- The Ferrari Luce has paddle shifters to adjust the torque deployment.
- Ferrari will also enhance the motors’ sounds for added auditory pleasure.
- Unlike some of the brand’s other cars, the Luce won’t be a track model.
The high-end EV market is facing some struggles, but despite this, Ferrari is plowing ahead with its first-ever electric car, the aptly named Luce. While the brand is perhaps the last you’d ever expect to enter the EV world, it’s confident the model will offer all the driving thrills expected of a Prancing Horse.
During a recent interview, Ferrari chief executive Benedetto Vigna insisted that the Luce will deliver each of the five key drivers of driving thrills, ensuring it is befitting of the brand’s badge and can succeed where some EVs have failed: to tug at the emotional heartstrings.
Read: Ferrari Breaks Its Silence On Luce Trademark Rights After Mazda Filing
Speaking with Autocar India, Vigna said one element “is longitudinal acceleration,” agreeing with the interviewer that perhaps this acceleration in EVs is too linear, and also “too much, because sometimes it’s disturbing our brain.” He went on to reveal that Ferrari has worked with NASA to “understand what is the level of acceleration that is disturbing people,” and that too much acceleration is not a good thing.
Sounds And Shifts
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Another important contributor to driving thrills is “transversal acceleration, followed by the braking experience, the gearshift, and the sound. As recent images of the Luce’s interior revealed, it will include paddle shifters, and unlike some EVs, these won’t be used to adjust the level of brake regeneration but instead to adjust the level of torque engagement.
Vigna stopped short of confirming that the system will mimic traditional shifts, as in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, but it certainly sounds like that is what Ferrari is aiming for. Then there’s the all-important sound.
As patents have revealed, Ferrari won’t aim to mimic the sound of an internal combustion engine with the Luce, and instead will amplify the sounds of the electric motor.
“The electric motor is not silent,” he said, “there is a sound there. The problem sometimes today [is that] most of us associate the sound of electric motor with something high frequency that is disturbing. But, there are also low frequency, there are also ways to pick up the sound in an authentic way, in the original way, to avoid the two looking like a DJ.”
Vigna went on to add that the Luce will have a driving range of over 311 miles (500 km), and while that may not sound all that impressive, he noted it has not been designed with track use in mind, indicating that the battery technology is not in a place to make such cars achievable.
