Elana Scherr: Ferrari Luce Is Not Shocking EnoughILLUSTRATION BY ADAM CRUFT - Car and Driver (ILLUSTRATION BY ADAM CRUFT - Car and Driver)From the May/June 2026 issue of Car and Driver.Maybe you open the car door, and there's a saddle. No, a suit, like in Pacific Rim or Fallout. Wait, something less Transformers; robots are so played out. How about if it's a cooktop? You control the car by boiling water. Hold up, not safe—although it would be convenient to be able to get your farfalle al dente while driving home. Back to the saddle idea: You control it like a horse, with your legs. "Good job," my friend Emmet said. "You just invented the motorcycle."Emmet had been listening to my increasingly deranged ideas for automotive interiors for close to an hour. Luckily, he was also enjoying an excellent Italian deli sandwich, so he was distracted and didn't immediately make a call to report a mental breakdown by the time I got to the goo-car concept, where a bioelectric gel that forms the door senses your individual electrical signature as you approach the car, assimilating you into the cabin and activating the propulsion. Suspended in clear jelly that absorbs all impacts, you direct the machine forward by simply thinking about where you want to go. "Now that would be surprising," Emmet said.Ferrari (Ferrari)We'd been trying to guess what the interior of the new electric Ferrari Luce would look like. Ferrari, like any brand about to unveil a new product, had really been hyping up the groundbreaking nature of what it planned to show us. But what, really, other than semi-cognizant amoebic slime, would count as revolutionary in car cabin design?AdvertisementAdvertisementIt's hard to create a new tool drastically different from its predecessors that does the same job. Things look the way they look because they have functions that require a certain size or shape. That goes double for cars, which not only need to suit our human bodies but also must meet requirements for budgets, safety, and manufacturability. Add to that the need to be recognizable enough that a driver won't get in and immediately mistake reverse for volume up. Safe usage is crucial. I mean, what happens if you sneeze in the amoeba car?Ferrari (Ferrari)Besides a level of user-friendliness, an interior requires at least semi-available technology, which is certainly not the case with the goo car. At least not that I know of. If I disappear after this column for accidentally guessing top-secret new research, come break me out of Area 51.After lunch, Emmet and I, and several dozen other automotive and design reporters, got to see the Luce cabin, and it was . . . fine. Nice, even. It was pleasantly minimal, with interesting glass surfaces and caramel-colored leather seats and lovely clicky toggle switches. It was unusual enough to be, maybe, ground-footprinting design, but broken, the earth was not.It's not that the Ferrari interior wasn't neat, with new tricks deserving some oohs and aahs. It was. And like my goo car, it was even designed using technology that hadn't been invented before its application in the Luce. The glass on the shifter and console is a new chemical composition, engineered by Corning to be even stronger and more scratch resistant than the Gorilla Glass on cellphones and smartwatches, yet still perfectly clear and luminescent. And it's cool, but the only really surprising part about the car is the idea of potential clients buying an electric Ferrari in the first place.Ferrari (Ferrari)The Luce design, which felt usable in a simple, tangible way, is a nice change from the current trends of multiplex screens and carbon-fiber trim. It was engaging and tactilely appealing, as you'd expect from designers Jony Ive and Marc Newson, whose previous work together includes the Apple Watch. It was, though, totally recognizable as an automobile interior. A time traveler from 1901 could take one look at it and say, "A few more doodads and thingamabobs than my Packard, but clearly the same kind of animal."AdvertisementAdvertisementWhich brings us back to form and function. "New is really easy," Ive told me after the Luce reveal. "We could do something new in half an hour. Make it pink and fluffy." It would be startling, he suggests, but that doesn't make it good design. Well, I can think of several lowrider upholsterers who would argue the benefits of pink velvet, but I get what he's saying. We keep expecting new cars to shock us, with radical shapes and materials we've never seen used before, but maybe designers should focus on the enjoyment factors of the familiar template. Primarily, can you fit an Italian sandwich in the glovebox?Ferrari (Ferrari)You Might Also LikeGift Guide: Best Ride-On Electric Cars for KidsFuture Cars Worth Waiting For: 2025–2029