You know things<\/span> are bad when the Pope gets involved<\/a>. No doubt reeling from a launch<\/a> that somehow went down even worse than Ferrari<\/a> itself anticipated, the Italian carmaker sought to get the endorsement of none other than His Holiness Pope Leo XIV for its first EV, the Luce.<\/p>\n Guided by Ferrari chairman John Elkann and senior Ferrari executives, in a hillside town about 15 miles southeast of Rome, the pontiff sat in the driver\u2019s seat and listened patiently as test driver Raffaele De Simone explained the vehicle\u2019s controls and driving modes as if he really was speaking to a man clearly in the market for a 1,000-horsepower electric car<\/a> capable of hitting 62 mph in 2.5 seconds.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, as Pope Leo was no doubt pondering how the Luce could boast one of the largest batteries in any production EV yet still only manage a maximum 329 miles, or how an accelerometer on the rear axle somehow worked like a guitar pickup to create in-cabin sound like an \u201cinstrument,\u201d the market was speaking. On seeing the $640,000 car design, not by Ferrari, but LoveFrom<\/a>, the agency founded by Jony Ive in 2019 upon his exit from Apple, the carmaker\u2019s share price dropped 8 percent<\/a> in morning trading in Milan, while New York-listed shares fell by 5.1 percent<\/a>, wiping billions off Ferrari’s value.<\/p>\n Courtesy of Ferrari<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n Remarkably, Luca di Montezemolo, who was Ferrari’s chairman until 2014, went on camera<\/a> to share his disgust. \u201cWe risk the destruction of a legend,\u201d he said. \u201cI just hope someone removes the prancing horse from that car. This is certainly a machine that the Chinese won’t copy\u2014they won’t need to.\u201d<\/p>\n In social posts echoing the recent calamitous Swatch X AP launch<\/a> where disappointed watch fans used AI<\/a> to fashion a product they really wanted from the collaboration rather than a pocket watch, within minutes the furious Ferrari faithful were posting not only AI-generated \u201cfixes<\/a>\u201d on Ive and LoveFrom’s vision, but also barbed AI images and videos of the Luce in Fisher-Price mode or as a giant automotive Apple mouse<\/a>, upturned with a USB cable plugged into its underside.<\/p>\n Having changed tune on posts asking followers “What do you think?”, gleefully smelling blood in the water, initially hesitant but now emboldened car commentators and YouTube hosts are piling on, secure in the knowledge of which way the wind is blowing on the Luce.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/6a16fba6125163f13223168b\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/Luce_2rt_v6_6000x3375.jpg\"\/)
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