Ferrari didn’t need to go looking for a culture war, but it’s found itself in one anyway.
The Luce — the company’s first fully electric road car and its first five-seater — has barely been unveiled before it became a proxy argument about what “counts” as a Ferrari in 2026. The loudest shot so far came from Luca di Montezemolo, a man whose name still carries serious weight in Maranello circles, who dismissed the project with the sort of line designed to land: he said he hoped Ferrari would “at least remove the Prancing Horse from that car”.
In response, Ferrari has done what Ferrari does when it wants to legitimise a direction: put the drivers front and centre, make it look effortless, and let the halo do the rest. Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were the ones chosen to pull the cover off the Luce in the official video, climb inside, and tell the world it’s not heresy — it’s progress.
Both leaned hard into the idea that the Luce is “still Ferrari”, just expressed through a different powertrain. Hamilton’s first impression wasn’t about range or charging or any of the talking points that usually orbit EV launches. He went straight for the old Maranello staples: finish, feel, detail.
“In terms of the attention to detail, you can tell that it’s very Ferrari,” he said as the pair took in the car for the first time.
Leclerc, too, framed the Luce as evolution rather than rupture. He admitted it doesn’t look like anything Ferrari’s done before, calling the design “very, very different” — but then pointedly described it as “very futuristic”, and argued that “it’s very Ferrari-like to look towards the future and to innovate.”
That’s the key battleground here. Ferrari isn’t trying to win over the small corner of purists who will never accept an EV with a cavallino on the nose. It’s trying to convince everyone else that the badge is earned by the total experience — by chassis discipline, control, tactility, the sense that somebody obsessed over the last five per cent. In other words: not noise, but character.
Inside, Leclerc sounded almost relieved by one detail: “I love that it’s back to having more physical buttons,” he said, selling it not as nostalgia but as usability — so you can “actually drive, look at the road and you can feel.”
Then came the part Ferrari clearly wanted: the drivers driving, not presenting. Hamilton took a turn at the wheel with Leclerc riding shotgun, and the dynamic was exactly what you’d expect when one of the greatest of all time is given a new toy and his team-mate has no control over the throttle.
“Whoah! No, no, no, no, no, please don’t do that,” Leclerc blurted as Hamilton leaned into the power delivery, before frantically repeating Hamilton’s “LH” initials like it might magically persuade him to calm down.
Hamilton, of course, didn’t look particularly persuaded. He was more interested in what the car was doing underneath him — and the way he described it was revealing. He talked about being “centred” through corners and praised how the Luce stayed connected over kerbs, suggesting Ferrari’s message isn’t simply that it has built an electric car, but that it has built an electric car with the kind of composure and body control people associate with its best work.
“The power delivery is amazing,” Hamilton said. “You just feel centred the whole time, even when you’re going through corners. That’s probably why I was so relaxed!”
There were other cues Ferrari will be glad its F1 drivers highlighted without needing to be prompted. Hamilton referenced a low centre of gravity and minimal roll — classic EV benefits, yes, but also the kind of thing you only praise if the car has been tuned to feel precise rather than merely fast. “In most cars, the car rolls a lot. This doesn’t roll,” he said.
Leclerc’s takeaway was more about the atmosphere: “It is so silent inside the car.” Yet even there, Ferrari has hedged against the obvious criticism. A “performance mode” introduces a more familiar soundtrack — not a V12 bellow, but something designed to evoke the brand’s naturally aspirated past. Leclerc noted it; Hamilton said he liked the “electric sound” specifically, which is a neat bit of positioning in itself. Ferrari isn’t pretending this is the same old symphony. It’s offering a new one and daring you to meet it on its own terms.
Even the small details were used to underline the idea that this is still a product of Maranello’s particular flavour of theatre: Hamilton singled out a glass gear stick; Leclerc liked a rectangular key that slots in beside it. You can almost hear the brief: make it feel special, make it feel intentional, make it feel unlike anything else in the segment.
The sticker price will do its part, too. The Luce is set to cost $640,000, and first customer deliveries are planned to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026. Whether that turns the debate down or turns it up is anyone’s guess — exclusivity tends to amplify arguments as much as it resolves them.
What’s clear is that Ferrari is already treating the Luce as more than a model launch. It’s a statement about identity in an era when “Ferrari-ness” can’t just be measured in cylinders and decibels. Di Montezemolo has drawn his line in the sand; Hamilton and Leclerc have been asked to draw a different one, in public, with the badge very much still attached.
And if Ferrari’s hoping to make this feel inevitable, there’s no better way than having its two F1 drivers grin through the acceleration while half the internet argues about whether they’re allowed to.
