Jony Ive Designs the Interior of the Ferrari Luce—and It Might Be the Most Radical Cabin Maranello Has Ever Built

Apple never built its own car, but Ferrari just got the next best thing.

After quietly killing its decade-long automotive project, Apple’s greatest design export—Sir Jony Ive—has resurfaced in a far more fitting home: Maranello. The legendary designer behind the iPhone, iPad, and Mac has crafted the interior of Ferrari’s first electric vehicle, the Ferrari Luce, and the result looks less like a traditional supercar cockpit and more like something that escaped from Cupertino’s skunkworks.

Ferrari reached out to Ive shortly after he left Apple in 2019 to form LoveFrom with fellow industrial-design icon Marc Newson. Two years of negotiations followed before the partnership was finalized in 2021. Now, with the Luce set for a formal reveal in 2026, we’re finally seeing what happens when Ferrari’s mechanical obsession meets Apple’s minimalist religion.

And it’s weird—in a very Ferrari way.

Analog Soul, Digital Brain

The Luce’s interior doesn’t abandon Ferrari tradition. Instead, it remixes it. There’s a digital display, sure, but it’s surrounded by a forest of physical switches, rotary knobs, and tactile controls. Ive and Newson deliberately resisted the Tesla-style slab of glass approach.

The centerpiece is a 10.2-inch OLED screen that rotates and responds to touch, but it doesn’t dominate the cabin. Ferrari still wants you driving, not scrolling. Volume is controlled by a physical glass dial. Large, solid switches flank the screen. The layout adapts to what the driver is doing, but it always keeps the car—not the software—front and center.

“It was very clear to us that we had to find as many ways as possible to intuitively and physically connect with the interface,” Ive said.

In other words: Ferrari drivers don’t want to swipe—they want to feel.

A Steering Wheel From Another Century

The most shocking element isn’t a screen at all. It’s the steering wheel.

Gone is Ferrari’s current spaceship-style yoke loaded with capacitive buttons. In its place is a three-spoke wheel inspired by the classic Nardi designs of the 1950s and 60s—complete with wood trim. It weighs 400 grams less than Ferrari’s current wheel, and its spokes are made from 100-percent recycled aluminum.

This is retro-futurism at its finest: old-school aesthetics hiding next-gen engineering. It’s also an unmistakable statement that Ferrari wants the Luce to feel like a Ferrari, even without an engine.

Apple Obsession, Ferrari Execution

If you think Apple sweats the details, Ferrari just went further.

The seat rails—the parts you never see—are molded and anodized. There are more than 40 pieces of Gorilla Glass surrounding the driver. Even the vents are sculpted like precision instruments rather than plastic afterthoughts.

And then there’s the key.

Yes, Ferrari redesigned the key.

It features an e-ink display, and when you insert it into the dashboard, the yellow glow visually “flows” from the key into the car. It serves no mechanical purpose whatsoever—and that’s exactly why it exists. It’s pure Ive: design as an emotional experience.

Designing in a World of Rules

Ive admits the car world was a shock.

“I’ve never worked in an area that’s so regulated,” he said. “Some of it is great… but some of it drives you crazy.”

That tension—between creativity and safety, beauty and bureaucracy—shapes every inch of the Luce. Ferrari’s first electric car isn’t just a technological pivot. It’s a philosophical one.

Marc Newson summed it up best:
“Jony and I share a really, really deep interest in automotive stuff… it’s probably a hobby for both of us.”

And it shows.

What Is the Ferrari Luce?

Ferrari hasn’t released specs, pricing, or even confirmed the rumored May preview. What we do know is that the Luce will be the brand’s first fully electric production car, with its official debut planned for the second half of 2026.

Whether it starts a full EV lineup or remains a one-off experiment is still unclear. But one thing is certain:

This is not Ferrari reluctantly going electric.
This is Ferrari using electricity as an excuse to reinvent itself.

And with Jony Ive holding the pen, the future of Ferrari suddenly looks a lot like the future Apple never got to build.

Source: Ferrari