>Allocation power:</strong> when orders outstrip supply, Ferrari chooses who gets a car, which turns even a divisive model into a status object</li>
<li><strong>Order-book runway:</strong> Vigna says the book already stretches toward the end of 2027</li>
</ul>
<h2>The Luce and Its Combustion Predecessor, Compared</h2>
<p>For the money, the Luce is not short on hardware. Four electric motors, one per wheel, combine for up to <strong>1,035 horsepower</strong> (1,050 in launch mode), a 0 to 100 km/h time of 2.5 seconds and a top speed above 310 km/h. A 122 kWh (kilowatt-hour) battery gives a WLTP (Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicles Test Procedure) range past 500 km, and 350 kW charging takes it from 10% to 80% in under 25 minutes. The full breakdown sits on <a href="https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ferrari&#8217;s official configurator and specifications</a>.</p>
<p>What it does not have is the thing that defined every Ferrari before it: an engine you can hear. That absence is the genuine fault line, and it is what separates this launch from the SUV that preceded it. The earlier model kept a naturally aspirated V12; this one trades the soundtrack for silence.</p>
<p>Set side by side, the two cars tell a consistent story about how Ferrari launches a polarizing product.</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Attribute</th>
<th>Ferrari Luce</th>
<th>Ferrari Purosangue</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Reveal year</td>
<td>2026</td>
<td>2022</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Body</td>
<td>Four-door, five-seat EV</td>
<td>Four-door, four-seat SUV</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Powertrain</td>
<td>Four electric motors, up to 1,035 hp</td>
<td>6.5L V12, about 715 hp</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Launch price</td>
<td>About $640,000</td>
<td>About $400,000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Launch reception</td>
<td>Mocked online, stock fell hard</td>
<td>Called sacrilege, &#8220;a Mazda CX-30&#8221;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Status so far</td>
<td>Order book toward end of 2027</td>
<td>Sold out for first two years</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2>Where the Electric Bet Carries New Risk</h2>
<p>Still, treating the Luce as a guaranteed repeat of the SUV&#8217;s arc misses what is genuinely different this time. The earlier backlash was about a body style. This one is about the powertrain, the badge and the brand&#8217;s identity all at once.</p>
<p>The timing is awkward too. Rivals are pulling back, with Porsche and Lamborghini both trimming electric ambitions and citing soft demand at the top of the market. Ferrari is pushing into the same headwind that made others flinch. Even sympathetic analysts hedged: Evercore ISI analyst Michael Binetti called the car a &#8220;polarizing EV offering,&#8221; while Citi told clients not to be &#8220;overly concerned.&#8221;</p>
<p>The harshest words came from inside the family.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I just hope someone removes the Prancing Horse from that car. We risk destroying a legend, which saddens me greatly.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That was former Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo, who led the company from 1991 to 2014, speaking to Italian media. When a former boss says the logo does not belong on the product, the dispute is about more than a charging port.</p>
<p>The identity question even reaches the cabin, where <a href="https://budgyapp.com/rivian-ai-carplay-obsolete-bensaid/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">other EV makers are rethinking what a luxury interior should do</a>. For Ferrari, the bet is that buyers who pay for the badge will accept silence as the next form of exclusivity, and that is a wager the V12 era never had to make.</p>
<h2>What the Fourth Quarter Will Settle</h2>
<p>The argument resolves itself on a schedule. First deliveries are due in the fourth quarter of this year in Europe, with U.S. customers waiting until the second quarter of 2027, and the company keeps its build numbers deliberately tight. The real signal will not be the meme count; it will be how many order-book deposits turn into collected cars, a figure Ferrari reports through <a href="https://corporate.ferrari.com/en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">its corporate and investor disclosures</a>.</p>
<p>If the deposits hold and the waiting list lengthens the way the last divisive launch did, the mockery becomes a footnote and Ferrari&#8217;s playbook collects another data point. If buyers walk once the novelty fades, the company will have spent its first electric launch learning that some lines cannot be crossed twice.</p>