Ferrari’s CEO says the Luce deserves “respect.” Its former chairman says it deserves a different logo.

Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna used a round table in Modena on Thursday to defend the €550,000 ($640,000) price tag for the Luce, the company’s first fully electric vehicle. The car was unveiled on Monday. By Tuesday, Ferrari’s Milan-listed stock had fallen 8%.

Vigna said the price was fair for innovation and that the Luce has “nothing to do with Chinese EVs or those by other brands.” He stressed that media coverage might lead some to conclude Ferrari was replacing traditional engines with electric, which he said was not the case.

The defence was necessary because the backlash came from inside the house. Luca di Montezemolo, who served as Ferrari chairman for two decades until 2014, described the vehicle to Italian media as a disgrace to the company’s history.

“I hope that they take off the prancing horse from that car,” Montezemolo said on the sidelines of a business conference in Rome. He joined the board of rival McLaren last year, which makes the criticism both personal and competitive.

Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini was equally blunt. “Electric, outrageously expensive (550 thousand euros!) and, from an aesthetic point of view, it speaks for itself,” he wrote on X. “It looks like anything but a car from the Prancing Horse. And this is supposed to be ‘innovation’? Who knows what Enzo Ferrari would say.”

The social media firestorm centred on the design. The Luce was co-designed by LoveFrom, the creative agency founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive and Marc Newson. Its smooth, continuous surfaces have no sharp edges or angles, a deliberate departure from Ferrari’s angular design language. Jalopnik described it as looking like “a rejected design for the hopefully now-dead Apple Car.”

Ferrari’s first five-seater produces 1,035 horsepower from four electric motors. It carries a 122 kWh battery on an 800V architecture, delivers 530 km of range on the WLTP cycle, and hits 100 km/h in 2.5 seconds. All components are developed and manufactured in house at a dedicated plant in Maranello called the E-Building.

Auto analysts have downplayed the investor backlash. The stock closed down 0.1% on Wednesday and traded up 1.3% on Thursday. Ferrari’s Q1 2026 results showed a 39.1% EBITDA margin and an order book extending into 2027 for its ICE models. The financial health of the business is not in question.

The question is whether the Luce will sell. Ferrari did not publish a launch-day order count, consistent with its approach on new models. Vigna said the car had received strong interest from new super-wealthy clients, including buyers who had not previously purchased a Ferrari. The commercial answer will arrive at the Q2 earnings call in August.

The competitive context is mixed. Lamborghini cancelled its upcoming EV due to lack of demand. Bentley has delayed its first EV repeatedly but still plans to launch later this year. Porsche’s Taycan and Lucid’s Air have struggled with sales. The ultra-luxury electric market has not yet proven it can sustain volume production at this price point.

At the other end of the market, Xiaomi launched a $34,300 electric SUV this week that undercuts the Tesla Model Y with more range. The Luce costs roughly 19 times more. Vigna’s insistence that the two categories have nothing in common is technically correct but commercially irrelevant: both cars are competing for a narrative about what the electric future looks like.

Vigna framed the design controversy as inevitable. “When you have a new technology, you need to make sure that technology is properly represented in the design, so the design must be different,” he told CNBC. The word he kept returning to was “respect“: respect for the technology, for the customer, and for the brand.

Montezemolo clearly feels the respect runs in one direction. Salvini feels it runs in none. The stock market spent Tuesday agreeing with them before spending Thursday reconsidering. The Luce ships in Q4 2026. Whether it becomes the Purosangue, which was met with similar scepticism and sold out immediately, or the luxury EV that proves the category is oversaturated, will not be clear until the order book speaks.