Photo courtesy of Ferrari

The new Ferrari Luce EV, co-designed by Jonny Ive no less, has caused more than a bit of a splash. My friends at Nissan are cockahoop at the similarity with the much, much cheaper new Leaf. In fact I’m sure I saw a mocked up pic of a Leaf with low profile alloys and yellow brake callipers which made me snort my coffee through my nose, but I can’t find it now.

Personally, I think it’s a fine looking car in the luxury executive mould. Think Aston Martin, or the successor to the Tesla Model S if a certain gazillionaire had, er, kept his eye on the ball (cough). But it’s not a Ferrari, is it? I mean, a Ferrari should look a bit mental – a car for people with an order of magnitude more money than sense. So I’d say the only thing wrong with this car is its badge.

When I interviewed Richard Gillies, then of Marks and Spencer, for the Green Executive, he explained that in the early days of Plan A they had played with the idea of selling ‘green’ products – eg wormeries for food waste. But they realised that people go to M&S for clothes and food, not garden hardware, so they focussed instead on integrating Sustainability into their clothing and food ranges. In other words, they were putting their customers first, meeting customer expectations in a more sustainable way, rather than expecting them to change.

Maybe Ferrari want to diversify away from its focus on impractical supercars and into the luxury market. Porsche did something similar with the Cayenne years ago, putting a sports badge on a vehicle more suited to the school run than the track. Maybe they just wanted to cause a stir. But they’ve definitely upset their current core market and they may regret that.