JAGUAR REVOLUTIONIZES EV DESIGN
New I-Pace concept a suave, zero-emission — quick — electric SUV writes David Booth
If there’s a reason electric vehicles will take over our transportation industry, it may have less to do with their method of propulsion and more to do with the fact the stylists who sketch out their futuristic designs are excited to be designing something so revolutionary.
Case in point, Jaguar’s new I-Pace. You’ll soon be reading how Jaguar has now fully committed itself to the environment, has pledged to engineer zeroemissions vehicles and how the new I-Pace — now a concept — “is really a preview of a five-seat production car that will be on the road in 2018,” promises Ian Callum, Jaguar’s director of design.
You’ll read how it’s the face of Jaguar’s future, that the company has finally joined the modern age of mobility and, most of all, how the I-Pace is proof yet again that electric propulsion is ascendant.
But the truth of the matter is that the I-Pace would be as gorgeous — and its swoopy exterior receive just as many accolades — were it powered by a supercharged, high-compression V8 with a stuck coolant temperature sensor (you analogue types should think “choke”), spewing unburned hydrocarbons into the atmosphere. It really is that beautiful.
Its gorgeous silhouette — all Le Mans endurance supercar scoops in the front, Porsche Cayenne-like muscular haunches in the rear — may have been inspired by its electric propulsion, but when you’re this besotted by stunning good looks, any talk of emissions reduction is just noise.
And the I-Pace truly is stunning. In pictures it looks like the F-Pace melded with Jaguar’s own C-X75 supercar. In real life, you wonder why Jaguar went to all the trouble of elaborately juicing up a virtual reality world inside Los Angeles’s famed Milk Studios, the I-Pace’s sleek profile all the eye candy even this EV skeptic needs. They could have parked the damned thing in a garbage dump or the back alley behind the studio and the assembled auto journalists would have been as wowed.
It’s the best design yet from a designer — the aforementioned and much lauded Callum — already responsible for an incredible number of gorgeous cars (from Aston Martin’s DB9 to virtually all Jaguars since 1999). I suspect that much of the automotive world’s excitement, supposedly for the I-Pace’s emissions-free engineering, will actually be awe at Callum’s expertise.
But, while a powertrain by any other energy source might have looked as sweet, Callum says its zero-emission powertrain eased his stylistic challenges, noting that “electric vehicles offer designers much greater freedom.” The I-Pace’s “revolution is not in the design language, but in the profile,” says Callum, “and that profile is only possible because the car is electric.”
How exactly did the difference in powertrain alter the design? Callum says the change in the mechanics of the car “led to the sporty cab-forward profile rather than a car with a hood and an engine.”
Indeed, without an internal combustion engine and transmission tunnel to package, the I-Pace’s designers were able to bring the cabin forward, extend its wheelbase and shorten the overhangs. The result, besides being gorgeous, is more aerodynamic; Jaguar claims a coefficient of drag of just 0.29, exemplary for an SUV.
Of course, there is an actual car beneath all that swooping skin — technology that Jaguar hopes eventually garners as much attention as the I-Pace’s good looks. Thanks to a liquid-cooled 90-kilowatt-hour lithium ion battery pack and twin, Jaguardesigned 200-horsepower permanent-magnet electric motors (fulfilling the all-wheel-drive promise of the exterior design), the I-Pace accelerates from zero to 96 km/h in just four seconds and claims 352 km of range by EPA standards.
Jaguar also says the I-Pace can travel 500 km in European NEDC evaluation, though pretty much anything with a motor and more than two Eveready triple-A batteries can make a mockery of NEDC testing these days.
And on a boringly practical front, the I-Pace’s cab-forward architecture also means Callum’s team was able to engineer more generous second-row seating and, says the chief designer, a larger trunk capacity — 19 cubic feet (538 litres) — “without compromising the dramatic silhouette.” The absence of that transmission tunnel also means the centre console can allow a (relatively) gargantuan eightlitre storage space. Will the benefits of electric drive never end?
The I-Pace also boasts an interior that, in any lesser a design, would be the highlight of the event. Windsor leather and twin-needle stitching add classic touches, Alcantara seat backs and carbon-fibre trim add a modernistic touch. Touch screen interfaces, large rotary controllers and a 12-inch high-definition virtual instrument cluster complete the I-Pace’s au courant bona fides, while the burled wood instrument panel — complete with laser-etched “Lovingly crafted by Jaguar. Est. Coventry 1935” — maintains the I-Pace’s connection with Sir William Lyon’s legacy.
Despite this mechanical goodness and emissions-free promise, however, it’s still the I-Pace’s gorgeous exterior, and how its compact electric motors and flat, under-floor battery pack allowed Callum to produce such a provocative design, that remains newsworthy. Indeed, the I-Pace feels like the electric vehicle’s design insurrection finally delivered. While Porsche’s Mission E seems like yet more of the Panamera/911 motif writ electric and Tesla’s Model X — and its problematic gull-wing doors — seem more evolution than revolution, the I-Pace turns the SUV segment on its ear, seamlessly melding the brutish muscularity of the SUV with the swoopy aggression of a supercar.
Jaguar says the I-Pace is one of the “most visually arresting concepts” it has ever produced. Callum simply says “it was an opportunity we had to grasp.”
Judging from the I-Pace’s achingly good looks, it’s an opportunity they grasped better than most. Driving.ca