Ferrari just made the battery replaceable — and quietly changed the rules for luxury EVs
Ferrari refused to let its first EV die with its cells. The Luce hides a swappable 122 kWh battery — and that changes everything for six-figure electrics.
Nobody saw this coming from Ferrari. The Prancing Horse’s first electric car — the Luce — was not designed as a gadget with an expiration date. The real bet isn’t the size of the battery, but its ability to outlive its own generation of cells: the pack can be pulled out, replaced or upgraded once the technology moves on.
At the heart of the Luce sits an 800 V, 122 kWh battery. Only this one isn’t welded into the body, the way most modern EVs lock their packs into the structural skeleton. Ferrari kept the battery housing serviceable: there’s no fixed internal grid — the modules themselves shape the layout. Ferrari’s head of battery pack development, Elena Ligabue, puts it plainly: “The chassis, the car and the battery housing are forever. The technology inside — we can replace it with something new in the future.”
For an expensive EV, this matters more than it looks. A six-figure electric car shouldn’t turn into ancient hardware in 8–10 years just because denser, lighter or cheaper cells have arrived. With the Luce, the owner keeps the car — and gets a shot at refreshing its most expensive, fastest-ageing component.
The pack is built from 15 modules. Each one has its own aluminium cooling plate that handles heat and doubles as a structural element. Ferrari quotes around 305 Wh/kg at cell level, with a temperature and voltage control system keeping output steady as the battery ages. For an electric car wearing the Scuderia badge, this is non-negotiable: a buyer will forgive a small range loss far more easily than power drop or thermal trouble under load.
The warranty on the electric drivetrain, powertrain and charging system runs eight years. But the approach to the battery goes well beyond a warranty. Ferrari is engineering for the moment when today’s cell standards leave the market — and the car remains. For a rare, expensive machine this stops being a question of engineering. It becomes a question of preserving value.
The Luce is interesting not just because it’s the first electric Ferrari. It tries to defuse the biggest fear of luxury EV owners — the fear that the car will die together with its first battery. And it looks like Maranello has found an answer.