I have an relatively old car that was made before the fad for touch screens, I am desperately hoping real tactile controls come back into fashion before I have to buy my next car.
Then I would have managed to avoid the touch screen stupidity entirely.
While I don't think the center console is very ferrari-like, and kind of looks more like a piece of consumer electronics to me, I quite the gauges.
Using round oleds with inset bezels and physical needles to emulate a traditional 90s (and earlier) gauge cluster is an interesting idea. Honestly refreshing in a sea of sameness in the car industry today.
Maybe the font (looks like SF pro), parts of the GUI, and the liberal use of glass surfaces.
But there's absolutely no way the apple car would've had gauges anywhere near this physically complex, or a steering wheel that looks like this with the thin spokes and manettino. A lot of the switches also look significantly more premium that what you'd realistically expect from someone like apple making their first car.
There are several ideas here about how to elegantly combine physical switches, knobs, and dials with digital displays that I quite appreciate in this design.
Some nice details:
- There's digital readouts around the binnacle gauges
- The physical needle on the speedo comes from the outside to leave the center available for the digital screen
- The drive selector has a small screen (light?) in the center as an indicator
The combination seems like it may create a quite polished feel if it's done well in motion.
I feel like nobody has figured out yet how these screens and components in a modern car should fit together that don't look like little iPhones and iPads just mounted in a car.
There are some nice buttons here, and individual components (as photographed) look good on their own.
BUT altogether it still seems like disparate components who share design language, just slapped into a vehicle.
screens are for output, buttons (and toggles, knobs & sliders, they all have their strenghts) are for input. Voice is also good for input but should never be the only (or primary) way of interacting with important functionality.
automakers are slowly figuring this out but, unfortunately, the move to electric may retard this realization because "high-tech"
Voice is only good for languages which have broad support, and for native or almost-native sounding speakers. Anyone with an accent or speaking a language with broken support due to few speakers or just models not heavily trained on hates voice commands.
I don't have a heavy accent but as a non-native speaker still do have an accent in English, and I hate the failure modes of voice commands when it misinterprets something since it is much harder to correct. I actively avoid voice commands just due to this 1-5% of failures that are extremely annoying.
Agreed. This projects looks like they couldn’t find a meaningful way to innovate and had to reach for impact-less uniqueness - physical clock on a digital screen, Oled gauges for no reason.
That steering wheel looks absolutely awful. Like a budget car. And the UX is rubbish. The easiest to reach buttons are ones that are nearly never needed: drive mode (usually used 0-2 times per trip), wiper mode (but no single wipe?). The only frequently used ones are the indicators - which I don't love but I guess stalks are a bit meh aesthetically - and the speed cruise. But sensors? Suspension? Why are they there?
The clock looks like a dollar store alarm clock. The center console otherwise looks okay, environment management can be done easily, that's a good trend to continue.
The instrument cluster has no aura - completely anonymous, doesn't make me think "Ferrari" or "high performance, high technology".
Rounded square design language isn't fit for purpose in a ferrari, which is about aerodynamic shapes that reinforce that you're in a high-performance sports car.
Jony Ive is a garbage-tier car designer. He'd fit in better at Kia. Or Volvo.
Good car interior design fulfills the functions of: usability; sensibility and brand identity. What's good for a LaFerrari (which has many of the same feature on the wheel as this, but imo, better) is not going to be good on a Hyundai i20 and vice versa.
But BMW is, in general, very good at finding a design language that fits all the right buttons in the right places while feeling like a mid-to-up market car. It's a blend of usability and aesthetics and brand (+model) identity that finds a really good balance across all three categories.
Heh, my thought on opening the article and seeing the image was "huh, without the badge in the photo, if forced to guess the make, I'd have gone with Kia."
It's very clear that at some point they decided stalks are bad, and so instead of having an indicator stalk - a universally understood control they decided to stick them all on the steering wheel so you can drive around looking at whether you want to be in Range, Tour or "Perfo" mode.
I think it's fine to lose the stalks - in a Ferrari. You're making tradeoffs in usability for aesthetics anyway so a few more makes sense. But the locations of these particular ones - at prime thumb access location, plus the high visibility of them... Not good!
glad to see some physical buttons, but there aren't nearly enough of them and they aren't differentiated enough
the emergency lights button should be colored red and elevated because it needs to be interacted with in high-stress situations
temperature should be set with a slider rather than a toggle switch because then a given temperature selection becomes spatially consistent and selecting max-hot or max-cold is instant and obvious
and so on
all in all better than expected and shows that we are moving past the "everything is an ipad" phase of civilizational development
I don't see why a slider couldn't work with "Auto".
Setting the temperature where one end is minimum, the other is maximum, and between them you have a choice of degrees.
Activated vents would probably be better kept as buttons instead of being on a slider, I might want to use the floor vents at the same time as the defroster.
Fan speed (imo) should be on a knob, like a volume control. It would be fun to see it move, like a motorized pot on a receiver.
British sports cars in the sixties for safety reasons had to remove toggle switches. The problem was that during crashes people were losing eyes or suffering puncture wounds. This was the story handed down to me by my uncle.
This is second hand account but here are my uncle's credentials...
I can forgive the circle screen in a Mini Cooper just because it's a heritage thing. What I don't like is, not having physical controls for heated seats, temperature controls, and heated steering wheels. Mini made all those touch screen, which don't work nice with gloves.
I always wonder if the people designing these things have ever lived in a cold climate. They know about cold in the abstract because they put heated seats in, but have they ever woken up in the morning and gone outside to commute to work in a car that's been sitting at -20 degrees overnight. Interfaces that don't work with gloves or mittens on are the worst.
Which is to say, do they know that touch interfaces are bad and do it anyway because it saves money? Or do they go through life thinking they're actually making a usable product?
"Which is to say, do they know that touch interfaces are bad and do it anyway because it saves money? Or do they go through life thinking they're actually making a usable product?"
It's likely the former. Industrial designers are trained on ergonomics so they know the benefits of physical switches.
However, at least in the case of BMW / Mini, they're forced use touchscreens by their management primarily because:
1. Not only it saves money
2. It also enables subscription models for certain features like heated seats and steering wheel. No heated seats? Just remove the UI buttons.
Unless consumers push back (like VW customers did), they will continue to cut costs.
Well, it was a heritage thing. The original remakes with the center speedo and plenty of physical buttons were fun. The digital circle thing is an abomination.
I would have literally bought a mini if not for the daft screen and lack of button. Bought a Smart Fortwo instead, happy camper with all my tactile interfaces.
I can't tell if it is just me, but a digital analogue clock is weird. I'm all for analogue time keeping with hands circling a face, but when it is put on a flat screen, it feels cheap.
There aren't enough buttons, there is too much to read, and all of this while I'm driving.
I remember my friends dad had a Corvette or something in the mid-late 90s, and it had this red projected HUD on the windshield. All of your information was right at eye level, and you never had to look away from the road to see your RPM or speed, and probably more, but that was 30ish years ago, and I barely remember yesterday.
GM has kept the HUD thing going for a few decades now. They offer it on a good number of vehicles in their GMC lineup. I have it on my vehicle now and it's absolutely amazing. I find I rarely look inside the vehicle at the 14" infotainment screen. It shows speed, cruise control status and alerts, navigation, and a popup of song title if I manually change songs with the steering controls. I find I'm lost and heavily distracted when I get in my wife's vehicle without a HUD.
Also, my vehicle is a truck, one of the last places where manufacturers still let you have buttons and knobs to control climate.
Everything about this design has a dichotomous personality. The smoothness of the materials and rounded edges can’t make up for the disparate and forced combobulation to get…this…
Our Mazda came with a HUD. It works well. Pretty great to have info like speed limit, next nav instruction, BLIS info right in your line of sight without being intrusive IMO.
While I quite like the choices around physical vs digital controls, this aesthetic feels refined to the most unexciting degree: objectively good, but locked in the past. In fairness, automotive interiors (especially EVs) seem to be having a bit of an identity crisis across the board.
Ugh, maybe I need to see it inside an actual car but overall looks like it could belong inside a small truck/SUV if you took away the Ferrari logos.
I like the physical controls. I actually just traded off my truck over the weekend and the climate controls being through the screen were a major part of that decision. It still seems like the switches here are pretty minimal and might be annoying - do you have to go through the screen when your windshield starts to fog?
Needing to “dock” the key in the center console to start the car is clunky. We’ve had the proximity key thing figured out for like 15 years. It also seems impossible to have the car key on a ring with anything else?
It’s not bad UX, it’s part of the experience of driving the car. Something that a Ferrari buyer probably cares more about than a Tesla buyer.
I personally miss the physical keys on older cars that you had to insert and turn to start the car because you’re directly controlling the starter/engine. It feels like you’re driving a car and not using an appliance. There are people who prefer manual transmissions for similar reasons.
My current car has keyless entry and start, and I don't really miss having to insert the key and turn the ignition. And I especially don't miss those ignition switches that were mounted on the side of the steering wheel where it was impossible to see the keyhole. At least the start button on my dash is in an easily visible spot.
This is the first automotive interior design for the blind.
It’s a mess. Disparate palettes even in grey is a serious WTF accomplishment. The ring over the Launch button is absolutely superfluous and idiotic at the same time. No function and even worse form.
Ugh. Enzo at least can power the first charge from the output of him spinning in his grave. Yes, I could do better.
I clearly don't understand Design. My expectation is that an amazing prolific designer would deliver different designs in different contexts. At Apple maybe it's this minimalist industrial design. But what I'm seeing here - and forgive me if I'm just an idiot about design, is exactly what you'd get it you asked ChatGPT "Ferrari but Johnny Ive apple design interior".
It's all the same design language and materials you'd seen on Apple product. It's almost like someone went "let's make the infotainment a giant Apple watch".
I would expect you call up a good designer and they design something special that works in the language of your product, something uniquely new, but also uniquely Ferrari. But what seems to be happening here is if you phone up Johnny Ive you'll get a slapdash re-run of 2010s iPhone design.
I don't think you are not understanding design, big-name designers do have a design language but in this case it just feels like Ive re-applied whatever his design language for Apple in the early 2000s into a Ferrari car.
Very little care on aligning the design to the brand design, except for the seat and a few selector switches (which somehow Ferrari seems to have accepted? Strange from such a picky client), no care about keeping refined design elements like stalks for the turn signals and wipers and instead applying this buttons-everywhere-for-every-function approach that is considered a regression in EVs input design.
The screens are just different shapes of iPhones/iPads instead of something uniquely Ferrari-Ive, feels like a Ferrari-Apple car collab.
Really don't understand it, Dieter Rams did a lot with the same design language because he worked for Braun for a long ass time, Ive is completely untethered from Apple so re-applying the same design language he created for the brand unto another brand is just unimaginative.
You have eloquently described my first impression upon looking at the pictures. It feels way too Apple-y or should we say Jony Ive-y. Perhaps a design’s style is truly unique to an artist, much like painters who inevitably develop recognisable styles, and therefore we should not be surprised by this outcome. For me, it dilutes the Ferrari's historical and unique Italian design.
This is Jony Ive taking his design aesthetic (minimalism, primary shapes, metal&glass) and applying it to the interior of a car vs. Jony Ive designing an interior of a Ferrari that looks like a Ferrari.
Looks like a sim racers rig or something Logitech designed. This bland tech aesthetic and cost cutting mindset has already ruined Porsche and I guess now it’s Ferrari’s turn.
I'm lucky enough to have driven quite a few modern Ferraris (488, 812, FF, California) and what they have in common is that their interiors are not very pretty or advanced, but everything is where you'd expect and gives the info you need (that is, apart from the horrible non-deterministic placement of the indicator switches on the steering wheel).
This is not a Ferrari interior. It's an interior for rich people who will buy a Ferrari EV and think they have a Ferrari. Like the Purosangue before it, it cosplays as a Ferrari while diluting the brand.
I recently went straight from a California to a Miata ND, and the Miata is just so much more fun in every conceivable way. Cheaper interior for sure, but it can actually be used in fun ways on normal roads and you cannot hide weight with electronics.
> What you’re looking at here is arguably the most consequential car interior, well, ever
It looks like the interior of many cars now except for having stick like manual toggles like a retro control panel. It's not consequential at all, unless they mean "following as a result of".
This is just so sad. One would have hoped Ferrari aa a car brand care about their design language enough to not look like any other car in 2026. That iPad in the middle looks just a bit more refined than the middle console tablet glued to a Dacia Sandero.
Why do they go for OLED fake analog gauges? You don't need to switch between a million different faces for gauges. A Ferrari is supposed to be about the driving experience, not the gimmicks.
Brajeshwar | 8 hours ago
DrScientist | 7 hours ago
Then I would have managed to avoid the touch screen stupidity entirely.
seydor | 8 hours ago
I wonder how an ai would design it.
Aren't those designs copyrighted by apple?
[OP] elxr | 8 hours ago
Using round oleds with inset bezels and physical needles to emulate a traditional 90s (and earlier) gauge cluster is an interesting idea. Honestly refreshing in a sea of sameness in the car industry today.
tummler | 8 hours ago
Tade0 | 8 hours ago
danieloj | 8 hours ago
t1234s | 8 hours ago
[OP] elxr | 8 hours ago
But there's absolutely no way the apple car would've had gauges anywhere near this physically complex, or a steering wheel that looks like this with the thin spokes and manettino. A lot of the switches also look significantly more premium that what you'd realistically expect from someone like apple making their first car.
rodeoclown | 8 hours ago
Some nice details: - There's digital readouts around the binnacle gauges - The physical needle on the speedo comes from the outside to leave the center available for the digital screen - The drive selector has a small screen (light?) in the center as an indicator
The combination seems like it may create a quite polished feel if it's done well in motion.
guga42k | 8 hours ago
duxup | 8 hours ago
There are some nice buttons here, and individual components (as photographed) look good on their own.
BUT altogether it still seems like disparate components who share design language, just slapped into a vehicle.
recursivedoubts | 8 hours ago
automakers are slowly figuring this out but, unfortunately, the move to electric may retard this realization because "high-tech"
piva00 | 6 hours ago
I don't have a heavy accent but as a non-native speaker still do have an accent in English, and I hate the failure modes of voice commands when it misinterprets something since it is much harder to correct. I actively avoid voice commands just due to this 1-5% of failures that are extremely annoying.
soared | 8 hours ago
automatic6131 | 8 hours ago
The clock looks like a dollar store alarm clock. The center console otherwise looks okay, environment management can be done easily, that's a good trend to continue.
The instrument cluster has no aura - completely anonymous, doesn't make me think "Ferrari" or "high performance, high technology".
Rounded square design language isn't fit for purpose in a ferrari, which is about aerodynamic shapes that reinforce that you're in a high-performance sports car.
Jony Ive is a garbage-tier car designer. He'd fit in better at Kia. Or Volvo.
maxwell | 8 hours ago
automatic6131 | 7 hours ago
But BMW is, in general, very good at finding a design language that fits all the right buttons in the right places while feeling like a mid-to-up market car. It's a blend of usability and aesthetics and brand (+model) identity that finds a really good balance across all three categories.
secretballot | 8 hours ago
Heh, my thought on opening the article and seeing the image was "huh, without the badge in the photo, if forced to guess the make, I'd have gone with Kia."
lbreakjai | an hour ago
Traster | 7 hours ago
automatic6131 | 6 hours ago
recursivedoubts | 8 hours ago
the emergency lights button should be colored red and elevated because it needs to be interacted with in high-stress situations
temperature should be set with a slider rather than a toggle switch because then a given temperature selection becomes spatially consistent and selecting max-hot or max-cold is instant and obvious
and so on
all in all better than expected and shows that we are moving past the "everything is an ipad" phase of civilizational development
nubg | 8 hours ago
Is it our hubris as armchair UI designers that we miss obvious problems? Is it internal politics? Is it bureaucracy? Is it hardware difficulties?
recursivedoubts | 8 hours ago
they also make it difficult to support an "auto" function, because they would need to move automatically to maintain a consistent user experience
sliders aren't used very often in cars now so it is probably harder to find well made components for them
etc
hopefully as the automakers move back to physical inputs they bring back these sorts of controls
korhojoa | an hour ago
Setting the temperature where one end is minimum, the other is maximum, and between them you have a choice of degrees.
Activated vents would probably be better kept as buttons instead of being on a slider, I might want to use the floor vents at the same time as the defroster.
Fan speed (imo) should be on a knob, like a volume control. It would be fun to see it move, like a motorized pot on a receiver.
pcurve | 8 hours ago
trgn | 8 hours ago
LightBug1 | 8 hours ago
detourdog | 7 hours ago
This is second hand account but here are my uncle's credentials...
https://mossmotoring.com/manhattan-mechanic/
CamperBob2 | 32 minutes ago
wlesieutre | 7 hours ago
jerlam | 4 hours ago
https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/tech/mini-circular-in...
It looks terrible especially running Carplay (which is designed for rectangular screens).
pcurve | 2 hours ago
wlesieutre | 2 hours ago
Which is to say, do they know that touch interfaces are bad and do it anyway because it saves money? Or do they go through life thinking they're actually making a usable product?
pcurve | 7 minutes ago
It's likely the former. Industrial designers are trained on ergonomics so they know the benefits of physical switches.
However, at least in the case of BMW / Mini, they're forced use touchscreens by their management primarily because:
1. Not only it saves money
2. It also enables subscription models for certain features like heated seats and steering wheel. No heated seats? Just remove the UI buttons.
Unless consumers push back (like VW customers did), they will continue to cut costs.
threetonesun | 2 hours ago
zemvpferreira | 2 hours ago
jermaustin1 | 8 hours ago
There aren't enough buttons, there is too much to read, and all of this while I'm driving.
I remember my friends dad had a Corvette or something in the mid-late 90s, and it had this red projected HUD on the windshield. All of your information was right at eye level, and you never had to look away from the road to see your RPM or speed, and probably more, but that was 30ish years ago, and I barely remember yesterday.
bronco21016 | 8 hours ago
Also, my vehicle is a truck, one of the last places where manufacturers still let you have buttons and knobs to control climate.
Hamuko | 5 hours ago
Podrod | 2 hours ago
davedx | 8 hours ago
The speedo and rev counter are exactly where they should be. What else do you need to read while driving?
What buttons are you missing?
prmoustache | 7 hours ago
jonasdegendt | 8 hours ago
See the multigraph section: https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/ferrari-luce
6stringmerc | 7 hours ago
jollyllama | 6 hours ago
TYPE_FASTER | 4 hours ago
drcongo | 4 hours ago
cnobody | 8 hours ago
loloquwowndueo | 8 hours ago
germinalphrase | 8 hours ago
jonasdegendt | 8 hours ago
https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/ferrari-luce
trollbridge | 8 hours ago
donatj | 8 hours ago
supermatt | 8 hours ago
drzaiusx11 | 7 hours ago
tonyedgecombe | 7 hours ago
klaff | 5 hours ago
qaq | 7 hours ago
aurea | 7 hours ago
Hamuko | 5 hours ago
justjash | 7 hours ago
I like the physical controls. I actually just traded off my truck over the weekend and the climate controls being through the screen were a major part of that decision. It still seems like the switches here are pretty minimal and might be annoying - do you have to go through the screen when your windshield starts to fog?
_giorgio_ | 7 hours ago
these links are ok:
https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/1r04f0x/official_ferr...
https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/ferrari-luce
diego_moita | 7 hours ago
This is something that we need to read slowly.
The "ferraristas" have been the most ardent sect on the cult of the internal combustion engine.
If these guys can be converted, then, probably, the last holdout in veneration of oil will probably be the government of the United States.
glimshe | 7 hours ago
lunias | 7 hours ago
cmckn | 7 hours ago
butlike | 7 hours ago
trpv | 7 hours ago
Hamuko | 5 hours ago
butlike | 7 hours ago
sambapa | 7 hours ago
6stringmerc | 7 hours ago
It’s a mess. Disparate palettes even in grey is a serious WTF accomplishment. The ring over the Launch button is absolutely superfluous and idiotic at the same time. No function and even worse form.
Ugh. Enzo at least can power the first charge from the output of him spinning in his grave. Yes, I could do better.
butlike | 7 hours ago
Traster | 7 hours ago
It's all the same design language and materials you'd seen on Apple product. It's almost like someone went "let's make the infotainment a giant Apple watch".
I would expect you call up a good designer and they design something special that works in the language of your product, something uniquely new, but also uniquely Ferrari. But what seems to be happening here is if you phone up Johnny Ive you'll get a slapdash re-run of 2010s iPhone design.
cr125rider | 6 hours ago
herbturbo | 6 hours ago
piva00 | 6 hours ago
Very little care on aligning the design to the brand design, except for the seat and a few selector switches (which somehow Ferrari seems to have accepted? Strange from such a picky client), no care about keeping refined design elements like stalks for the turn signals and wipers and instead applying this buttons-everywhere-for-every-function approach that is considered a regression in EVs input design.
The screens are just different shapes of iPhones/iPads instead of something uniquely Ferrari-Ive, feels like a Ferrari-Apple car collab.
Really don't understand it, Dieter Rams did a lot with the same design language because he worked for Braun for a long ass time, Ive is completely untethered from Apple so re-applying the same design language he created for the brand unto another brand is just unimaginative.
lcrisci | 6 hours ago
anonym00se1 | an hour ago
vax425 | 6 hours ago
jerlam | 4 hours ago
herbturbo | 6 hours ago
Hamuko | 5 hours ago
deafpolygon | 3 hours ago
dundundundun | 3 hours ago
I'm lucky enough to have driven quite a few modern Ferraris (488, 812, FF, California) and what they have in common is that their interiors are not very pretty or advanced, but everything is where you'd expect and gives the info you need (that is, apart from the horrible non-deterministic placement of the indicator switches on the steering wheel).
This is not a Ferrari interior. It's an interior for rich people who will buy a Ferrari EV and think they have a Ferrari. Like the Purosangue before it, it cosplays as a Ferrari while diluting the brand.
I recently went straight from a California to a Miata ND, and the Miata is just so much more fun in every conceivable way. Cheaper interior for sure, but it can actually be used in fun ways on normal roads and you cannot hide weight with electronics.
CamperBob2 | 31 minutes ago
I, too, shorted NVDA
jemmyw | 3 hours ago
It looks like the interior of many cars now except for having stick like manual toggles like a retro control panel. It's not consequential at all, unless they mean "following as a result of".
twalichiewicz | 2 hours ago
hnburnsy | 2 hours ago
proee | 2 hours ago
bgnn | 2 hours ago
Why do they go for OLED fake analog gauges? You don't need to switch between a million different faces for gauges. A Ferrari is supposed to be about the driving experience, not the gimmicks.