Controversial Ferrari Luce EV is an instant sellout in China

All the controversy surrounding the launch of the first all-electric sedan to ever wear the Ferrari badge hasn’t slowed down sales any – every single Ferrari Luce allocated to the Chinese market is already spoken for.

Ferrari unveiled its new Luce EV this past May, and the car – both the first regular production sedan in the company’s history and the brand’s first car penned by ex-Apple design guru Jony Ive – was immediately criticized for being too plain, too practical, and too electric (among other things) by legions of internet commenters. The negative feedback was enough to drive Ferrari’s stock down over 6% in a single day, leading the company to axe its long-serving chief marketing and commercial officer, Enrico Galliera, just weeks after the rocky debut, installing former BMW Italy boss Massimiliano Di Silvestre in his place.

Nobody seems to have explained all this to the Chinese, however. All 88 examples of the 3,988,000 yuan (~$586,000) Ferrari Luce allocated to that market were snapped up “immediately,” according to CarNewsChina.

That rapid sellout supports Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna’s claims that the Luce is “clocking up orders” despite the backlash, which could be interpreted to mean that any backlash against the electric Ferrari isn’t a market backlash, with “market” being defined as “people who can actually afford to buy the thing.”

It’s nice in there

Another take, however, is the idea that Ferrari dealers were effectively forcing customers to buy a Luce in order to gain access to the brand’s more exclusive (and expensive) models – a report that gained enough steam to appear in Bloomberg before being vehemently denied by Galliera in at least one interview prior to his axing.

“No, I was mad because we don’t respect what is written in this article, and it’s totally not correct,” Galliera told The Drive. “Let me say why: because since the very beginning, we made clear to our clients that this car is designed for a different target audience.”

We’ll see if that’s true if and when those 88 Luce buyers get fast-tracked into the next Ferrari hypercar soon enough.

SOURCE | IMAGES: CarNewsChina.

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