Jony Ive, the highly respected and well-spectacled industrial designer behind the iPhone, is the reason you have a touchscreen in your pocket. More than likely, you’re reading this on one of Ive’s touchscreens right now. But Jony Ive is also, begrudgingly, the reason there’s a touchscreen on damn-near everything, from your fridge to your camera to your car. Everyone copied his touchscreen. But Ive isn’t happy about it.
He’s on record saying his soul dies a little whenever he gets into a car with a Tesla-style giant touchscreen pasted onto the dashboard.
Now, after all that, he’s gone and designed a car with a touchscreen, albeit with a big twist.
Jony Ive and Marc Newson — the two most influential product designers of the past 50 years — put their LoveFrom agency to work in collaboration with Ferrari to design the brand’s first EV, called the Luce.
The team spent years researching Ferrari’s history and the mechanics of driving. LoveFrom first delivered to Ferrari’s top brass several great tomes filled with research and analysis. (Both Ive and Newson drive vintage Ferraris, a 250 Europa and 857S, respectively.) Only then did the LoveFrom “collective” unveil the Luce’s switchgear; it’s made of CNC-cut anodized aluminium, magnetic toggle switches, E Ink, and hardened glass infused with lights. The new typeface and dainty three-spoke steering wheel are both obvious callbacks to Ferraris of old.
And, yes, there is a touchscreen too — it has an aluminium palm rest, and is mounted on a swivel — but it’s not the centre of attention.
“The reason we developed touch [for the iPhone] was that we were developing an idea to solve a problem,” Ive told U.K. magazine Autocar during a roundtable. “The big idea was to develop a general-purpose interface that could be a calculator, could be a typewriter, could be a camera, rather than having physical buttons.
“I never would have used touch in a car [for the primary controls]. It is something I would never have dreamed of doing because it requires you to look. So that’s just the wrong technology to be the primary interface,” Ive said.
Indeed, the primary controls in the Luce are all analog. LoveFrom ditches Ferrari’s fiddly touch buttons in favour of chunky, tactile Formula 1-style switches. (Each switch is a different shape, so drivers can use them by feel without looking down.) The dashboard instruments feature OLED screens with analog needles positioned under glass lenses.
Ferrari’s decision to bring LoveFrom on board for the Luce speaks to the fact that the stakes are sky-high; the usual car enthusiast crowd is not sold on the notion of a Ferrari EV, and the market for fast EVs seems to be shrinking by the month. (Ferrari’s old rival Lamborghini has delayed its first EV, saying the market simply isn’t ready.)
In the electric era, the Ferrari experience — brain-melting sound, 9,500 rpm vibrations from a V12, rifle-shot gear change — must be replaced by an alternate experience, something equally intoxicating and still very Ferrari. It’s a tall order (maybe impossible?), but LoveFrom’s switchgear is, at least, a start.
Other brands will pay attention; this could change car design forever. But the question remains: is it any good?
FEATURE PHOTO COURTESY OF FERRARI.
