Revhead Ramblings: Why Aren’t Our Electric Cars Styled More Excitingly?

Often, unless you know your cars, you’d be oblivious to the electric forms on the road. They’ve slipped seamlessly into society; with the odd exception of course! I’m not sure if this is how it should be done though, most EVs are cautious petrol-car clones, they have design cues from their fossil fuel burning cousins that are purely cosmetic.

Manufacturers have so far failed to utilise the styling advantages afforded by the electric powertrain.

Standardised Design

This was present even in our first ever motor cars, high seating and tall wagon-style wheels were all too present in our previous mode of transportation; the horse and carriage. There’s no reason now that we have three-box or even two-box architectures. We often have a large front engine bay, occupied by nothing and upright grills that have no engine to cool!

Jaguar

While no cars have taken huge steps to differentiate from the pack, Jaguar are at least pushing the boat out a little bit with their i-Pace model. Project Designer, Ian Callum said: “It’s the most exciting project I’ve worked on in 40 years as a car designer. It’s a new hero Jaguar for a new era”

The electric nature of the car means it has a skateboard floorplan, this blank canvas gives designers huge freedom when designing the vehicle. By rejecting traditional styling, the design team have given the SUV a cab-forward design, not only does this emulate a mid-engined sports car, it also affords vast amounts of space for the rear passengers and storage space in the boot.

Traditional Styling

Electric cars need far less cooling than their ICE counterparts. This means their noses can be lower, a plus for style and aerodynamics too. Unfortunately, this is a feature few manufacturers take advantage of. Even with the i-Pace, Jaguar chose to only dip the nose so much, to ‘retain the Jaguar presence’. EVs also don’t need gearboxes, clutches, bell-housings, exhausts and petrol tanks – their omissions should all liberate cabin space. Heating and ventilation can also be more compact – see the Tesla Model 3. 

The uptake of electric cars is promising, more and more people are becoming happy with the idea of charging their cars and saving the environment. Surely that means then that their designers can be given some more leeway in terms of design? Tesla are leading the way at the moment; the layout of their Model X is revolutionary and I hope other manufacturers will follow suit shortly!

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