Car Two.0 – Why Electrified Cars are the Car Design Story of 2016
For several years we have seen a growing number of electrical production and concept cars, but the latest Geneva auto showcase gave us unequivocal proof of how, for the very first time, the electrical car is here — and here to stay.
The Geneva event demonstrated that the electrical car has gone from being an in-the-wings story to an on-the-main-stage event and flagged up some of the key ways that the electrical car impacts on car design. We think that two thousand sixteen has become the year where Car Two.0 — the convergence of electrical power, autonomy and clever sharing — will be realized as being a car design story just as much as a mobility story.
At one end of the showcase floor in Geneva, Hyundai introduced the Ioniq, a stand-alone lower-medium car that comes in three flavors of electrical: BEHV (battery electrical hybrid vehicle), BEV (Battery Electrical Vehicle) and PHEV (Plug-In Hybrid Electrical Vehicle). The mainstream brand introduced a mainstream car type exclusively with electrified powertrains — a world very first.
At the other end of the hall was one of the world’s oldest and most traditional of car companies, Morgan, displaying a concept car preview of their all-electric three-wheeled roadster, the EV3.
Inbetween these two poles of electrical car types, Geneva also had Tesla displaying their gull-wing doored Model X SUV; several electrified mid-engine supercar concepts with almost 1000hp; BMW announcing their iPerformance brand that takes some of the alchemy from the i3 and i8 PHEV/BEVs to the core BMW model line-up; and numerous PHEV versions of otherwise ‘normal’ petrol or diesel-powered sedans, hatchbacks, SUVs and wagons — notably from trend leading brands like Audi, Volvo, Mercedes and BMW.
But isn’t this news about cars, not car design? Maybe the headline is about this market adoption of a fresh means of motivation for the private passenger car. But it is also a design story.
Car proportions are switching, mostly for the better, as the packaging constraints of the BEVs switch relative to ICE (internal combustion engine) cars.
Tesla’s platform on display in Geneva shows this switch most compellingly, and the BMW Vision Next one hundred concept (that previews the i5) arguably shows even more so the scope for EV realized proportional switches. Downsizing the ICE in BHEVs — depicted through latest Volvos most notably — also tips-over to affect vehicular proportions. And there are the details too: witness the front ‘grille’ treatments of the Hyundai Ioniq and the Morgan EV3.
Yet these proportional shifts and the more subtle design details that electrified cars bring to car design is only the peak of the iceberg. Electrical cars are fundamentally moving the ground under the feet of car design.
The entire idea of the car is set to switch with the electrical car — and the autonomous, collective car that this bleeds into. The fundamental tenants of ‘sportiness’ and of luxury; of the nature of cars’ singular unconnectedness; of their noisy animation; of the entire idea of a ‘motor car’; is waning.
Car Two.0 isn’t here now, but in the last throws of Car 1.0 we can perhaps see its shadow already being cast, and its story is very much a design story. It’s just that, excitingly, it hasn’t been fully written yet.
This article very first appeared on Car Design Research and was republished with permission