We’re agreed that the aesthetics of electric cars are disappointing. On the present evidence, if the EV is the future, I’d say that the great age of car design is in the past. An Australian correspondent tells me that EVs are known as ‘Covid cars’ because they all appear to be wearing masks. Not to protect occupants from airborne pathogens, but, paradoxically, to disguise the identity they so forlornly lack. Actually faceless.
Polestar is an exception but Maximilian Missoni has designed something surprising. And that’s rare. Significantly, he has not taken inspiration from the new propulsion systems, but from mirrors and cameras. Missoni has reckoned that cameras are now so efficient that rear-view mirrors are redundant. He has done something quite radical and reckoned that a back window is redundant too.
So the latest Polestar has none. This allows the rear-seat occupants to sit in a smoochy aedicule, rather as children enjoy sitting under tables. To seek this sense of pacific enclosure is a fundamental of behavioural psychology insofar as it affects architecture and interior design. People love booths in restaurants and the upper deck of a 747.