The Electric Future Is More Appealing Than You Think
Change is coming whether you like it or not. That is just the bare reality of it. Electric cars ARE the way of the future. Many hardline petrol heads refuse to accept anything other than the supremacy of the internal combustion engine, but the electric future will not be full of amorphous blobs of batteries and poorly designed metal, but rather a renaissance of design and class.
A common complaint among auto enthusiasts these days is that cars all look the same. Like they have all been cut from the same boring uninspired mold, fitted with uninspired engines that exude blandness from every pore. The electric future however will be an enormous deviation from this current era of cookie cutters.
The few prototypes and first new era EV vehicles that we have had the pleasure of seeing have certainly showed us a small taste of what this new future holds in store.
The most widely seen of them being the Jaguar E-Type Zero.
The all-electric lithium-ion powertrain is of a comparable size to the original Jaguar straight six and is located in the same place for optimum weight distribution and handling, whilst saving a total of 80kg. The 0-62mph sprint takes just 5.5 seconds so it is no slouch either.
The interior styling flows effortlessly in from the exterior continuing the blending of old and new.
This epic amalgamation of past and future was made globally famous when the newlywed royal couple drove off into the sunset in one.
The styling is relatively unchanged since the 1960's but why change what is already perfect? Even the likes of Enzo Ferrari called it "The most beautiful car ever made."
There is the winning recipe. Retro styling combined with a drivetrain from the future.
Nailing this recipe without breaking a sweat is the Vision Mercedes-Maybach 6. It stole the show at last years Pebble Beach Concours.
For Mercedes-Maybach style and luxury is their bread and butter. So this taste into what they can create is certainly cultivating desire. The extra space left from where the engine would normally be is now re-utilized to provide more amenities and conveniences for its driver.
The interior strides firmly into the future and more closely resembles a spacecraft of some sort as opposed to a car.
If offerings like the Vision 6 are what we have to look forward to, the future is looking brighter than ever. Much like the renaissance of old, this modern take will be focused on beauty, art, and the advancement of design.
Pushing this recipe of success even further is Infiniti. Having only been an automotive company since the late 1980's, Infiniti never got to experience the majesty and danger of the early days in racing. So Infiniti’s U.S. marketing team provided Infiniti design chief Alfonso Albaisa with this thought experiment. Imagine you are somewhere in the Japan countryside and came across a car, sheltered in a barn, hidden away for decades. Not only is it a race car, but it is also an Infiniti. What would that car look like? Could it be connected to the Infiniti production cars of today? Albaisa did just that with the Infiniti Prototype 9.
Pulling on design inspiration from the early era Mercedes Silver Arrows Albaisa and his team went above and beyond and produced a truly stunning work of art; truly a labor of love.
Underneath the stunning skin beats the heart of the next generation of Nissan Leaf. It's fully EV rear-mounted drive system makes 148 hp and 236 lb-ft and drives the rear wheels. Enough, Infiniti says, to hustle the 1,962-pound Prototype 9 to 60 mph in less than 5.5 seconds. Top speed is limited to 105 mph, down from a theoretical maximum of more than 130 mph. The 30-kW-hr battery pack stacked ahead of the driver should, Infiniti claims, allow for about 20 minutes of hard track driving.
These three glimpses into our electric future provide a guide and establish a precedent for what the future of the automotive world should look like.
Beauty, elegance, and clean performance. How can you be against that?