1. tire touches the wheel well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0TQBdUAfWg&t=655s
2. hard top hits another panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0TQBdUAfWg&t=670s
3. center console creak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0TQBdUAfWg&t=816s
MSRP > $500,000...
Will it? I've owned a few Ferraris and I've driven quite a few others. They're lots of fun, but I would never describe Ferrari as a company with high build quality standards.
Whether or not it’s well put together is another topic entirely.
There is really no way to justify the price tag. With combustion engines at least you knew that you had an extremely rare feat of engineering.
The fact that I like the interior and I can't get it for less money is what justifies the price tag.
It's only since 2018 that they stepped up, but that's still not the focus of a Ferrari even with the Roma or Purosangue.
Even at low mileage, even for the new cars, wear and heat ruin the car extremely fast. Plastics and glues break down very soon on those cars, other surfaces become sticky and gummy.
Ferrari is a car made for the driving experience, if you're looking for interior quality you can get way better materials and build at a fraction of the price from other GT cars makers.
To be fair, what, three, four people will see the interior? But thousands see the exterior.
Buying an ultra-premium EV Ferrari over a faster, cheaper is a evolutionary broadcast (Costly Signaling Theory), proving the buyer possesses such immense excess wealth that they have no practical need to optimize their dollar-to-spec ratio. Everybody drives Teslas, the highly exclusive Ferrari satisfies a deep human drive for elite group differentiation (Social Identity Theory) while perfectly mirroring the buyer's aspirational ego and public identity (Self-Congruity Theory). Ultimately, this choice optimizes for intense internal sensory and emotional pleasure rather than objective efficiency (Hedonic Consumption Theory) by making (at least at the beginning) the owner feel that he is a super special dude.
The whole point of this fiasco is that this design doesn't work as a Veblen signal. It has none of the usual Veblen signifiers - overt use of premium materials and/or ironic fragility, sculpted elegance, conspicuous high-touch over-engineering and stat play, aggressive animal magnetism, high-effort minimalism, distinctive heritage design.
Instead it's nice - happy colours, toy car curves, improved ergonomics.
It's literally all of the things you don't want in a premium product.
It literally looks exactly like a cheap Chinese EV. (And, to add insult to injury, you can almost certainly get a cheap Chinese EV with comparable specs.)
Apparently they're aiming to produce about 2500-3000 Luces (Luci?) a year, and they're building about 14,000 cars total annually. So not too many in keeping with their scarcity strategy. That has worked great for them so far, but I doubt they can replicate it with the Luce.
Ferrari also presells the vast majority of its "special" cars. Which this one is. The run is probably already entirely sold out.
Who is the customer for a Model S? What fancy full-size sedan would they otherwise buy?
Certainly not the person who'd buy a BMW 7er or a Mercedes S-class. Model S does not offer the basic comforts required to compete in this segment.
Perhaps the person who'd buy a BMW 5er or a Mercedes e-class? Possibly, but the Model S is still an uncomfortable, noisy and cheap feeling clunker compared to those two.
It's not like the full-size luxury sedan market is doing too bad. We've got at least:
Audi: A8
BMW: 7er, i7
Mercedes: S-class, EQS
Porsche: Panamera, Taycan (sort of)
Rolls Royce: Phantom, Ghost
Bentley: Flying spur
raises hand
I like EVs for their ripping fast 0-60. It's the only performance metric I can actually use. Top speed doesn't matter.
I drive a Model 3 Performance. I would have upgraded to a Model S Plaid a couple years ago, but Elon made a hard right turn politically and so I don't want to give him any more money. Also, Tesla has still been unable to fix quality consistency. My M3P has been great, but I've seen too many stories. Even people paying $100K for a Model S Plaid end up with things coming unglued or misaligned. I've seen them try to deliver a car with obvious gnarly scratches in the paint.
With the weather getting dryer in the PNW, I'm now looking for a convertible for my next car. Still looking to keep electric though, so now I'm just waiting patiently for the Porsche 718, Polestar 6, or Corvette EV convertible if they ever make one. Basically, whoever makes the first EV sports convertible for $200K or less that doesn't look ugly as sin will likely get my money.
Yeah! My first though about the design was "This looks like a Tesla SUV-type thing" and about as sporty as a minivan. It is 1544mm high. The Lotus Esprit (which is my standard for a cool sportscar) is over 400 mm lower. The batteries do need to go somewhere... but isn't there room around the cockpit instead of under? Or a way to have a thin layer of batteries below the entire car?