Ferrari Luce Debut Sinks Stock 8.4% As Ex-CEO Says Strip The Prancing Horse Off Jony Ive’s EV

Ferrari‘s first electric car has been on the road for under 48 hours and the prancing horse is already bleeding cash. Milan-listed shares closed down 8.4% Tuesday after the Luce, a four-door, five-seat family car styled by former Apple design chief Jony Ive and Marc Newson at LoveFrom, was unveiled at a gala event in Rome late Monday. The stock slipped another 0.1% Wednesday.

The aesthetic verdict from Italy has been brutal. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini publicly wondered what Enzo Ferrari, who died in 1988, would have made of it. Former Ferrari CEO Luca Cordero di Montezemolo said the car should be stripped of the prancing horse logo entirely. On social media, comparison points are a vacuum cleaner, a rubber clog, and the Fiat Multipla, the 1990s people carrier routinely cited among the world’s ugliest cars. Ferrari declined to comment on the backlash.

The Backlash Reached The Boardroom And The Vatican Garage

Ferrari unveiled the Luce in Rome late Monday, then drove the car the next day to Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Pope Leo, a known car enthusiast who took the driver’s seat. The Milan stock reaction landed once public trading opened Tuesday and the memes from Monday night had hit a critical mass.

Fabio Caldato, portfolio manager at AcomeA SGR, which holds Ferrari shares, told Reuters the stock was “being penalised for an aesthetic disappointment,” and added that the reaction also reflected broader investor worries about Ferrari’s expansion into electric models. New York-listed RACE shares closed Tuesday with a smaller decline of around 5%.

The Tuesday selloff landed on a stock already down roughly 30% year-to-date. That sharpened the institutional reading: less about one day’s memes, more about whether the Luce can steady a name that has been bleeding investor confidence since the start of 2026.

I covered the cabin reveal back in April after Ferrari showed it at a San Francisco media day. The Jony Ive cockpit used physical buttons, a three-spoke recycled-aluminum steering wheel, and layered Samsung OLED panels for the binnacle. That interior earned cautious praise. The exterior was the wildcard, kept under wraps until Monday in Rome. Now the world sees why Ferrari split the reveal into three phases.

The Numbers Make The Luce A Family Car With Hypercar Outputs

The Luce produces 1,036 horsepower (765 kW) from four electric motors under Launch Control, accessible only at a standstill. Daily driving caps power at 430 hp on rear-wheel drive in Range Mode, with Performance Mode unlocking 986 hp and all-wheel drive. Tour Mode sits in between at 617 hp.

A 122 kWh nickel-manganese-cobalt battery from SK On rides on an 800-volt architecture, with 350 kW peak DC charging. Ferrari claims a WLTP range of more than 530 km (329 miles). The EPA figure, which I projected in April would land below 280 miles, has not been published. Curb weight is approximately 5,100 lb. 0-62 mph takes 2.5 seconds. Top speed is 193 mph. The price is €550,000 (about $640,000), with first European deliveries scheduled for October 2026 and US deliveries pushed to Q2 2027.

That puts the Luce into a small competitive set with the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT and the new electric Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door. Both rivals undercut Ferrari on price, the Taycan by roughly half. Both also bring more years of EV-segment learning to the launch.

Ferrari’s Curveball Defense Cites The FF And The Purosangue

A Ferrari source pointed Reuters to two earlier polarizing debuts that later sold well: the all-wheel-drive FF grand tourer in 2011 and the Purosangue SUV in 2022. Both drew open skepticism at launch. Both went on to become commercial wins for Maranello. The argument is that the Luce will follow the same pattern.

Felipe Munoz of Car Industry Analysis said Ferrari likely anticipated the uproar given the deliberate break with tradition. “From a communication standpoint, they have managed to get the world talking about the electric Ferrari,” he told Reuters. “As far as awareness goes, they have made it, because there is no other topic at the moment.” Munoz described the Luce as a “statement product,” unlikely to be a high-volume seller but useful for repositioning Ferrari in the electric era.

HSBC global autos analyst Michael Tyndall took a more guarded view. He wrote that Ferrari may have expected to raise eyebrows, but not to trigger a sharp market reaction. “There is a sense listening to management, that it felt compelled to take a risk given it is such a departure from their core DNA (4-door, 5-seats, electric),” he said. “Orders will be the key determinant of whether the risk pays off.”

Bernstein analyst Stephen Reitman struck the most constructive note among the major sell-side desks, keeping his Outperform rating with a $402 price target. “Ferrari has not embarked on this blindly,” Reitman wrote, “and we know that much curiosity has been generated by the Luce.” He expects enough Ferrari customers and collectors, new and old, to ensure the Luce establishes its position within the range.

EVXL’s Take

The share reaction is the actual story here, not the memes. Ferrari ships fewer than 14,000 cars a year and its order book usually runs over a year long. A handful of unflattering tweets and a former CEO quote don’t normally move a luxury brand 8% in a day. What moved Ferrari on Tuesday was the realization that the Luce is launching into the toughest luxury EV market in years.

Lamborghini pushed its first EV out to 2029. Porsche walked back its all-electric plans and committed to keeping gas Macans and Cayennes alive. Ferrari itself pushed its second EV to at least 2028 last June, citing weak demand for high-performance EVs. Investors who watched that retreat happen in slow motion just got confirmation that the first Luce arrives without a second act warming up behind it.

When I wrote up the April interior reveal, I predicted Ferrari’s EPA range would land below 280 miles and that anything under 250 would make the pricing defense harder. We still don’t have an EPA number. The WLTP 329 miles converts to roughly 260 to 280 miles EPA in the typical translation, so my April call still holds for now. Whether Ferrari clears 280 or falls short is the technical question the market is also pricing this week, alongside the aesthetic one.

The Luce will sell out its first model-year allocation by spring 2027, and Ferrari stock will recover the ground it just lost within six months of first European deliveries in October. Aesthetic backlash on a car this expensive is mostly noise. Buyers at €550,000 don’t read memes. They write deposits, and Ferrari’s order book has historically absorbed worse opening reviews than this one.

Sources: Reuters, InsideEVs, Ferrari.

EVXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.