Why do these cars look so boring?! Electric cars have the potential to look so exciting, so why do so many such as the 2026 XPeng G6, Geely EX5 and Tesla Model Y look the same? | Opinion

I’ve spent a fair bit of time around new electric cars in the last couple of years and there’s a trend I’m sure you’ve noticed if you’re paying even half the amount of attention I am.

There was a steady period of car enthusiasts bemoaning the homogeneity of modern car design. Everything was starting to look the same according to the critics, but there were some trends that took hold quickly: big grilles, tail-lights spanning the rear, the list goes on.

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It seemed like every conversation or interview with a car designer in the late 2010s led to a conversation about how exciting the possibilities were with electric cars.

Fast forward a few years and, save for a few here and there, it feels like electric cars are more homogenous than even combustion cars were. 

This became even more obvious at the recent Melbourne EV Show, where numerous electric mid-size SUVs failed to really stand out in the convention hall.

Non-enthusiast punters were surprised by how ‘same-y’ some cars looked. Audience members of a CarsGuide panel on new and future EVs nodded their heads along to a dialogue between myself and CarsGuide Production Editor Jack Quick on the lack of innovation when it comes to EV design in some line-ups.

Essentially, we were all told electric cars would look exciting and different. So why don’t they?

It seems like there are three key reasons, but before that it’s worth pointing out that I’m not talking about every electric car here, just a majority. It’s a shame because there are new brands trying to make a mark in Australia with increasingly solid offerings in terms of value and quality - they just look a bit bland.

One of the three key reasons should be fairly obvious, and it’s probably the most to-blame. Drag. Not the RuPaul kind, hunty, but wind resistance.

For EV engineers, a low drag-coefficient is tantamount to winning a lip-sync battle in the penultimate episode of Drag Race. Essentially, a slipperier car means more EV range.

Unfortunately, that results in the kind of egg-shaped mid-size SUVs you see on the roads from the Tesla Model Y (yes, boring) to the XPeng G6 and Leapmotor C10.

I don’t know about you, but I would sacrifice a significant amount of EV driving range if it meant I enjoyed the view walking back to my car from the front door.

Reason two goes hand-in-hand with the first. There are actually more constraints to EV design than we might have originally thought several years ago.

In an interview with CarsGuide in 2023, Head of Alfa Romeo Design Alejandro Mesonero-Romanos said the challenges for EV design don’t just stop in the wind tunnel.

“People are wondering with electric cars, ‘Ok, now you have freedom because you have more space and less intakes.’ It’s not true, because we have even more constraints than ICE cars,” he said.

One example he gave was that because of the battery pack underneath the floor of the car, often approximately 110 to 130mm of height needs to be added to the height of an EV.

A higher centre of gravity means engineers need to work around this to build a car that’s still safe, easy and enjoyable to drive.

He also pointed out that the risk of getting too adventurous with EV design has the potential to turn potential buyers away. This leads to the third reason – the pendulum may have swung too far back to conservatism in EV designs after a few early examples had customers worried all EVs would look ‘funky’. 

Mesonero-Romanos dropped BMW’s early EV designs, the i3 and i8, as examplesand said they looked different just because they were electric. 

“I think this was a marketing exercise to say ‘Hey, I’m electric, I’m different from the others, buy me.’ It was ok five years ago, it’s not fine now,” he said.

“Why? First of all, in the end it’s fake… Secondly, all the cars in the future will be electric so if you want to differentiate yourself by being electric then it doesn’t make sense.”

Even this year, Chery’s Vice President and General Manager of Design Steve Eum pointed out the difficulty in maintaining brand identity in the EV era.

“Growing up, if you saw the front end of an Aston Martin or a Jaguar, you knew it was an Aston Martin or a Jaguar.”

“With these newer energy vehicles, [design is] becoming a lot more simpler at the front, more cleaner, of course, but at the same time, you’re losing that identity,” said Eum.

“The grille plays a big part because it is that one piece of detail at the front of the car that really says it is a certain brand next to the badge. Of course, it gives a clear indication – especially from far away – about what vehicle is coming towards you,” said Eum.

“As soon as you get rid of the grille, you’ve left this big part out of the visual identity.”

Put all of this together and the tendency for EVs, especially mid-size SUVs, to come out looking like they were designed almost entirely in a wind tunnel probably isn’t that surprising. But there are glimmers of hope.

South Korea’s big two, Kia and Hyundai, have both developed electric car design languages that gel with the rest of their line-ups. The Hyundai Ioniq 6, divisive as its design can be, is also extremely efficient in terms of its drag coefficient (0.21, slightly better than a Tesla Model 3 at 0.219).

Importantly, it looks related to the Ioniq 5, which itself has a decent 0.288 drag coefficient. It’s particularly impressive given how visually boxy it looks – no eggs here.

Then there’s Kia’s family of EVs, all of which are slightly different in shape but mostly traditional SUV-shaped, using elements like lighting and trim to create visual interest and a clear resemblance to each other. The EV3 small SUV looks clearly related to the EV9 large SUV, for example.

Some brands have also managed to lean into the fact they’re a niche enough offering that efficiency and electric range isn’t the number one goal.

Earlier this year, Mini Australia’s General Manager Alexander Brockhoff told CarsGuide the Mini brand is perfect for electric vehicles because, even in the days of petrol-only line-ups, a Mini was often the second car to a larger family car.

“So we have most of our customers around the city. So from a from a driving profile, that makes a big difference. It's also quite often that we have the cars as a second and third car in the household.

“I think we have, naturally, a customer group [for which] electric makes total sense.”

He says there’s still a strong need for brand identity in design, even pointing out that the teams at Mini and parent company BMW remain separate to avoid homogenisation.

“There's one head of the group for design, but there's a very differentiated head of design for BMW, head of design for Mini. To make sure that that character is flowing through differently between two brands, yeah that’s quite important to us.”

Back to Chery’s Steve Eum, there are more ways around the difficulty in design language that some brand have seemed to come across lately – things like headlight signatures, trim, even new design elements like BMW’s glowing kidney grille.

“I think, in the future, whether it be something that’s not so physically direct or so literal in terms of the physical grille, we might start experimenting with more digital aspects, like lighting, transparent lighting, opaque lighting and things of that nature.”

“I think that gives more of an identity for the front part of the vehicle that supports the brand as well, and so, that's what we see for the future."