We strip electric cars of their ‘makeup’ to see how tall they really are.
An electric car should give designers more freedom, but of course there still has to be room for a battery pack somewhere. With crossovers that is no problem at all: they are already high. With sedans it is a bit more difficult. A beautiful sedan has to be low and stretched. And that is a bit difficult with a big battery at the bottom.
We therefore see that designers do their utmost to mask the height of a car. In the brand new Audi A6 e-tron (the reason for this article) they did this cleverly with a black design element at the bottom. But what remains of the design if you remove that in Photoshop…?
Audi A6 e-tron
What turns out? That black element is sorely needed. If you remove it, you really notice that this car is also a lot higher than a normal sedan and it looks a lot clumsier. But to be fair: the design trick does work.
Volkswagen ID.7
Volkswagen made a valiant attempt to disguise the height of the ID.7 with a black underside, but it didn’t quite work out. The ID.7 just looks really tall for a car that’s supposed to be the electric Passat. And that becomes even more apparent when you spray the black part too.
BMW i5
With the i4 – which also has a fairly high waistline – BMW didn’t use any tricks, but with the i5 they did bring out the black marker. If we remove that in Photoshop it becomes a bit of a pot-bellied pig, but to be honest it’s not that bad. In fact: maybe the i5 is even more beautiful without the black bottom.
Mercedes EQE
The Mercedes EQE is already a very difficult car in terms of proportions and that of course does not get any better when we remove the black make-up. The little bit of elegance that the car still had is completely gone.
Can it be done differently? Yes, the Porsche Taycan and Audi e-tron GT prove that it is indeed possible to make an electric sedan that is simply low and has beautiful proportions. So it is possible.
