Luxury car brand Ferrari has pushed the button on a storm of criticism with the launch of a car that is being lambasted as “straight to the junkyard trash”.

The hallowed Italian brand unveiled its new $815,000 Luce in Rome earlier this week – not only its first electric vehicle but its first five-seater.

But to say the new model has been divisive is to put it mildly. Criticism has come from the highest levels and across the internet.

There have even been unflattering comparisons to Nissan’s tiny Leaf EV.

“Electric, incredibly expensive (€550,000! ), and aesthetically speaking, it speaks for itself… It looks anything but a Prancing Horse car. And this is supposed to be “innovation”? I wonder what Enzo Ferrari would say…” wrote Italian transport and infrastructure minister Matteo Salvini on social media platform X.

Ferrari bosses took the Luce to meet Pope Leo XIV. His views have not been made public. Photo: AAP

Former Ferrari boss Luca de Montezemolo was also scathing.

“If I were to say what I truly think, I would damage Ferrari. We risk the destruction of a myth,” he told Italian media.

Di Montezemolo became president of Ferrari in 1991, turning the then-struggling automaker around and making it profitable again. He stayed with the company until 2014 and remains the known as the man who saved Ferrari by many.

“I am truly sorry. I hope they remove the Prancing Horse [logo], at least from that car,” he said.

“What are we supposed to do about China? This is certainly one car the Chinese will not copy from us.”

The new Luce (the name means “light”) may not immediately look like a Ferrari at first glance. That might be because it wasn’t designed by the car maker’s in-house team.

Instead, the Italians turned to design agency LoveForm, which was co-founded by Sir Jonathan Ive and Australian Marc Newson. Ive is a former chief designer at Apple and was a key figure behind the iPhone.

The result is a strikingly clean shape built around what Ferrari calls the “glass house”, a large glazed cabin area with the body and a pair of floating aerodynamic wings wrapped around it.

The whole thing rides on the biggest wheels Ferrari has yet fitted to one of its production vehicles – 58 centimetres in the front and 60 centimetres at the rear.

The rear doors are rear-hinged, like a Rolls-Royce, and the windscreen wipers rest on the A-pillars, rather than the base of the windscreen.

Underneath, the Luce uses four electric motors, one for each wheel, which makes it the second all-wheel drive electrified Ferrari after the SF90 plug-in hybrid. It has 772 kilowatts of power and 990 Newton metres of torque.

The vehicle has a claimed 0-100km/h time of 2.5 seconds, and a claimed battery range of more than 500 kilometres.

None of it was enough to convince another Italian politician, Carlo Calenda, who worked at Ferrari more than 20 years ago.

“The Ferrari Luce is an aesthetic and technological insult to those who love Ferrari or, as in my case, have worked with it,” he wrote on X.

Also on X, one user posted a photo of a blue toilet “by Apple”.

“It’s bloody awful! What a brilliant idea to hire an Apple designer to churn out something like that,” he wrote.

American entrepreneur, technology commentator and Tesla owner Sawyer Merritt said it was “one of the ugliest EV designs ever”.

Ferrari’s share price has slumped about 8 per cent since the Luce was unveiled onTuesday. They fell from €309.20 (A$501.51) at Monday’s close to €284.05 (A$460.72) within day.

“Those who have over $$US640,000 to spend and have always dreamed of owning the spicy Italian version of the Nissan Leaf, Toyota Prius, or Jaguar i-Pace will soon be able to do so,” wrote one motoring critic.

Ferrari chief executive Benedetto Vigna has repeatedly said the car is intended to be “polarising”, and that the company hopes to appeal to people outside its core market.

“There is strong interest, including from new clients,” Vigna said ​on Wednesday (Italian time).

“We’ve already received bank transfers, clients who were [at the launch] want it.

The Luce is also aimed at wealthy buyers already used to electric cars – a major shift for Ferrari, which last year sold 81 per cent of its new vehicles to existing owners.

Vigna also defended the Luce’s steep price, saying it was fair for the innovation the vehicle offered.

“If you see it and try it, you immediately understand it was not copied and it has ​nothing to share with other EVs you have seen ​and are ⁠produced by others, in terms of interiors, exterior and performance,” he said.

The Luce will be available in Australia. Local pricing and a launch date have yet to be announced.