Part 6 EV design

ONE OF THE THINGS THAT CONTINUES to surprise me about electric vehicles is how big they are. I looked in on a Renault dealer recently to try a Renault Zoe and in the showroom what I was confronted with was a rather big car that Renault describes as a small car. But the Zoe was dwarfed by the new Arkana hybrid, a kind of four-door fastback coupe SUV.

I’m used to cars shrinking when they’re taken outside – that’s why I always insist on viewing a design project in an outdoor evaluation space, and why I would never make design decisions just on a computer screen – but out of doors both Renaults were still big. This is really not surprising because, like ICE cars, an EV