The future of electric car design remains to be written

The builders are a strange group. On the one hand, they are willing to give their designers the freedom and millions of dollars to explore distant concepts, but then their production vehicles follow a narrow and uninviting design line. By attending the Mondial de l 'Automobile de Paris this week, I see this dichotomy all around me. Renault's self-driving limousine EZ-Ultimo is parked a few meters away from a fleet of anonymous SUVs. The eye-catching attention supercar of the Audi PB18 E-tron is flanked by uniformly forgettable cars. And Peugeot's superb e-Legend concept is a drop of flair for design and aggression in an ocean of visual predictability. I came to Paris in search of the future of electric car design, but I managed to find some fantastic fantasies and a lot of continuity.

What is missing in the world of automotive design today is common ground. Either you are limited to using headlights and other unimportant cosmetics, or you get a totally blank slate without any design constraints. Anyone can draw a romantic, seductive, opulent, fantastic – and unrealistic – concept for many years to come. But where are the risky, opinion-based, and near-future designs that encompass the full range of possibilities offered by the electric car?

My point of view at the Paris show is that car manufacturers are, at the base, extremely conservative. They engage in the wave of advanced innovations and build physical representations, but it is a form of extravagant marketing. In their quest for hype and attention, automakers often launch their new cars in a bright and provocative red, and then build the majority of these cars in gray, white and black, as these are mostly most popular colors. people end up buying. We share a collective illusion that we want our vehicles to be new, wild or unprecedented, and car manufacturers have decided to treat it as long as it will boost sales.

Photo of Vlad Savov / The Verge

Mercedes-Benz is a good example of the current philosophy of car manufacturers. The famous German brand is working on the release of the first car of its 100% electric EQ sub-brand, the SUV EQC, and I spoke to Jochen Hermann, head of electromobility at Daimler, Mercedes' parent company. Hermann said that Mercedes "did not want to take two measurements at once", which means that the shift to electric propulsion and the need to think about how to charge and use an electric vehicle is already a disruption sufficient. "We kept the familiar shape," says Hermann of the EQC, "but everything has changed [else] In other words, the basic experience remains unchanged and designers are once again forced to make only superficial adjustments.

In order to reduce manufacturing costs and complexity, Mercedes has chosen to place EQC electrical drive components in the space provided by the combustion engine that the car does not need. This allows the company to use its existing production lines to build the EQC system more quickly. No need to rethink the complete architecture of the vehicle if you can simply trade one driving system for another. Few people get fired for an overabundance of caution, after all.

But the irony of this pragmatic strategy of speeding up time to market is that it may slow down the overall pace of innovation. With electric cars, there is a huge amount of creativity to determine the number of engines to use, their power, and their location. The technical layout of an electric vehicle is much more flexible than that of a combustion engine car. And yet, Mercedes chooses to stick to what already works.

Some degree of real world skeuomorphism occurs with electric car designs. The batteries need cooling, of course, but an electric vehicle does not strictly require a front grille (as evidenced by the Tesla Model 3). I asked Hermann about it, and he reiterated that car companies – or at least his company – had to give something familiar to consumers. Electric propulsion is the future, there is a total consensus on this at the Paris Motor Show, but to achieve this, it will be necessary to proceed in stages, without alienating the final customer. It is also probably for this reason that the power outlets for most electric vehicles are in almost the same places and are covered by the same shutters as the fuel caps.

Picture of Sean O'Kane / The Verge

Audi's E-tron SUV follows exactly the same formula as the Mercedes-Benz EQC. It has about the same size, a large grille and enlarged air intakes at the front, and its taillights are a large red stripe that runs the full width of the car. They are both similar to all SUVs already on the market. Audi and Mercedes both opt to start electrifying their wallets with SUVs, because it's by far the most popular type of car that people buy. Both play security.

You can add to this list of other electric competitors, such as Jaguar's I-Pace or Hyundai's Kona, and you'll find that they look alike and look a lot like the previous models. There is certainly something to say about the continuity of the design, but for now, it looks like conservatism of design. Automakers will quickly tell you that, given their size and the huge cost of time and money required to conduct road tests, even for seemingly minimal modifications, this approach makes the most sense. They may be right.

And yet, I think the main reason why Tesla exists and continues to arouse the interest of many enthusiasts is because of this obvious gap in the creativity of established automakers. The absurd law about Elon Musk's genius is the closest thing we have to a carmaker who wants to be bold to rethink the entire vehicle. Yes, a Tesla is always in the shape of a car, but it has a distinct appearance on the outside, an aggressive infotainment system inside and a constantly changing user experience, thanks to an update program regular software. And the fact is that all of this is possible for older brands, who have had the courage.

Photo of Vlad Savov / The Verge

Volvo is proposing a new approach to be more aggressive electrically while isolating the main car brand from potential pitfalls. The Swedish manufacturer, owned by a Chinese company, created the brand Lynk & Co and launched it with the obvious choice of an SUV. And for the more upscale customer, Volvo is preparing another derivative brand, Polestar, and its Polestar 1 will seek to establish itself as a high-performance electric vehicle worthy of our attention. Both of these initiatives are safer than Volvo squeezing into the ambitious market of young Chinese consumers (Lynk & Co) or the super premium segment of high-performance luxury cars (Polestar).

Another disruption of the established automotive industry model has probably come from China, where companies are investing heavily in the recruitment of experienced designers and in the development of electrical technology and design. The builders in Paris with whom I spoke all believe that the Chinese market is essential to the sales of electric vehicles, which the local government subsidizes and encourages. But the competition will be fierce, with locals seeking to emulate the smartphone market by taking advantage of their proximity to manufacturing skills, state support and a greater willingness to search for risky ideas.

Established auto companies have all sorts of peripheral considerations, such as their brand positioning in the market and their dealership relationships, which play into the strategic decisions they make about their products. At shows like Paris, it is also safer to stick to the demonstration of the predictable, existing and far-fetched roadmap instead of the design roadmap of the next three or four years. So, my search for the future of electric car design remains frustrated for the moment. The year 2019 will have the biggest wave of newcomers on the all-electric market, and we will probably have to wait to learn from these cars before we can expect to see a true innovation, a first electrical design in space. automobile.