alt Hacker NewsIn case anyone was wondering what the Apple Car would have looked like inside, it would have been roughly this.
As an Apple Car™ it makes sense, but as a Ferrari it's incredibly soulless and oversimplified. This Ive design aesthetic (Dieter Rams' aesthetic really) is fine on consumer electronics where you want the device to disappear and give way to the display, but on something as emotional as a vehicle (Ferrari especially), this design falls flat.
I do hope some of the design details work their way through the industry (e.g. using glass instead of gloss black plastic, convex glass to add depth to digital gauges), but I hope the rest of it stays as a one-off experiment demonstrating the hubris and one-dimensionality of a top designer.
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It certainly looks like an Apple device. Ive's aesthetic is Apple's aesthetic, so if you hire Ive, that is what you are going to get.
I can see a car company who doesn't care about design stumbling into this outcome, but Ferrari doesn't seem like that kind of company. So the choice must have been intentional.
Well, that’s the problem with product design — looking at it simply doesn’t suffice. It needs to be experienced in person.
Well, that’s not (yet) possible, but this video does a good job in the meantime:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wv1btxCjVE&pp=ygUQTG92ZWZyb20...
Ferrari interiors have always been spartan and aimed at functionality.
This feels like a modern Ferrari F40 dashboard and I like it a lot.
> but on something as emotional as a vehicle (Ferrari especially), this design falls flat.
Strongly disagree. To each their own...
I think the Aston Marting with the Apple Carplay Ultra[0] is a pretty good example of what an Apple Car would have looked like.
[0]: https://www.astonmartin.com/en-us/our-world/brand-stories/as...
What is oversimplified specifically (given this is an electric car)
So bland. An iPad put in a holder. I was not exactly hoping for, because I didn't really, but I dreamt of a much more radical design direction.
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EVs have a weight issue that fundamentally constrains their overall design. It is really a tough engineering problem to try to shave weight off of everything, because you are starting out with a 700kg battery replacing a 400kg engine + transmission, so you are ~300kg in the hole, and need to remove 300 kg from the rest of the car. That's why they do crazy stuff like use the battery as part of the structural frame, to save on metal there. Every extra kilogram reduces range. Solid things are made hollow. Metal is replaced by plastic. Fabrics are thinner or replaced with lighter-weight engineered materials. Lots of things are removed. Physical buttons gone, flourishes gone, handles gone. Seats are made thinner and with less material. See how they brag about a simpler new steering wheel that is 400g lighter?
All of that and still they come up with a 2300 kg compact two row SUV.
So, if you are going to be redesigning everything anyway to try to get rid of as much weight as possible, why not hire a designer known for sparse, minimalistic, clean design? It makes sense. It may not be what Ferrari buyers want, but you can't really blame Ferrari for giving it a try. We'll see how well it sells.