Bezos quip, Ive design shaped Ferrari's Luce EV, Elkann says

By Giulio Piovaccari

TURIN, Italy, Oct 7 (Reuters) - When John Elkann first started thinking seriously about an electric Ferrari a decade ago, the prompt came from an unlikely source: a walk with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the Ferrari chairman said on Wednesday.

That conversation eventually led to the Ferrari Luce, the luxury carmaker's first fully electric model, unveiled in May and created in partnership with former Apple design chief Jony Ive and his LoveFrom team.

But the result was also a car that sparked fierce debate, prompting social media mockery and criticism for its unconventional styling, while some investors questioned Ferrari's gamble on electrification.

"This is something that we believe is important for the future of Ferrari ... not to just recycle history, but to create the future," Ive said of the project as he joined Elkann at a panel discussion at the Wave technology conference in Turin. 

Ive described a project that began not with sketches but with understanding Ferrari itself.

"We spent really the best part of a year researching and trying to learn," he said, explaining that LoveFrom immersed itself in Ferrari's history and culture before starting work on the vehicle. Teams in California and at Ferrari's Maranello headquarters in northern Italy then spent five years developing the project together.

With Luce, Ive, who helped create some of Apple's most iconic products, sought to reject some industry trends, including the predominance of touchscreens and digital controls.

"Touch, as the primary interface, shouldn't be in a car," he said. "There's a price you pay ... you're disconnected as a physical being from the object." 

The Luce relies heavily on physical controls and tactile feedback designed to create a more direct relationship between driver and machine.

SEEING IS BELIEVING

"We weren't in any way intending to do a controversial Ferrari," Elkann said at the conference, organised by Vento, the venture capital arm of Agnelli family holding group Exor, which controls Ferrari. 

"What is important is how much that touches your conviction. What it did is that it made our conviction very strong."

But both Ive and Elkann, who is also Exor CEO, said seeing the Luce in person often changed perceptions compared with the initial response to images.

"I've never known such a massive change that seems to occur when you see it," Ive said.

With a Luce on display at Wednesday's event, drawing long queues of visitors eager to judge Ferrari's most debated new model for themselves, Elkann recalled that a July 2016 conversation with Bezos helped convince him Ferrari needed to think seriously about electric vehicles.

Bezos told him: "I don't know anything about cars, but I really know a lot about innovation. And I think that you need to really think hard about building an electric vehicle," Elkann said.

(Reporting by Giulio PiovaccariEditing by Keith Weir)