Alternative Energy Vehicles and their Visual Design

According to a story in the NYTimes yesterday Mitsubishi and Nissan are attempting to leapfrog Toyota’s dominance in the Hybrid car market by developing electric vehicles for production in the near future. Considering that Japan imports 100% of its oil, a switch to electric cars would help shift the energy problem to power plants where economies of scale would allow more efficient and cleaner means of generation.

Also as Japan is such an urbanized society with a large percent of its population living in and around several large cities, the 90 mile range of these electric cars would be sufficient for most uses. Quiet, clean, small, cost effective and of course cute, these vehicles seem to fit Japanese society’s demands very well. Not to be out done, Toyota is meanwhile attempting to extend its lead in AEVs by developing a hydrogen fuel cell car it hopes to bring to market in the next decade.

How these cars will do in other countries is a question that involves many local issues beyond energy efficiency and lack of pollution. In America for instance, our relative need for space, power and comfort would make widespread adoption of these first generation vehicles impractical. Conversely our abundance of Natural Gas and the well understood conversion process for NG utilization in cars, makes it a preferable solution. Government support seems to be growing for adding natural gas pumps to filling stations especially in the West, initially for long haul trucks and then for cars, as a bridge fuel for the near future.

Another factor in adoption appears to be the visual styling of AEVs according to an interesting study on why the original Honda Fit failed in the US. People were turned off by the Fit’s similarity to the external profile of a normal Honda Civic and preferred the odd styling of the Prius as a public badge of their progressive lifestyle. The question then is how will electric cars and hydrogen vehicles distinguish themselves in the near future from their regressive hybrid or positively prehistoric gasoline powered brethren ?

In terms of visual style I find Japanese vans to be really interesting in their disproportionality of height to width making for an odd profile on the streets. Equally fascinating for me for its shortness was the Smart Car when I ran into it years ago in Italy. When I visualize American cars on the other hand I always think about length and width as the salient features of the profile rather than height.

An American centric AEV then would have to highlight these elements to capture mass appeal. I wonder if it would be possible to apply Le Corbusier’s ideas about the Golden Ratio to resolve this design challenge.