First Ferrari Luce EV sells for $40 million, 36x its estimate

Ferrari’s first electric car sold for $40 million at RM Sotheby’s Monterey auction Saturday night. The pre-sale estimate was $1.1 million.

That’s more than 36 times the estimate, and roughly 62 times what the Luce costs on Ferrari’s own price list. Every dollar goes to charity.

What actually crossed the block

The car was chassis ZFF21BUA8T0338000, designated “Chassis 0” and the first production unit of the Luce program. RM Sotheby’s ran it without reserve and waived the buyer’s premium, so the $40 million is the hammer price and the donation in one number.

It’s a Tailor Made build. The paint is a one-off “Madreperla Semi-Gloss” that shifts from green to violet depending on the light, and the cabin uses Le Mans metallic leather in Perla with Grigio Corvara accents, which Ferrari says replaces black on a Luce interior for the first time. Dedicated wheels, custom calipers, a prancing horse on optical white.

The buyer doesn’t get it yet. The car goes back to Maranello for final assembly, with delivery scheduled for Q1 2027.

Proceeds go to The Ferrari Foundation, a 501(c)(3) that funds educational programs. RM Sotheby’s confirmed the result on X shortly after the sale.

Ferrari keeps breaking its own record

This is now a Ferrari tradition, and the number climbs every time.

Last August, at the same Monterey sale, a one-off Daytona SP3 built beyond the 599-car production run sold for $26 million, also for The Ferrari Foundation, and was billed as the most expensive new car ever sold at auction. Twelve months later, Ferrari beat that by 54% with its first battery-electric car.

Go back further and the pattern holds. A unique LaFerrari Aperta went for $10 million at Ferrari’s Maranello sale in 2017 for earthquake relief.

Electrek’s Take

For scale on the $40 million: RM Sotheby’s sold a 1962 250 GTO for $48.4 million in 2018, still one of the highest prices ever paid for a car at public auction. A brand-new EV that hasn’t delivered a single customer unit came within $8.4 million of it.

The Luce lists at €550,000, or about $640,000. The most expensive electric cars ever put into series production, the Rimac Nevera and Pininfarina Battista, sit in the $2.2 to $2.5 million range, but they are even lower volume than the Luce.

Ferrari’s first EV got savaged at its Rome launch in May, RACE stock dropped on the reveal, former chairman Luca di Montezemolo said the badge didn’t belong on it, and Ferrari replaced its marketing chief a month later.

Then the entire 2026 allocation of just under 500 cars sold out in under two months, before a single delivery. And now this.

Now, of course, the charity aspect obviously played a big role. But it must be nonetheless satisfying for Ferrari after the original reception.