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At $40 million, all-electric Ferrari Luce becomes most expensive new car ever auctioned
Ferrari unveiled the Luce in May, priced at €550,000 ($636,356). But a wave of criticism and a drop in the company’s share price followed.
Italian auto giant Ferrari's first all-electric vehicle may have faced criticism from purist fans, but it has defied it all to sell for $40 million, making it the most expensive new car ever sold at auction.
According to a statement by Ferrari, Sotheby’s charity auction of the Luce “tailor-made” at Monterey Car Week in California broke a record posted last year, when the company's customised Daytona SP3 sold for $26 million.
“Tailor-made” cars are one-of-a-kind vehicles customised to a buyer’s precise specifications.
Ferrari unveiled the Luce in May, priced at €550,000 ($636,356). But a wave of criticism and a drop in the company’s share price followed.
The vehicle marks a break from Ferrari’s heritage of combustion-engine sports cars.
The model was designed with LoveFrom, the studio founded by Jony Ive, former design chief at Apple and a key figure behind the iPhone and iMac. The car combines more than 1,000 horsepower with four doors.
Ferrari’s Chief Executive Officer Benedetto Vigna said in May that the model was getting orders from old and new customers.
“The Ferrari Luce has nothing to do with electric cars you have seen from other players,” he said at the time.
“You have to see it and drive it to understand that it wasn’t copied — not the interiors, not the exterior, not the performance,” the CEO had added.
Ferrari Luce specifications
The Ferrari Luce is powered by four electric engines, one on each wheel, with a power output of 1,050 cv, and can accelerate to 100 km/h in 2.5 seconds, according to the company website.
The vehicle has a top speed of 310 km/h and a range of 530 km on a full charge. It uses a 122 kWh battery pack, has an 800V architecture, and weighs 2,260kg.
According to Ferrari, Luce is a capacious hatchback with room for five people on board.
The car has been fitted with a new vehicle control unit (VCU), which, according to the company, networks all the systems and updates targets 200 times per second. The front engines deliver 210kW at the axle, while the rears generate 620KW. It has a total torque of 7750 N · m at the wheels.
Ferrari says it has prioritised efficiency, energy density and thermal management. The front engines can spin at up to 30,000rpm, and can go from zero to maximum in less than a second.
“While the Ferrari Luce itself is zero emissions at the ‘tail-pipe’, Ferrari has also achieved a 70 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions during the production phase thanks to clever use of secondary aluminium alloys,” the website reads.
Luce uses a separate, elastically mounted subframe, which is the first time on a Ferrari, which helps minimise unwanted vibrations. It uses a precision accelerometer at the centre of the rear axle to capture the natural frequencies of the rotating components. These are then equalised and amplified in a manner similar to that of an electric guitar, producing the vintage Ferrari sound.
“This is all part of creating a truly engaging EV, a mission taken further with the Torque Shift Engagement system, which increases driving pleasure by delivering torque demand progressively during cornering. An e-manettino joins the traditional Ferrari chassis one, and oversees power, the torque curve, traction, and performance via ‘Range’, ‘Tour’ and ‘Performance’ settings,” the company website says.
