Ferrari’s new all-electric Luce has a high-tech and upscale cabin, but it’s missing a key ingredient found in just about every modern supercar or hypercar interior: Carbon fiber trim.
That’s no accident. While fiber-reinforced plastic has long been an excellent solution when you need every bit of strength you can squeeze out of a lightweight component, Ferrari’s interior designers—Jony Ive (of iPhone fame) and Marc Newson—simply don’t think it’s worthy of a high-end interior. How do we know? Well, they told us as much during a round-table chat at the Luce’s launch. And when the topic shifted to interior materials, both Ive and Newson had plenty to say.
[Please note: the following has been edited for clarity and legibility.]
“I hate carbon fiber when it’s decorative,” Ive said. “We tend to love extreme materials, but it’s really the thinking behind them.”
“Materials are like a language, you know, or a vocabulary, right? So, if they’re appropriate, if carbon fiber was a word and it helped you to express an idea, then then it’s appropriate,” Newsom said. “And carbon fiber happens to be an incredibly useful and practical material.”
And as Ive pointed out, other aesthetically pleasing materials can be used structurally—especially aluminum.
“And obviously there’s a lot of carbon fiber used,” Newsom said. “Not in these elements, but certainly on the exterior.”
So why not use it in the cabin?
“I don’t like plastic,” Ive said. “That’s why. Everything would have been easier in plastic,” Ive continued.
And certainly that’s so. Ferrari said that the designers’ choice to eliminate carbon elements from the interior cost them roughly 22 pounds—the weight of the glass and aluminum that was used in its place.
“This is this is aluminum, right?” Newsom asked, holding up a dashboard panel. “Which is a relatively traditional material by all measures. But it’s the way in which you use the material.”
Carbon fiber’s greatest advantage—offering the same strength with less weight relative to other established materials—doesn’t make it inherently more premium. Nor is it the only solution for structural elements.
“This is an extrusion, that’s then machined, and it’s the real deal,” Ive said of the dash. “And it’s not an appliqué, it’s not a badge. So it’s structural.”
“There’s no advantage to using carbon fiber in this context,” Newsom added.
The notion that weight saved in the cabin has no consequence may have Colin Chapman rolling in his grave, but then again, the Luce‘s not here to win races, but rather show the world that a Ferrari EV is more than just abstraction—it’s the future.
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