BMW declared a while ago that "EV owner want that their cars are recognized as an EV". I wonder where this false information is coming from. They obviously did surveys and they did them wrong. I believe that EV owner want a good looking car but not something that looks like from a SF movie. If you look at the i3 or I8 you can say that maybe a portion from the design comes from the carbon fibre material decision but there is in my view a complete misinterpretation what a consumer wants and BMW seems not to listen.
People do not need a futuristic design but a car that just works well and has great specs. I like the range they announced above 400 miles although I have strong doubts that they know how to make that happen. Maybe its a bet on the solid state battery that a lot of manufacturers here hope will come to market and be a game change. I doubt that and believe the Lithium Batteries have still a lot of improvement if not most still in them and it will be the technology that replaces ICEs in the next 2 decades.
I suspect that a lot of EV buyers
do want a car that is recognizable by the general public as an EV - there is an element of the market that wants to conspicuously not consume.
However, that doesn't mean it has to look
weird. I think the success of the Gen 2 Prius and the Gen 1 Insight (which both looked radically different from normal cars when they launched - that's less true today, where oil crisis and CAFE-driven design trends required Prius-esque aerodynamics out of conventional compact and midsize sedans), and failure of some hybrid conversions of conventional cars (especially the Civic, Accord, and the GM SUVs/pickups with the 2-mode hybrid system), convinced traditional automakers that they needed to go weird to attract customers to an eco-car.
The failure of the Gen 2 Insight demonstrated half of why that was utterly wrong - looking weird wasn't enough. (Why buy it when the Prius is barely more expensive, roomier, more powerful, more efficient, and has a reputation for reliability that Honda hybrids didn't have?)
The success of the Tesla Model S demonstrated the rest of why that was wrong - looking weird wasn't required. Tesla's designs are very conservative by 2010s standards, but at the same time, Tesla has elements that make their design language clear - the result is conservative, but not generic. So, just
looking like a Tesla is enough to project eco-consciousness, without looking weird at all (on the exterior, anyway).
And, of course, being a good car, not just good for an eco car, helps a lot, too.
