FUTURE PROOF
Anyone else think electric cars are a bit... samey? Fear not – there’s hope yet, says Paul
Variety being the spice of life an’ all, I have a beef with electric cars. I really do love their motors’ smoothness and quick wits. But with this near-perfection comes precious little variation. While, duh obvs, there are differences in magnitude of power, in quality of delivery they’re pretty uniform. And they’re not just samey in performance, they resemble one another in styling and design too. Of course, for most daily driving purposes these are pretty satisfactory ways to power and package a family car. But as the Niagara of new ones gushes towards us, I find myself struggling to pick one over another.
Combustion cars provide more variety – that’s even the normal ones, not just the specialist mid-engined tackle. Petrol or diesel? How many turbos (or none), or cylinders? Gears selected manually or automatically? Engine mounted longitudinally or transversely? These things affect the way a combustion car drives of course, but also its proportions and what accommodation lies within.
This drab similarity of future EVs has been worrying me, but I’m happy to have found some countervailing voices.
First, Gordon Murray. A man with previous on V12 engines, and not a fan of battery mass in the context of sports cars. But he sees the way the wind is blowing and has founded a new subsidiary company, specifically to design and engineer EVs.
“A battery’s advantage is that it doesn’t change mass during discharge. A fuel tank is up to 100kg lighter when empty than full.” So he’s always striven to place the tank near the car’s centre of gravity, otherwise the handling will alter as it drains. “So a battery can be sited away from the centre of gravity. It’s the heaviest thing in the car. Unlike a combustion car, the motors are lighter, so the second heaviest thing is the occupants, and then the powertrain after that.” So while your standard EV puts its battery under the people, Murray wants to move the battery and drop the seat height too. And this is isn’t for an exotic car; he’s conceiving a third-party hatchback.
Luc Donckerwolke, head of design at Genesis, is obsessed with layout and proportions as much as surface. He just designed an electric concept, the Genesis X, that isn’t only magnetic to look at but proportioned rather like a BMW 8-Series. The pretty one from 1990. Surely that’s not feasible for an EV? Not when his group is doubling down on its new people-over-battery platform, as in the Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6?
He says that yes, roomy crossovers with flat floors will boss the market. But there can also be cab-backward cars with ‘impact zero’ on the proportions. Absent an engine, a long nose can house the aircon, high-voltage electronics, drive motor, even luggage. The battery can be tucked behind the people. “I hope we don’t go to just one typology. People will get sick of SUVs. There is interest in diversity. We must design cars that make us dream.”
“THIS DRAB SIMILARITY OF FUTURE EVs HAS BEEN WORRYING ME”