Take any gasoline car sold today and show it to a mechanic who has been working on a Ford Model T for 100 years and there is a good chance they will understand roughly how it works. An internal combustion engine at the front spins the wheels, carrying a driver behind a steering wheel, some passengers and luggage.
The arrival of electric cars changes everything. The shape of the car will no longer be defined as rigid by bulky engines, exhaust handling or drive shafts. At the same time, digital technology promises to replace everything from mirrors to the human driver. Never before has the car industry had to deal with so many changes at once.
All of these changes will culminate in the coming years, says Adrian van Hooydonk, head of design for the BMW Group. The main concerns of car manufacturers will be electricity and the integration of rapidly evolving digital technology, while improving environmental sustainability. “It will be a reinvention,” he says.
These are some of the most amazing changes we can expect to see.
‘The skateboard’
A General Motors Hummer EV chassis in Lansing, Michigan. Photography: Bill Pugliano / Getty Images
The lack of an internal combustion engine has already had an impact. Look at the front of a Tesla and one thing is clear: no grille is needed to supply air to the engine.
Rival manufacturers (in recovery mode from Tesla, the world’s most valuable carmaker) are using the new design freedom to offer models like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Honda e looking for smaller but more powerful headlights in a package that offers a retro futurism that could have appeared in an eighties sci-fi movie.
The Hyundai Ioniq 5 won the World Car of the Year 2022 award. Photo: Andrew Kelly / Reuters
But the changes will go far beyond the superficial style. Electric cars are built with a “skateboard” design, with a flat bed of batteries and wheels and motors at each end. Electric motors are also smaller than bulky internal combustion engines, which means that no hood extension is required in front of the driver.
The American startup Canoo is one of the most notable examples of this. Its “lifestyle vehicle”, which may be delayed until early next year due to supply chain problems, will have a remarkably flat front end, giving it a square shape unlike most cars. moderns.
An EV “skateboard” that contains batteries and motors in an almost flat configuration. Photo: Hyundai / Canoo
However, aerodynamic considerations still govern to some extent. UK van startup Arrival initially planned a vertical front windscreen, but eventually opted for a more traditional rake design because the air resistance reduced the range of the vehicle.
More interior space
The Hyundai Seven concept. Photo: David Swanson / EPA
Skateboarding means that electric cars tend to be a few inches taller, and many carmakers have first started with bulky sport utility vehicles (SUVs) so they can fit in more batteries. But there is still more room for passengers.
In combustion-engined cars, “mechanics took up a lot of space in the general footprint,” says Mark Adams, Vauxhall-Opel’s chief design officer. Then, what this space is used for in an electric vehicle depends “really on the individual vehicle and what you are trying to do as a brand.”
Citroën, one of Vauxhall’s stable mates under the Stellantis conglomerate, has already shown a choice: the Ami is a small, two-seater car with no frills for walking around the cities. It will be released in the UK in late summer for less than £ 8,000.
Citroën’s electric friend. Photography: Ed Alcock / The Guardian
In France, the Ami can be driven by anyone over the age of 14, without the need for a driver’s license.
Adams believes the electric revolution could finally stop the move to larger SUVs. “The days of growing cars have gone by forever more,” he says. “We don’t need mass cars anymore.”
Fewer car parts
The BMW Vision Circular is on display in Munich in September 2021. Photo: Sascha Steinbach / EPA
Producing zero exhaust emissions is not the only major change in the look and feel of cars. Reducing end-of-life waste is becoming increasingly crucial for carmakers, and that means using fewer parts with fewer complicated mixtures of materials whenever possible.
For example, the front grille of a car can hold 10 to 15 pieces, so doing without it reduces the hassle of repairing or recycling. BMW’s i Vision Circular showed how a car could be made with just seven materials, all recyclable. However, achieving scale will be another matter.
Sign up for the Daily Business Today email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk
Forget the steering wheel
The most conspicuous absence in future cars will finally be the steering wheel. Driverless cars already travel millions of miles on the roads and it seems inevitable that mostly or fully autonomous cars (known as level 4 and level 5 in industry slang) will eventually hit the market.
“If you then change it to total self-employed, you don’t necessarily have to stay in the same position,” says Adams of Vauxhall. “We’re all looking at this space.”
Changing “something big changes 100 smaller things,” he adds. Less driving means less need for easy access controls, so cars will change the cockpit of the plane, full of buttons and switches, for a cleaner look that relates more to leisure.
In general, digitization will have an even greater effect on car design than even electrification, says van Hooydonk.
Living room on wheels
Hyundai chief designer SangYup Lee is part of the Seven Concept at Automobility LA in California in November 2021. Photo: David Swanson / EPA
Canoo calls its U.S.-based model a “wheeled loft,” while Korean carmaker Hyundai’s Seven concept has swivel seats and bench seats that it describes as a “living space on wheels.” Clearly, some cars will be treated more like home extensions that move as drivers give in to doing other things.
All this free time on the go can give people more time for other activities. Movie-style projectors or virtual reality entertainment are two options in the works. Car consultants and major technology companies, from Apple and Alphabet to Spotify and WeChat, believe that the car will be the next place where they can sell a variety of services such as movies, games and music.
Finally, interiors could go from “living room” to “bedroom”, although putting beds instead of seats in cars creates complicated security issues. However, the idea of going to bed at home and waking up at work, or even in another country, is no longer a Jetson-style dream.