Electric cars to kickstart future auto designs – Jaguar

Jaguar’s head of design, Ian Callum, has said that electric cars “will kickstart the biggest change in automotive design history.” Speaking to Autocar UK, the design chief didn’t reveal anything about his company’s own electrification plans, but said that the new era presents automakers with the opportunity to reinvent vehicle designs entirely.

“My view is that electric cars are a new start. Car design will change more in the next 15 years than it has in the past 100. Electrification will kickstart the biggest change in automotive design history,” Callum said.

With electric vehicles requiring fewer components compared to traditional fuel-powered ones, Callum suggested that how designers use the extra space will be a key factor to shaping future designs. “By removing so much of the mechanical hardware and placing the batteries in the floor plan you open up all sorts of possibilities with packaging,” he said.

“The question is whether you make the cars smaller, but with the same interior space, or keep the cars the same size and offer more space – or perhaps both,” Callum added. “It offers designers and stylists much greater freedom.”

Sharing no details about Jaguar’s future electrification plans, the design boss only said that an electric Jag would be suitable for the brand as it keeps up with the times. “Look at the C-X75 concept (pictured above) — that was a car that was designed for an alternative powertrain, and nobody had any complaints about how that looked. It just so happened we later fitted a conventional powertrain in the car – but it was designed entirely around an electrified hybrid powertrain,” he said.

Several reports also suggest that Jaguar will launch its first electric vehicle in 2018 — an SUV to rival the Audi Q6 e-tron quattro. It’s all unconfirmed for now, but it is also said that the first electric Jag will offer a 482 km driving range, and will be priced around the 60,000 pound sterling (RM335k) mark. Previously, we also reported that Jaguar had moved to trademark two new names for itself, being “I-Pace” and “I-Type.”

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