Where’s the “spark” in electric car design?
Electric cars look just like their combustion brethren, with nary a closed-off grille and a few blue accents… Why?
Automobile design managers are very proficient at making excuses.
Whenever challenged about a less-than-successful design, they’ll tell you it was because of inept management, marketing input, cost-cutting, legislation… And that’s often true.
Up until recently, it wasn’t uncommon for design managers to indicate new powertrains as a gateway to a new, exciting phase in automobile design. Fast forward to 2020 and, almost a decade after Tesla’s breakthrough Model S, the automobile industry at large is finally pivoting towards mass-market electrification… But you could be forgiven for not noticing. With a few exceptions, electric cars look just like their combustion brethren, with nary a closed-off grille and a few blue accents to “highlight” their different status.
So, what gives?
The automobile industry is perhaps the most tightly regulated of all, for a good reason: to keep people alive. But I believe there’s more that’s holding designers back, mostly because technology evolves far more rapidly than people’s minds…
Let alone our bodies: to work in the real world, the vehicle still has to provide easy entry and egress, comfortable seating, and ample visibility to the passengers. After more than a hundred years, this basic concept has been redesigned so many times it’s perhaps unreasonable to expect to see something radically new.
Or is it?
The importance of design (in a holistic sense, from exterior to interior to UX) in the automobile sector is only going to increase in the electric age. Because, much like cellphones, very little differentiates one electric car from the other under the skin. Their underlying technology is inevitably going to be, at least to a degree, commoditized.
Design and brand image will decide, more than ever, which companies will thrive and which won’t. Automakers will need to “tell their story” much better, maybe create their own “ecosystem” to encourage brand loyalty, ripping a page from Apple’s book.
But there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
Car designers are, first and foremost, massive automobile enthusiasts, each looking to leave a mark. But the automobile industry is a high-stakes game whose low return on investment makes management weak at the knees.
It’s no coincidence it took an outsider willing to burn billions to turn electric cars into reality… While hiding revolutionary technology under a very traditional-looking, Jaguar-like body.
But, long enough in the future, the remarkable flexibility of electric vehicle architectures and commoditized hardware will reduce the risks involved in pursuing a daring visual language.
